The Monday–Thursday puzzles and the Sunday puzzle always have a theme, some sort of connection between at least three long (usually Across) answers, such as a similar type of pun, letter substitution, or alteration in each entry. A full specification sheet listing the paper's requirements for crossword puzzle submission can be found online or by writing to the paper. Will Shortz does not write the Times crossword himself a wide variety of contributors submit puzzles to him. Style and conventions The New York Times crossword grid Various other forms of merchandise featuring the puzzle have been created, including dedicated electronic crossword handhelds that just contain Times crosswords, and a variety of Times crossword-themed memorabilia, including cookie jars, baseballs, cufflinks, plates, coasters, and mousepads. The game includes over 1,000 Times crosswords from all days of the week. In 2007, Majesco Entertainment released The New York Times Crosswords game, a video game adaptation for the Nintendo DS handheld. In addition to appearing in the printed newspaper, the puzzles also appear online on the paper's website, where they require a separate subscription to access. Martin's Press, the current publisher of the series. Times puzzles have been collected in hundreds of books by various publishers, most notably Random House and St. Many celebrities and public figures have publicly proclaimed their liking for the puzzle, including opera singer Beverly Sills, author Norman Mailer, baseball pitcher Mike Mussina, former President Bill Clinton, conductor Leonard Bernstein, TV host Jon Stewart, actress Gillian Jacobs, and music duo the Indigo Girls. The puzzle's popularity grew until it came to be considered the most prestigious of the widely circulated U.S. In addition to editing the Times crosswords, Shortz founded and runs the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament as well as the World Puzzle Championship (where he remains captain of the US team) has published numerous books of crosswords, sudoku, and other puzzles, authors occasional variety puzzles (also known as 'Second Sunday puzzles') to appear alongside the Sunday Times puzzle and serves as 'Puzzlemaster' on the NPR show Weekend Edition Sunday. The second editor was Will Weng, former head of the Times 's metropolitan copy desk, until 1977, and the third Eugene T. She created many of the rules that have become standard, such as creating the grid, limiting the number of black squares, creating a minimum word length of three letters, requiring grids to have rotational symmetry and be an odd number of squares by an odd number of squares, and forbidding unchecked squares. Farrar edited the puzzle from its inception in 1942 until 1969. There have been four editors of the puzzle. That first daily puzzle was published without an author line, and as of 2001 the identity of the author of the first weekday Times crossword remained unknown. In 1950, the crossword became a daily feature.

The puzzle proved popular, and Sulzberger himself authored a Times puzzle before the year was out. The motivating impulse for the Times to finally run the puzzle (which took over 20 years even though its publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, was a longtime crossword fan) appears to have been the bombing of Pearl Harbor in a memo dated December 18, 1941, an editor conceded that the puzzle deserved space in the paper, considering what was happening elsewhere in the world and that readers might need something to occupy themselves during blackouts. The first puzzle ran on Sunday, February 15, 1942, and was published under a pseudonym Farrar occasionally used, Anna Gram. Many of the puzzle's rules were created by its first editor, Margaret Farrar.Īlthough crosswords became popular in the early 1920s, The New York Times (which initially regarded crosswords as frivolous, calling them 'a primitive form of mental exercise') did not begin to run a crossword until 1942, in its Sunday edition. The standard daily crossword is 15 by 15 squares, while the Sunday crossword measures 21 by 21 squares. The larger Sunday crossword, which appears in The New York Times Magazine, is an icon in American culture it is typically intended to be as difficult as a Thursday puzzle. The crosswords are designed to increase in difficulty throughout the week, with the easiest on Monday and the most difficult on Saturday. The puzzle is created by various freelance constructors and has been edited by Will Shortz since 1993. The New York Times Crossword (marketed as The Crossword) is a daily American-style crossword puzzle published in The New York Times as part of The New York Times Games, online on the newspaper's website, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals, and on mobile apps. 1942 video game The New York Times Crossword

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