References: General | Puns & Anagrams | Cryptics | Artificial Intelligence(AI)
General
- later section: Authoring: Submission Guidelines
- One crossword-solver's enthusiasm inspired an entire TikTok subculture
How Katie Grogg created the purest puzzling community: @coffeeandcrosswords; 11/7/2021 - The best crossword-solving tactics reflect life's best lessons
Practice makes perfect, or Try, try again.
Make no assumptions and consider all angles;
-- in other words, a single word can have several meanings
Be a lifelong learner. Take your time and check your work.
Be willing to take chances. Get back to basics. Details matter; 2/9/2021 - How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle Amy Reynaldo; book; 1/31/2021
- Will Shortz's Tips for... Beginners video: 1:22; Pros video: 0:45; NYT; 11/8/2012
- How to Be the Fastest Puzzler in Town Shortz; 3/10/2002
- How to Solve the NYT Crossword Puzzle Shortz; NYT; 4/8/2001
- NYT Style & Conventions; Trivia puzzle about NYT construction [JS; .pdf]
- How to Solve Crossword Puzzles Puzzazz: Lewis and Leban
- Easy Crosswords For Seniors For Dummies Cheat Sheet
- HSW: Top 10 Tips for Solving Crossword Puzzles
- Word Buff: How to Solve Crossword Puzzles; about.com 10 Tips
- Crossword Phrase Dictionary: Tips
- Free Resources for Solving Crosswords; Puzzletome Crossword Tutorial
- BarelyBad: Diagramless Crossword Puzzles; tutorial
- How to Solve Crossword Puzzles: WonderHowTo video: 1:23; Howcast video: 1:23
- How to Idiot's Secret Guide to Mastering Crossword Puzzles
- How To Dominate the New York Times Crossword Puzzle
- Beginner's guide to solving crosswords Electricka
- How to Get Better at Crosswords LH; 2/15/2019
- Complete Idiot's Guide to Crosswords by Matt Gaffney
- Books for Crossword Puzzle Solving
- Crossword Rules 5/10/2004
NYT Puns & Anagrams (aka 'PandAs')
- PandAs use a subset of cryptic-style clue types,
but since they're fully-crossed, they may be easier to solve. Examples: - WP blog NYT; 4/21/2018
- WP blog NYT; 2/24/2018
- WP blog Will Shortz; NYT; 1/28/2017
- WP blog NYT; 9/24/2016
- WP blog NYT; 8/1/2015
public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Cryptics
- ChatGPT vs a cryptic crossword 2022
- Links for Cryptic Crosswords, Variety Word Puzzles, and Logic Puzzles 6/1/2022
- What makes a crossword cryptic? one-sheet solving guide; 3/24/2022
- The Puzzling Story of How Cryptic Crosswords Crossed the Atlantic 1/17/2022
Beastly Clues: T. S. Eliot, Torquemada, and the Modernist Crossword 1/12/2022- about.com: Diagramless Crosswords: A Tutorial
- Always Puzzling blog; American vs British crosswords grids, clues; 1/10/2013
- The Atlantic: Puzzler Instructions Atl; 1999
- AVCX: Cryptic Solving Guide .pdf; American Values Club Crossword; Francis Heaney; 6/2020
- Cryptic crosswords: A puzzling British obsession BBC; 3/3/2021
- How to Get Started in Cryptic Crosswords Patrick Berry; 9/13/2019
- BestForPuzzles
- Biddlecombe: Yet Another Guide to Cryptic Crosswords
- Introduction Includes a quick description of cryptic puzzles, an instant history and some terminology
- Clue Types A list of the clue types used in cryptic puzzles
- Solving tips General advice about solving puzzles
- The bad and the ugly What makes a bad cryptic crossword?
