The JimH Crossword Blog

Déjà vu all over again

The new Wordplay blog is live. This time I mean it. Swing by and check it out.

http://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com

That means The JimH Crossword Blog is being put to sleep. It’s been a fun year blogging from outside The Beltway but it’s time to leave the Real America behind as I set up shop at the new URL.

Thanks to my many visitors, commenters and contributors, the experience of writing this blog has been incredibly satisfying for me. I’ve met so many smart and interesting people, at least virtually. I’m grateful to you all.

I won’t be updating this blog any more but it’s not going away either. All the posts and all your comments will remain on line for posterity. It’s always good to help out those posteriors, don’t you think?

I was a blogger for the New York Times

Really, I was. It was live for about two hours. Eight times the Warhol limit. I even got a comment. So, ok, if you blinked you missed it but for the rest of my life, I can put "NYT Blogger" on my resume.

It was so much fun, I'm going to do it again. Maybe even for longer this time. To answer a great many questions, it's looking like Monday will be the official re-launch. I hope you'll drop by and say hi. Garson Hampfield said October, so does that mean we're still on schedule?

 

Update: Shortz Numbers continue to drop for some constructors as I find more errors in the data. A recent comment from Liz Whistler identified three more pairs of constructor name that were misspelling of one another. It would be a long-shot bet to guess that I've now found all the errors...

V Formation

Thanks to the sharp eyes of many readers, I'm gradually cleaning up the data in XWord Info. Once a week or so, someone sends me mail with another bug: a constructor name is misspelled, a clue is transcribed incorrectly, or an answer is just wrong.

Today's bug report was especially embarrassing because it concerned one of my favorite puzzles. V Formation by Elizabeth C. Gorski is one of the most elegantly lovely puzzles in the collection.

Try it yourself with this updated Across Lite file. If you want to spoil the fun, the complete answers are here.

The original publication date was April 25, 2004.

Sexing the Constructors

What are the differences between crosswords constructed by men and by women? This is just one of the new areas of statistics I plan to pursue in the future. Unfortunately, I can't always check authors' Y chromosome counts directly so I have to guess.

The Shortz Number page now shows my best guess. There are some holes. I've listed all the currently unsexed constructors here. If you happen to know whether, C. W. Stewart, for example, is a man or a woman, please let me know.

Speaking of the Shortz Number, some of the assigned numbers have dropped a peg or two. Doing historical research with the help of a few friends has yielded a couple of cases where two presumably different constructors were combined when it was determined that one was just a misspelling of the other. Ashish Vengsarkar, for example, drops from #443 to #441. I hope you haven't already ordered t-shirts, Ashish.

Anyway, please help out if you can by identifying the "unknowns" or pointing out sex errors in the Shortz Number page. Thanks.

 

Update: Thanks to a certain Puzzlemaster, the "unknown" list is down to a single constructor. For those who placed bets, Carolyn W. Stewart turned out to be a woman.

Wordplay is Live!

 

 

The Wordplay blog is live. For those who don't know, The JimH Crossword Blog is winding down and it's being replaced by a new blog at http://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com.

The first real post will be Sunday evening for the Monday puzzle but stop by, check out the new environment, and say hi. I'm looking forward to reconnecting with old friends at my new address.

UPDATE:

It turns out the Times isn't quite ready to roll out the new blog this weekend after all. Things are so much more complicated when it's not just a one-man shop. I'll let you know when I learn the real start date. Sigh...

XWord Info Constructor stats have changed

Perhaps only crossword authors care about this but I have changed how I calculate constructor stats for puzzles with more than one author.

If you want to learn more, this page explains it all. Even more exciting, you can also find out your Shortz Number™!

 

The new NYT blog is looking like it's ready to roll out sometime next week. I'll let you know.