The New York Times crossword


The New York Times crossword is a daily American-style crossword puzzle published in The New York Times, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals, and released online on the newspaper's website and mobile apps as part of The New York Times Games.
The puzzle is created by various freelance constructors and has been edited by Will Shortz since 1993. The crosswords are designed to increase in difficulty throughout the week, with the easiest on Monday and the most difficult on Saturday. The larger Sunday crossword, which appears in The New York Times Magazine, is an icon in American culture; it is typically intended to be a "Wednesday or Thursday" in difficulty. The standard daily crossword is 15 by 15 squares, while the Sunday crossword measures 21 by 21 squares. Many of the puzzle's rules were created by its first editor, Margaret Farrar.

History

Although crosswords became popular in the early 1920s, The New York Times initially considered them frivolous, calling them "a primitive form of mental exercise", and did not run a crossword until February 15, 1942, in its Sunday edition. It was published under a pseudonym Farrar occasionally used, "Anna Gram".
The motivating impulse for the Times to finally run the puzzle appears to have been the bombing of Pearl Harbor; in a memo dated December 18, 1941, an editor conceded that the puzzle deserved space in the paper, considering what was happening elsewhere in the world and that readers might need something to occupy themselves during blackouts. The puzzle proved popular, and Sulzberger himself authored a Times puzzle before the year was out.
In 1950, the crossword became a daily feature. That first daily puzzle was published without an author line, and as of 2001 the identity of the author of the first weekday Times crossword remained unknown.
There have been four editors of the puzzle. Farrar edited the puzzle from its inception in 1942 until 1969. She created many of the rules that have become standard, such as creating the grid, limiting the number of black squares, creating a minimum word length of three letters, requiring grids to have rotational symmetry and be an odd number of squares by an odd number of squares, and forbidding unchecked squares. The second editor was Will Weng, former head of the Timess metropolitan copy desk. Weng served until 1977, and Eugene T. Maleska, the third editor, until 1993. The current editor is Will Shortz. In addition to editing the Times crosswords, Shortz founded and runs the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament as well as the World Puzzle Championship ; has published numerous books of crosswords, sudoku, and other puzzles; authors occasional variety puzzles to appear alongside the Sunday Times puzzle; and serves as "Puzzlemaster" on the NPR show Weekend Edition Sunday. There have also been two interim editors of the puzzle: Mel Taub from September 6 to November 20, 1993, after Maleska's death; and Joel Fagliano, from March to December 2024, while Shortz was on medical leave.
The puzzle's popularity grew until it came to be considered the most prestigious of the widely circulated U.S. crosswords. Many celebrities and public figures have publicly proclaimed their liking for the puzzle, including opera singer Beverly Sills, author Norman Mailer, baseball pitcher Mike Mussina, former President Bill Clinton, conductor Leonard Bernstein, TV host Jon Stewart, actress Gillian Jacobs, and music duo the Indigo Girls.
Times puzzles have been collected in hundreds of books by various publishers, most notably Random House and St. Martin's Press, the current publisher of the series. In addition to appearing in the printed newspaper, the puzzles also appear online on the paper's website, where they require a separate subscription to access. In 2007, Majesco Entertainment released The New York Times Crosswords game, a video game adaptation for the Nintendo DS handheld. The game includes over 1,000 Times crosswords from all days of the week. Various other forms of merchandise featuring the puzzle have been created, including dedicated electronic crossword handhelds that just contain Times crosswords, and a variety of Times crossword-themed memorabilia, including cookie jars, baseballs, cufflinks, plates, coasters, and mousepads.