- Puzzle sources Where to find good cryptic puzzles, and information about some famous setters
- Internet stuff Some resources for solvers
- UK references Some assistance with cricket terminology, names of British rivers, and other stuff likely to baffle non-Brits
Big Dave's Crossword Blog- Learning To Juggle Cryptic Crosswords thebrowser.com; interactive
- Clue Clinic: Codes Used In Cryptic Crosswords: Abbreviations and Indicators word indicators for 'wordplay' type
- CrosswordAcademy.com
- Crossword Genius an app (from unlikely.ai) containing an AI, Ross, who can solve and explain
even the most difficult cryptic crossword clues. The app also uses state-of-the-art machine vision
to read in crosswords found in newspapers via the smartphone camera and allow solving on your device - Crossword Haikus as cryptic clues; 5/8/2019
- CrosswordTools.com: introduction to cryptic crosswords
- CrosswordUnclued.com:
- for Beginners
- Tackling Cryptic Crosswords: 7-Step Guide For Beginners 8/2008
- More Tips For Solving Cryptic Crosswords 8/2009
- Which Crosswords Should You Solve? 8/2009
- Abbreviations Every Solver Must Know 10/2008
- How To Spot Anagrams 8/2008
- Digging Out Hidden Words 8/2008
- Charades 11/2008
- Containers 2/2009
- Reversals 11/2008
- Decoding Double Definitions 10/2008
- Tuning In To Homophones 10/2008
- Deletions 3/2009
- Substitutions Simplified 12/2008
- Acrostics 9/2008
- Letter Picking 4/2009
- Letter Shifting 12/2009
- Letter Exchange 12/2009
- Cryptic Definitions 12/2008
- &lit, Literally So 8/2008
- Surface Reading, Cryptic Reading 6/2009
- Agent Nouns In Crosswords 11/2008
- Cricket And Cryptic Crosswords 11/2008
- Crosswords & The Game Of Bridge 11/2010
- Features Of The Crossword Grid 9/2009
- Clue Annotation Shortcodes 1/2013
- advanced: Cryptic Gymnastics
- Elision, and questions of fairness 11/2011
- The significance of apostrophe-S 4/2010
- Reverse anagrams 6/2010
- How to interpret punctuation in clues 8/2010
- Ellipsis-linked clues... 5/2010
- Tricky Indicators 4/2009
- About "about" 3/2009
- Palindromes 7/2009
- Wordplay Inversion 1/2009
- Have no enemy but time 3/2010
- Do the math to solve these clues 7/2010
- Connectors: How much is too much? 7/2009
- Fandom. Comparison of cryptic crosswords difficulty ranked by source
- Fifteensquared.net blog
- Games World: How To Solve a Cryptic Crossword video: 1:21:21; 8/19/2020
- Globe and Mail: solving the online crossword
- Guardian; Cryptic crosswords for beginners: [series]; articles:
- What to do when a puzzle looks harder than it actually is 5/27/2024
- Trains and railways 5/6/2024
- Money 1/15/2024
- Jobs 10/2/2023
- Meet the letter O 9/4/2023
- Replacing one thing with another 8/22/2023
- Unpicking the dress codes 7/3/2023
- dot dot what? ellipsis; 6/5/2023
- Writers 4/3/2023
- One to a hundred -- when clues use the % sign 3/20/2023
- Mind the gap -- when clues get completely heartless remove middle letters; 1/23/2023
- Solving mysteries of ambiguity and coincidence 10/10/2022
- A little bit of politics abbreviations from the corridors of power; 9/19/2022
- Meet the letter N 8/22/2022
- Points of the compass for beginners, part 2 6/20/2022
- The states of the US 5/23/2022
- Examples of examples 4/25/2022
- Middle letters 3/28/2022
- Boys and Girls 3/14/2022
- From Inspector Morse to Barbara Windsor, it's all Latin to me 1/31/2022
- End points from Land's End to verbal bottoms 10/25/2021
- Meet the letter M 9/27/2021
- Is it OK to 'cheat' when solving puzzles? 3/29/2021
- Cryptic definitions 3/15/2021
- Cryptics in America No 2 11/5/2020
- First and last letters 10/5/2020
- Doctors 9/21/2020
- Newspapers 8/12/2020
- Naked words 6/29/2020
- Royal abbreviations 5/4/2020
- Crossword roundup: fancy learning cryptic crosswords during coronavirus lockdown? 3/30/2020
- Sailors and boats 2/10/2020
- Playing cards 11/12/2019
- Taking most of a word 10/28/2019
- Points of the compass what to do when the clue refers to ‘north’, ‘south’, etc.; 8/12/2019
- stuttering in clues 7/29/2019
- cycling clues 5/27/2019
- cities 3/18/2019
- Rivers 2/19/2019
- Seven great clues from the first 1,000 quiptic crosswords 1/21/2019
