Happy New Year Treat: Interview with I. Judah Koolyk—Plus, Barry Haldiman First to Solve Blast! Challenge

Happy New Year Treat:  Interview with I. Judah Koolyk

Happy New Year, everyone!  To start off 2015, I'm delighted to present an interview with the prolific pre-Shortzian constructor I. Judah Koolyk, who had a total of 40 crosswords published in the Maleska era!  Judah first contacted me early last month.  He introduced himself and mentioned that he'd discovered this site; he also included a long list of the publication dates of all his Times crosswords (and even his variety puzzles!).  I was very excited to hear from him and sent along some additional dates of puzzles listed as being his.  When I asked whether he'd be interested in being interviewed for this site, he said he would, though he wondered (needlessly) whether anyone would be interested and worried that his answers might be "too boring"!  (He also mentioned that his 15-year-old daughter would be thrilled to see that her dad was so famous!)  To read Judah's eloquent and informative interview, click here or on the Pre-Shortzian Constructor Interviews tab above.

Project Update

Despite the holiday season, it's been very busy on the proofreading front over these past two weeks!  On Sunday the 20th, Todd Gross sent in 10 puzzles with 17 mistakes, then 8 more with 15 mistakes on Monday night and 10 with 14 mistakes Tuesday night.  Christmas Day Denny Baker sent in 35 puzzles.  On Saturday afternoon Mark Diehl sent in 31 puzzles and then 29 more that night.  Sunday afternoon he sent 28 more, then a few hours later another 25, then 30 more that evening, then 31 more later on—whew!  Monday he took a brief break from proofreading so we could meet for lunch since he was in the area—we had a great time eating pizza in Echo Park, followed by a sojourn to a fascinating place nearby called the Time Travel Mart (a fitting destination, given our time travels through pre-Shortzian puzzles!).  Tuesday afternoon Mark sent another 31 puzzles, and then Wednesday morning Todd sent in 12 with 19 mistakes, which were followed by 30 more from Mark.  Thursday morning Mark sent 28 more, and then another 28 that afternoon, followed by 33 more, and then 30 more that night—whew again!  Finally, Friday afternoon Todd sent 10 more puzzles with 25 mistakes.  What an amazing two weeks of proofreading—thanks so much again, everyone!

Mark Diehl and me taking a break from the project.

Wacky glasses at the Time Travel Mart.

Barry Haldiman First to Solve Blast! Challenge

Congratulations to Barry Haldiman, who, on Friday the 26th at 9:55 a.m., was the first to solve the December 19 Blast! from the Past challenge!  The challenge, from the puzzle published on April 8, 1959, was to guess the three-word clue for the entry HAIRDO; the solution was "Woman's top problem."  Todd Gross came across a great clue-entry pair while proofreading recently, and I've decided to make it this week's Blast! challenge, which you'll find in the sidebar.  As with previous Blast! challenges, a new letter will be added every day, hangman-style.  Thanks so much again, Todd—and good luck, everyone!

Featured Puzzle

This week's featured puzzle, one of my favorites by I. Judah Koolyk (second only to this one I featured in 2012), was published May 10, 1985; edited by Eugene T. Maleska; litzed by Todd Gross; proofread by Kristena Bergen; and can be solved on XWord Info.  This impressive construction features four symmetrically interlocking 15-letter definitions of colors in a sparkly 68-word grid!  For example, the clue for RANK OF A CARDINAL is "Purple"; similarly, the clue for CONFEDERATE ARMY is "Gray."  I like that none of the definitions include the word color, and I especially appreciate that some of the definitions reference a completely different sense of their color words (such as TURN INTO LEATHER for "Tan").  And it must have taken hours to generate a list of theme entries that interlock so elegantly by hand!  Appropriately, Judah squeezed many colorful entries into the nonthematic fill—my favorites include SOAKER, ECLAIRS (yum!), STYMIE, SHANKED, and ARMHOLES.  That's quite a list of strong entries for a thematic 68-worder!  Even better, the only quasi-obscure entry is MILLIME (clued as "Tunisian coin"), which is an interesting word that I would have appreciated learning as a solver.  It turns out that a millime is equivalent to 1/1000 of a dinar, which makes sense, since a millimeter is 1/1000 of a meter.  And the only piece of fusty crosswordese is SKEP, which Judah or E.T.M. gave the original clue ("Wicker basket") to keep things interesting.  When I see the entry SKEP, I automatically think "Straw beehive," so I may well have struggled a bit with the "Wicker basket" clue.  Speaking of clues, "Item in a bar" for SOAP and "Item in the holy of holies" for ARK are particularly nice.  Although the rest of the clues are mostly dictionary-based, I appreciate Judah's and E.T.M.'s eye for fresh definitions, such as the one for SKEP I mentioned above.  In all, this is a standout pre-Shortzian puzzle—just one of many that place Judah among the finest constructors of the Maleska era!  This puzzle can be viewed on XWord Info, though I recommend looking through the page that lists all of Judah's puzzles.  As usual, the answer grid (with highlighted theme entries) can be seen below:

Contest Update, New Litzer of the Month, Publicity, Poll Results, and Some Funny Litzing Mistakes

Great news:  The October litzing contest has been a real success so far!  It's incredible that litzers have sent in 161 puzzles in just five days—I have a feeling it's going to be a real tooth-and-nail battle for the free Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project T-shirts!  This rapid spurt of litzing pushed us way past the 4,400 mark; as of right now, Mark Diehl is in first place with 36 litzed puzzles, Barry Silk has 25, and Joe Cabrera has 21.

