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!
Barry has a treasure trove of puzzles in electronic form. Yesterday, he sent me the first Washington Post crossword, from 1924 or so. I was delighted to see that OBI and NEE have been around since crosswords' earliest days!
Posted by: Orange | April 01, 2008 at 05:48 AM
This additional crossword data is going to be great. Thank you for working on it.
Why is there music playing in my head after the NYT puzzle today...I can't quite recognize it...something like "we won't be fooled again" and it evokes The Who or some British Invasion band.
Posted by: PhillySolver | April 01, 2008 at 06:56 AM
Great news! Good luck dusting off all those pre-millennial puzzles, and if you find any left-handed moths maybe you'll find out what happened to the missing painting.
Posted by: JJF | April 01, 2008 at 06:46 PM
I'm glad JJF got the left-handed moths reference. It's an *awesome* reference.
"You ever see a cole slaw like that?"
Posted by: Alex | April 01, 2008 at 09:06 PM
@Philly.... Yep, the Who. Won't Be Fooled Again. I kept hearing Michael MacDonald and the Doobie Brothers singing "What a Fool Believes."
@Jim... this just gets better and better.
Posted by: Rikki | April 01, 2008 at 11:32 PM