Style and conventions

Will Shortz does not write the Times crossword himself; a wide variety of contributors submit puzzles to him. A full specification sheet listing the paper's requirements for crossword puzzle submission can be found online or by writing to the paper.
The Monday–Thursday, and usually Sunday, puzzles have a theme. This is often some sort of connection between at least three long across answers, such as similar types of puns, added letters, or hidden synonyms. These puzzles often have entries known as "revealers", phrases that relate to the themed entries and may help explain the link. Notable dates such as holidays or anniversaries of famous events are often commemorated with an appropriately themed puzzle, although only two are routinely commemorated annually: Christmas and April Fool's Day.
The Friday and Saturday puzzles, the most difficult, are almost always themeless and "wide open", with fewer black squares and more long words. The maximum word count for a themed weekday puzzle is normally 78 words, while the maximum for a themeless Friday or Saturday puzzle is 72; Sunday puzzles must contain 140 words or fewer. Given the Times's reputation as a paper for a literate, well-read, and somewhat arty audience, puzzles frequently reference works of literature, art, or classical music, as well as modern TV, movies, or other touchstones of popular culture.
The puzzle follows a number of conventions, both for tradition's sake and to aid solvers in completing the crossword:
  • Nearly all the Times crossword grids have rotational symmetry: they can be rotated 180 degrees and remain identical. Rarely, puzzles with only vertical or horizontal symmetry can be found; yet rarer are asymmetrical puzzles, usually when an unusual theme requires breaking the symmetry rule. Starting in January 2020, diagonal symmetry began appearing in Friday and Saturday puzzles. This rule has been part of the puzzle since the beginning; when asked why, initial editor Margaret Farrar is said to have responded, "Because it is prettier."
  • Any time a clue contains the tag "Abbr." or an abbreviation more significant than "e.g.", the answer will be an abbreviation.
  • A play on words is called out by either
  • * a clue ending in a question mark, or
  • * a clue followed by a comma and the word "maybe".
  • Occasionally, themed puzzles will require certain squares to be filled in with a symbol, multiple letters, or a word, rather than one letter. This symbol/letters/word will be repeated in each themed entry. For example, the December 6, 2012, puzzle by Jeff Chen featured a rebus theme based on the chemical pH scale used for acids and bases, which required the letters "pH" to be written together in a single square in several entries.
  • French answers, and less commonly those in other languages, such as Spanish and Latin, are indicated by:
  • * a tag in the clue giving the answer language, or
  • * the clue itself being in that language, or
  • * an English prompt with a place where the language is spoken. Foreign words that contain accented letters typically omit the accents in the answer.
  • Clues and answers must always match in part of speech, tense, aspect, number, and degree. A plural clue always indicates a plural answer and a clue in the past tense always has an answer in the past tense. A clue containing a comparative or superlative always has an answer in the same degree.
  • The answer word will not appear in the clue itself. The number of words in the answer is not given in the clue—so a one-word clue can have a multiple-word answer.
  • The theme, if any, will be applied consistently throughout the puzzle; e.g., if one of the theme entries is a particular variety of pun, all the theme entries will be of that type. Theme answers will tend to be the longest answers and often appear in reverse symmetry throughout the puzzle, although not always.
  • Unlike in some word games, popular proper nouns, brand names, abbreviations, and even symbols can be used.
  • No entries involving profanity, sad or disturbing topics, or overly explicit answers are allowed, though some have sneaked in. The April 3, 2006, puzzle contained the word SCUMBAG, which had previously appeared in a Times article quoting people using the word. Shortz apologized and said the term would not appear again. PENIS also appeared once in a Shortz-edited puzzle in 1995, clued as .
  • Spoken phrases are always indicated by enclosure in quotation marks, e.g., for LEAVE NOW.
  • Verbalizations of certain invoked actions are sometimes clued by square brackets, often including an exclamation point or question mark. e.g., It's cold! for BRR, We finally made it! for PHEW Why? for SHRUG.
  • When an extended phrase of the answer can also be used in the clue to mutual meaning, the mutual extension is indicated in parentheses. e.g., for MULL, for PUSH.
  • When the answer can use an additional word to fit the clue, the word is preceded by "with" and placed in quotes. e.g., for SINK.
  • Times style is to always capitalize the first letter of a clue, regardless of whether the clue is a complete sentence or whether the first word is a proper noun. On occasion, this is used to deliberately create difficulties for the solver; e.g., in the clue , it is ambiguous whether the clue is referring to the proper name John or to the slang term for a bathroom. All proper nouns are capitalized regardless of place in the clue.