October's Litzer of the Month is super-fast typist Angela Halsted!  In addition to being a New York Times crossword constructor, Angela has also found time to litz 199 puzzles—great job, Angela!

Recently the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project received some more publicity!  Jim Horne wrote another interesting blog post featuring Bert H. Kruse's brilliant "Please Think Twice!" puzzle!  And Tuning Spork announced the project on his Blather Review blog.  Finally, Ray Hamel added the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project blog to his list of crossword-related blogs.  Thanks so much, everyone!

In other news, the results of our second poll came in on Tuesday!  The poll asked which pre-Shortzian editor published the best puzzles.  Coincidentally, we had the same number of respondents to this poll as to the last poll.  Of the seven readers who voted, one (14%) preferred Eugene T. Maleska.  Will Weng and Margaret Farrar got three votes (43%) each.  I'm a little surprised that only one respondent voted for Eugene T. Maleska, especially since we've primarily been litzing Maleska-edited puzzles.  As we've seen, very high quality puzzles can be found throughout the pre-Shortzian era.  Thanks to everyone who voted!

I just posted a new poll, which asks you to vote for pages and gadgets you like and would like to see continue on this site.  Be sure to vote for all your favorites—pages and gadgets that don't receive any votes may end up on the chopping block.  If you have suggestions for additional pages or gadgets, please comment or shoot me an e-mail (for the address, please refer to the Contact page).

Before getting to the puzzle of the day, I thought I'd share a few more funny typos our proofreaders have caught:

• A clue for ABCDE was typed as "F's foregunners" instead of "F's forerunners"
• A clue for AERO was supposed to read "Kind of plane or dynamics" but was accidentally typed as "Kind of plane or gymnastics"
• A clue for MANTA was entered as "Devilish" instead of "Devilfish"
• A clue for SAFE EDGE should have been entered as "Kind of file" rather than "Kind of life"
• A clue for STEVES should have read "Martin  and Allen" but was mistakenly typed as "Martin and Alien"

My personal favorite of the recent litzing typos, though, was the clue "Telepathic sounds," rather than "Telegraphic sounds," for DITS!  Usually litzing mistakes are few and far between—in fact, our proofreaders have come across many error-free puzzles.  But it's always a nice change of pace when we find humorous typos!

Today's featured puzzle, "No Big Deal," was constructed by Charles M. Deber, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the ACPT this year!  The puzzle was originally published on August 22, 1982, and was litzed by Barry Haldiman (or one of his former litzers).  This brilliant puzzle features ten symmetrically interlocking pairs of theme entries with card-related clues but with no connection to cards!  Each pair of theme entries is divided up by an ampersand.  For example, "Pair of queens" leads to MARIE & ELIZABETH, and "Pair of jokers" leads to HOPE & BALL.  Some other very clever theme entries/clues are "Pair of aces" for EVERT & BORG and "Pair of jacks" for SPRAT & KENNEDY!  There is hardly any obscurity in the nonthematic fill, which is very impressive considering the quantity of intersecting theme entries.  I'm not overwhelmingly fond of ACIDE (clued as "Tart, in Toulouse") or SORB (clued as "Service tree"), though the awesome entries LIBIDO and WINE LIST certainly make up for the more arcane ones.  All in all, this Sunday puzzle is a masterpiece!  The answer grid with highlighted theme entries can be seen below:

Today's featured pre-Shortzian entry is DEIPNOSOPHIST.  Not surprisingly, DEIPNOSOPHIST has never been reused in a Shortz-era puzzle (though it has appeared in a pre-Shortzian 1993 puzzle).  DEIPNOSOPHIST originally appeared in the June 23, 1984, puzzle by I. Judah Koolyk, which was recently litzed by Garrett Hildebrand.  The clue for DEIPNOSOPHIST was "One adept at table talk."  Webster defines a deipnosophist as "a person skilled in table talk."  Deipnosophist is derived from "Deipnosophists," a work published in 200 A.D. by the Graeco-Eygptian author Athenaeus about a banquet where long discussions  take place.  Etymologically it comes from the Greek words "deipnon" (meaning "meal") and "sophistes" (meaning "wise man").  Since I couldn't find a great picture of a deipnosophist, below is a picture of an ancient banquet:

Image courtesy of The Garden of Eaden.

