About

This application was made by Emma Brennan-Wydra, who loves crossword puzzles and the people who love them!

Explore

You can do two things on the Explore page:

  1. Find clues for a given crossword answer (can be limited to a specific year between 1976-2018). Note that The answer field is not case-sensitive (i.e., a search for hotpotato will return the same results as a search for HOTPOTATO). Whitespace will be removed from the answer prior to searching (i.e., a search for hot potato will return the same results as a search for hotpotato). In addition, if an invalid year or a year outside of the range (i.e., 1976-2018) is entered, results for all years will be returned. Clue results are ordered by the number of times the clue has been used for the provided answer in the NYT crossword puzzle.


  2. Find most commonly occurring answers across puzzles (can be limited to a specific length and/or to a specific year). Use the first dropdown menu to select a desired number of characters (3-15+), or select any length (selected by default) to view all answers. Similar to above, if an invalid year is entered, results for all years will be returned. Answer results are ordered by number of times the answer has appeared in the NYT crossword puzzle.

Solve

The tool on the Solve page can be used to find possible matches for partial answers. Use a question mark ('?') to represent unknown letters to view all answers matching the pattern that have previously appeared in NYT crossword puzzles (e.g., a search for H?T?????? will return HOTPOTATO, HITANDRUN, HITORMISS, HITTHEHAY...). Search is not case sensitive (e.g., a search for h?t?????? will return the same results as a search for H?T??????) and answer results are ordered by number of times the answer has appeared in the NYT crossword puzzle.

Data

Puzzle data are from Dylan O'Shea's public repository of New York Times crossword puzzles in JSON format from 1/1/1976 through 3/9/2018. Note that there are several gaps in coverage, and coverage is spotty from 2016 onward. More information about crossword puzzles in JSON format can be found on XWord Info.