I’ve been scooped by The Times! This announcement was posted in the Today’s Puzzle forum on the nytimes.com website today:
wshortz - 11:32 AM ET September 12, 2008 (#61909 of 61922)
Announcement
The Times has asked me to make an important announcement about something starting next month -- an official New York Times crossword blog.
This new blog will feature daily commentary on the puzzles by Jim Horne, whom many of you already know from his website www.xwordblog.com. Jim will continue his lively, insightful, amusing writeups on the Times puzzles, with bonus information and occasional contributions from yours truly. The blog will incorporate Jim's database of crossword stats (currently at www.xwordinfo.com) in addition to having many new features.
The existing problem-riddled forum will be discontinued when the new blog begins. Besides the addition of official commentary, probably the most noticeable change for you will be your ability to read and write comments about specific puzzles via threaded discussions, rather than all the comments appearing linearly. And behind the scenes, the Times promises that the technical performance of the blog will be much more robust than that for the forum. No more "Service Unavailable" messages, we hope!
The exact start date of the blog is still to be decided.
I hope this official new blog will make the Times' crosswords more enjoyable, answer questions better, be more informative, and help bring the Times' online crossword community even closer together.
--Will Shortz
So, yes, I’m moving to a slightly more upscale web address. This current blog will remain here as a kind of archive.
I’ll have lots more to say about this as I wrap up XWord Blog. This evening I’ll be running my last constructor interview and I have another interview to run over the next few days. Then there will be an official announcement appearing sometime in the next week or so.
Along the way, there will be some time for reflection and some thoughts about the future. I’m excited about the change. I hope you’ll join me at my home.
-- JimH
