And sometimes it's the other way around. Manny Nosowsky's April Fool's puzzle (answers) extends his lead over every other constructor in my database with his 194th effort. I don't want to say too much about it because, you know, April Fool's and all that. There just might be some kind of trick. Try it first and come back and tell me if you like it.
I was excited to get some email from Barry Haldiman today. Like me, he enjoys database dabbling and if you explore around his site you'll discover lots of puzzle insights. Unlike me, his data goes back to well before 1996.
The NYT website has puzzles from that year to the present and that's all I use because the rest are much harder to dig up, or so I thought. It turns out Mr. Haldiman had them stacked up around his garage, already in electronic form, and he's sharing them with me. We've decided together that we'll add in all my missing puzzles way back to the very dawn of the Will Shortz era in 1993 A.D.
It's going to take some cleanup before the data is ready for prime time. Constructors back then only had first initials, not first names. Rebus puzzles have to be edited by hand to display properly in my database since the old version of Across Lite didn't allow such shenanigans. When data gets that old other errors tend to creep in too, probably because of moths or something. That's it, left-handed moths!
I'm sorry, I drifted. I'd guess that within a couple of weeks, Mr. Nosowsky's 194 will seem small potatoes (plural does get the E, Dan) so don't touch that knob!