More Than One-Fourth of the Puzzles Litzed, Poll, and Litzing Methods Using OCR

I am thrilled to announce that, as of this week, we reached and passed the 4,000 mark and have now finished more than a quarter of the entire project (4,056 puzzles)!  This is amazing—I never imagined we'd be this far along in the project so early on.  We're also rapidly approaching 1982, with just six more months of puzzles to send out from 1983!

In other news, I've added a poll feature to the website.  The first poll asks how long it takes to litz a daily puzzle.  Several responses have already come in; if you'd like to respond before the poll expires next week, you can find the poll under the litzing thermometer to your right.  I'm planning to post a new poll every week in between my longer regular blog posts.

Litzers especially may be interested in the following:  Joe Cabrera and Martin Herbach, two of our litzers, have come up with innovative methods for litzing puzzles with optical character recognition (OCR) software!  Though the final puzzles need to be proofread for obvious mistakes (such as "A Tunrier" instead of "A Turner," for TED), the OCR methods seem to be quite fast and accurate.  Joe reports that it takes about an hour and fifteen minutes for him to litz an entire batch of puzzles, including the Sunday puzzle; Martin estimates that he takes just forty-five minutes (over several sittings) to litz a batch with his method!  I've summarized both methods below, paraphrasing slightly to make them less technical:

Joe Cabrera's Method

1.  Create new Across Lite text file templates based on the dates and authors' names.

2.  Pull each PDF into Photoshop (assuming everything was originally scanned at 300 dots per inch).  Rearrange all the columns [answer grid and clues] into one long one, with the answer grid on top. Delete the lines in the answer grid to leave just the letters.

3.  Run each Photoshop file through the online OCR reader to turn it into plain text.

4.  Run a script to remove all the clue numbers and use them to separate the clues so they're not all one big paragraph.  Also use the script to clean up extra spaces and garbage, format underscores and ellipses properly, make all quotes "dumb," and so on.  Proofread the clues.

5.  Clean up and proofread the answers.

6.  Cut and paste the proofread clues and answers into the Across Lite text files created earlier.

7.  Drag the text files into Across Lite and save them as standard .PUZ files.

Martin Herbach's Method

1.  Use an online OCR reader to convert from PDF to rich text format (RTF).

2.  Copy and paste the clues from the RTF file into a Notepad document.

3.  Manually fix missing numbers, broken lines, accented characters, ellipses, and fill-in-the-blank clues.  Save as a text file.

4.  Read the text file into Microsoft Excel, specifying "Space Delimited" and "No Text Indicator."

5.  Delete Column A (which consists of the clue numbers).  Save the Excel file.

6.  Upload the Excel file to Google Docs and then download the Excel file from Google Docs as a text file (because Excel screws up quoted strings and commas by inserting extra quotes, which Google Docs doesn't).

7.  Read the text file (actually a .tsv file for tab-separated values) into Microsoft Word.

8.  Replace all tabs with spaces.  Select the entire Word document and copy it.

9.  Paste the contents of the Word document into an Across Lite text template.

The only minor flaw in these methods (other than that litzers must be very tech-savvy!) is that the OCR service Joe and Martin use only allows fifteen file conversions per hour.  This isn't a huge problem, though, since each batch only contains seven puzzles.  Another very interesting idea Joe tested was speaking the answer grid into his smartphone, though he found that doing this actually took more time overall.  Nevertheless, the ingenious methods both Joe and Martin have come up with to automate the litzing process are very, very cool!

Today's featured pre-Shortzian New York Times puzzle was constructed by I. Judah Koolyk.  It was originally published on October 8, 1983, and was recently litzed by Mark Diehl.  This amazing daily puzzle contains twelve rebuses of STAR!  My favorite theme entries are **** RATINGS (yes, four rebus squares in a row!) and *** GENERAL.  Even today, stacked rebuses with this many rebus squares are extremely challenging to construct.  Not surprisingly, the nonthematic fill (consisting of fewer entries than usual) has a handful of undesirable entries (ESNES, ITEAS, etc.).  All things considered, though, this is an admirable construction that feels way ahead of its time!  The answer grid (with highlighted theme entries) can be seen below:

Today's featured pre-Shortzian entry is NEBEL.  According the the Ginsberg database, NEBEL has never been reused in a Shortz-era puzzle.  NEBEL originally appeared in the June 2, 1985, puzzle by Joy L. Wouk, which was recently litzed by Stephen Edward Anderson.  The original clue for NEBEL was "Ancient stringed instrument."  Webster defines a nebel as a variant of nabla, which it lists as "an ancient stringed instrument, probably like a Hebrew harp of 10 or 12 strings."  Not surprisingly, nebel comes from nēbhel, the Hebrew word for "harp."  Below is one interpretation of what a nebel might have looked like:

Image courtesy of the Potsdam Public Museum.