- Cars 10/29/2018
- Cryptozoology 10/1/2018
- Music 9/17/2018
- Meet the letter L 7/31/2017
- Greek alphabet 7/17/2017
- NATO alphabet 2/13/2017
- Alcohol 1/30/2017
- Elementary chemistry 12/14/2016
- Meet the letter K 8/1/2016
- Capital letters 3/21/2016
- Foreign affairs 2/1/2016
- Drugs 12/15/2015
- Howzat! cricket; 11/16/2015
- Revving it up 5/4/2015
- Meeting the letter J 4/20/2015
- Apostophes 2/16/2015
- Me, you, her, him 2/2/2015
- Roman numerals 1/19/2015
- Crack 10 of our clues 9/12/2014
- My, myself, I 11/18/2013
- Alternate letters 1/17/2013
- Palindromes 11/1/2012
- Cryptics in America 7/19/2012
- Backwards clues 7/5/2012
- Which papers are easiest? 5/31/2012
- Containers 4/19/2012
- Spoonerisms 3/1/2012
- Initial letters 1/27/2012
- Soundalikes 12/8/2011
- What does 'A' mean and what means 'A'? 11/24/2011
- Double definitions 11/17/2011
- Hidden answers 10/6/2011
- General handy tips 5/3/2010
- IndigoExtra.com: How to Solve Cryptic Crosswords
- Lovatt's Cryptic Tutorial (video)
- How to solve the New Scientist cryptic crossword NS; 3/13/2020
- New Yorker: Reintroducing The New Yorker’s Cryptic Crossword
video & interactive clue guide: Anagram, Hidden Word, Homophone, Double Definition,
Assemblage (Charade), Deletion, Reversal, Container, Bits and Pieces, Multiple; NYkr; 11/26/2019 - How to Solve Our Puzzle Glenn Eichler humorously explains the rules of a cryptic crossword; NYr; 1/12/2019
- PennyDell: How to Solve Cryptics .pdf; 3/2019
- Solving Cryptics: Types of Clues
- Sondheim: How to Do a Real Crossword Puzzle
Or What's a Four-letter Word for "East Indian Betel Nut" and Who Cares? 4/8/1968 - How to Get Started in Cryptic Crosswords 9/13/2019
- Fifty years of The Spectator crossword 7/3/2021
- Here's a clue: we should all be doing cryptic crosswords Spectator; 3/13/2021
- Spectator: Why do the British love cryptic crosswords? 11/16/2013
- Time to get wise about cryptic crosswords: your how-to solve guide SMH; 4/10/2020
- Crosswords and Clue Types Teazel; 10/22/2014
- How to spot a Spoonerism 3/15/2023
- The Telegraph Crossword gets a new regular setter Robyn; Tel; 2/8/2023
- The compiler's arsenal: our final set of tips for solving cryptic crosswords from our puzzles editor 4/19/2020
- Juggling with words: more tips on solving cryptic crosswords from our puzzles editor 4/5/2020
- How to solve a cryptic crossword: tips for beginners from our puzzles editor part 1; 3/9/2020
- Telegraph: Cracking cryptic crosswords: why juggling with words is easier than you think Tel; 6/29/2019
- Theresa's Solving Guide
- Times for the Times blog
- NYT: Conquering the Times of London Cryptic Crossword 6/30/2017
- H2G2: How to Solve 'The Times' Crossword 6/4/2001
- Wikipedia: How cryptic clues work; Types of cryptic clues:
Anagrams, Charade, Containers, Deletions, Double definition, Hidden words, Initial letters,
Odd/even letters, Homophones, Reversals, Cryptic definition, Spoonerism - WonderHowTo: Complete a cryptic crossword puzzle video: 8:17
- WSJ: Guide to Cryptic Crosswords [.pdf]
- Ximenes On The Art Of The Crossword 1966
- Decrypting the Cryptic:
#1: Charades; #2: Anagrams; #3: Containers; #4: Hidden Words; #5: The Basics;
#6: Double Definitions; #7: Reversals; #8: Homophones; #9: When to stop and try again;
#10: Beheadings et al.; #11: Letter Banks; #12: Beginnings and Endings; #13: Drop It!;
#14: The Cryptic Alphabet; #15: &lit.! Stella Zawistowski; Tough as Nails; 6/2020
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- "I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords." ~Ken Jennings, on Jeopardy, quoting from The Simpsons
- AmuseLabs: Crossword Creator freeform with words and clues from theme description
- WebCrow: Wikipedia;
WebCrow 2.0 site How It Works; AI vs Human: Can You Compete with WebCrow?; Resources: News, Papers, Docs; Game Platform - Does AI have a clue? The Times Crossword Championship is set to find out Crossword Genius and cryptics; TheTimes; 9/21/2024
- Language Models are Crossword Solvers paper; 6/13/2024
- Can ChatGPT do crossword puzzles? 4/2/2024
