Twenty Five Years of The New York Times Crossword Data
I first started reverse-engineering the .puz file format about 6 years ago. Its a very efficient crossword format that goes to great lengths to compact the data into a small payload. (Update: In September 2021 the NYT no longer uses this file format)
With that done, the The New York Times crossword archive had interesting information.
This is a CSV of collected data representing clues and answers from The New York Times crossword archive over almost 25 years.
It spans December 1993 through to July 2017 and contains about 432,205 clues and answers.
One thing I really love about this data is how it captures moments in time. For example, take Facebook. One of the Clues to which this is the answer goes “Alternative to Friendster or MySpace“. Who remembers either of those services? Who ever thought of Facebook as a competitor to those now?
Or even better, there is “AOL“. It went from “Big letters in cyberspace” and “Yahoo! competitor” in 2000, to “Earthlink competitor” in 2002 and then didn’t feature much after 2011.
Example:
"id","thekey","key","source","file","date","day","difficulty","direction","number","instruction","flag","groupid","question","answer"
"1048337","Jul2814A24","nytimes","Jul2814.puz","2014-07-28 00:00:00","Monday","6","A","24",,"0","nytimes","Cutters that cut with the grain","RIPSAWS"
"1048338","Jul3015A48","nytimes","Jul3015.puz","2015-07-30 00:00:00","Thursday","3","A","48",,"0","nytimes","Ill-looking","PALE"
"1048336","Jul3015D47","nytimes","Jul3015.puz","2015-07-30 00:00:00","Thursday","3","D","47",,"0","nytimes","Like some tea","HERBAL"
"1048335","Jul2814D23","nytimes","Jul2814.puz","2014-07-28 00:00:00","Monday","6","D","23",,"0","nytimes","With great attention to detail","MINUTELY"
"1048333","Jul2814A22","nytimes","Jul2814.puz","2014-07-28 00:00:00","Monday","6","A","22",,"0","nytimes","Portent","OMEN"
"1048329","Jul2814A20","nytimes","Jul2814.puz","2014-07-28 00:00:00","Monday","6","A","20",,"0","nytimes","In the manner of","ALA"
"1048330","Jul3015D44","nytimes","Jul3015.puz","2015-07-30 00:00:00","Thursday","3","D","44",,"0","nytimes","Long vowel indicator","MACRON"
"1048331","Jul2814A21","nytimes","Jul2814.puz","2014-07-28 00:00:00","Monday","6","A","21",,"0","nytimes","Fraidy-cat","WUSS"
"1048332","Jul3015D45","nytimes","Jul3015.puz","2015-07-30 00:00:00","Thursday","3","D","45",,"1","nytimes","Creator of the characters added in 17-, 28-, 44- and 57-Across","ALCOTT"
"1048334","Jul3015D46","nytimes","Jul3015.puz","2015-07-30 00:00:00","Thursday","3","D","46",,"0","nytimes","University that was originally the Medical College of Louisiana","TULANE"
"1048325","Jul2814D18","nytimes","Jul2814.puz","2014-07-28 00:00:00","Monday","6","D","18",,"0","nytimes","""Gross!""","EWW"
"The CSV is available in full on Github. Please let me know if you spot gaps or errors.
Further reading