- How I built a New York Times Crossword Puzzle Trainer GPT called CrossTrainer Medium; 11/30/2023
- Savvy Silicon: How I Made a Crossword Puzzle Helper With AI source; 10/19/2023
- A Complete Guide to LLMs-based Autonomous Agents (Part I) 10/9/2023
- Fine-Tuning a LLM to Generatively solve Cryptic Crossword Clues (Part 1 / 2) 8/4/2023
- Can an AI chatbot solve a [cryptic] crossword better than a human? We put it to the test Tel; 3/6/2023
- How to Access ChatGPT From Your Mac's Menu Bar MacGPT; MR; 3/3/2023
- ChatGPT vs a cryptic crossword 2022
- Automated Crossword Solving ACL 2022 paper; 7/3/2022;
Berkeley Crossword Solver: demo; source code - 'WebCrow 2.0' AI can solve crosswords in two languages English, Italian; Eng; 6/9/2022
- Neural Crossword Solver Outperforms Humans for the First Time
Berkeley Crossword Solver at ACPT; AI-enhanced algorithm still trails humans at cryptic crosswords; Disc; 5/25/2022 - Putting in a Good Word: GPU-Powered Crossword Solver Makes Best Showing Yet Against Humans 5/28/2021
- What a Crossword AI Reveals About Humans' Way With Words Wired; 5/6/2021
- 'I was terrible at crosswords so I built an AI to do them' BBC; 5/2/2021
- An A.I. Finally Won an Elite Crossword Tournament (ACPT)
Its name is Dr. Fill, and it isn't allowed to keep the prize money; Slate; 4/27/2021 - Google's 'Semantic Experiences' let you play word games with its AI web experiments:
Google Books search, Semantris; TC; 4/13/2018 - Clue to 15-Across: Crossword Puzzle Solver (22 Letters)—Artificial Intelligence deep language learning; 5/17/2016
- Can An Astrophysicist Change The Way We Watch Sports? Matt Ginsberg, OR author of Dr.Fill; 538; 10/27/2015
- In Crosswords, It's Man Over Machine, for Now Dr.Fill finishes 141 out of 600+ entrants; 3/18/2012
- The Computer's Next Conquest: Crosswords ("Dr.Fill" at ACPT 2012); NYT; 3/17/2012
- Fast Talk: How "Dr.Fill" Does For Crosswords What IBM's "Watson" Did On "Jeopardy!" 3/12/2012
- Why Computers Can't Make It as Stand-Up Comics 3/13/2011
- What Is Artificial Intelligence? (Jeopardy & Watson); NYT; 2/6/2011
- Jeopardy, IBM, and Wolfram|Alpha 1/26/2011
- Crossword Puzzle Generator Darren Cheng, Nimit Dhulekar; .pdf; 3/13/2009
- Quackle
world-class crossword game artificial intelligence and analysis tool. It includes a move generator, simulator,
and Qt-based user interface and can be used with any board layout, alphabet, lexicon, and tile distribution; 2006? - WebCrow: a WEB-based system for CROssWord solving .pdf; 2005
- Solving Crossword Puzzles via the Google API
The API enables software agents to query and use search results from the large collections of data available
via the Google search engine. Web searches using Google are exposed to over 4 billion pages, many of which
are cached within Google. While the Google API may be used to produce customized user interfaces to Google,
the API also provides direct programmatic access to the subset of the Web covered by Google.
In this paper, we present a fresh approach to solving crossword puzzles by making use of the Google API.
Our system, the Google CruciVerbalist (GCV), reads XML-encoded crossword puzzles, derives answers
to clues via the Google API, and uses a refined depth-first search algorithm to populate the crossword grid.
GCV has successfully solved smaller puzzles, especially ones containing pop-culture and fill-in-the-blank
types of clues. Based on this ongoing work, limitations of current search technologies are identified.
To overcome these limitations, we look ahead to semantic queries via the emerging Semantic Web,
including techniques using RDF that augment the Google search engine with semantic information,
enabling semantically rich queries beyond the current capabilities of Google; 1/2004 - A probabilistic approach to solving crossword puzzles 2002
- Solving diagramless crossword puzzles 11/1994
- Crossword Clue Solver
- Crossword Genius app for solving cryptics from unlikely.ai
- Solving Cryptic Crossword Clues by Computer William Tunstall-Pedoe
- American Assoc. of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI): Crossword Puzzles. Intro, Readings, Resources