Over 10,600, OCR with Martin Herbach, Puzzazz Solving App, and Funny Typos

Great news—we've now litzed more than 10,600 puzzles!  Here's a recap of the week:  On Friday afternoon, Nancy Kavanaugh started us off by sending in 14 puzzles; that evening, Howard Barkin sent in another 14, putting us over 10,500!  The grand finale for the day was Mark Diehl sending in 14 more puzzles.  Then on Saturday, Denny Baker sent in 7 puzzles, which were followed by 7 more from Joe Cabrera.  Sunday morning, Joe sent in another 5, and that night, Mark sent in 35 more puzzles!  Early Monday morning, Jeffrey Krasnick sent in 7 puzzles, which were followed by 10 proofread puzzles from Todd Gross.  Monday evening, Howard sent in 7 more puzzles, and Tuesday night, Mark sent in another 21 puzzles, putting us over 10,600!  Then Thursday evening, Mark sent in another 5 puzzles—and a short while later, 5 more!  Awesome job, everyone!

As I've mentioned, I'm currently up at Stanford taking an artificial intelligence course.  Before it started, I had the pleasure of visiting with litzer Martin Herbach in Saratoga, which is about half an hour south of Stanford.  He and his wife, Elaine, are terrific cooks and made a delicious salmon meal, after which Martin demonstrated how he litzes puzzles using OCR technology.  Although I'd read his description of the process before, actually seeing it in action was fascinating!  The script that tidies up the file was particularly cool; I also hadn't realized that he litzes the grids manually.  Here are a couple of photos:

Martin Herbach demonstrating OCR litzing 

Clues litzed using OCR

Last week litzer/proofreader Todd Gross and I published a puzzle in The New York Times that many solvers had difficulty with, in part because of glitches in their solving apps.  [Spoiler alert for the 7/18/13 puzzle if you haven't already solved it.]  After the puzzle appeared, I received an e-mail from Roy Leban, who informed me that the Puzzazz app had supported this unusual puzzle properly:  The 23 was in the right place, the apostrophe worked correctly, and the diamond was highlighted in gray.  In addition, clicking on 23-Across highlighted the entire diamond and allowed solvers to write or type the whole title in order.  This software is a remarkable achievement and might just be the solving app of choice, not only for today's puzzles but for some of the trickier pre-Shortzian ones as well!  Here's a photo of what this puzzle looked like on an iPad:

Photo courtesy of Puzzazz

Thanks again for letting me know about this, Roy!

In other news, the 1981 proofreading has continued to progress—with just a few more months to go, our indefatigable proofreaders are working hard to finish up the year.  The funny typos list mushroomed when proofreaders began looking over puzzles from the first litzing contest!  In one of these contest puzzles, Todd Gross found one of the funniest typos of all time.  Here are some typical clue typos, followed by some "variety typos," followed by Todd's pièce de résistance:

• Entry:  TRACER
• Wrong:  Kind of ballet
• Right:  Kind of bullet
• Entry:  ASSET
• Wrong:  Brians or beauty
• Right:  Brains or beauty (though I'm sure litzer Brian Tyler would prefer the first one!)
• Entry:  NAIVE
• Wrong:  Ingenious
• Right:  Ingenuous
• Entry:  HOMER
• Wrong:  Slugger's request
• Right:  Slugger's quest
• Entry:  EGO
• Wrong:  Kind of trap
• Right:  Kind of trip
• Double typo:  Entry:  ELS
• Wrong:  Chi. loop loppers
• Right:  Chi. Loop loopers
• OCR mistake caught by Joe Cabrera:  Entry:  OLAN
• Wrong:  Pearl suck heroine
• Right:  Pearl Buck heroine
• Copyright Field
• Wrong:  © 1971, The New York Times.  Editor: Will Went.
• Right:  © 1971, The New York Times.  Editor: Will Weng.
• Copyright Field
• Wrong:  © 1969, The New York Times.  Editor: Margaret Farrah.
• Right:  © 1969, The New York Times.  Editor: Margaret Farrar.
• Ultimate typo:  Entry: DAMAGED
• Wrong:  Married
• Right:  Marred

Great typos—LOL!

In 1966, An Interesting Crossword History Article, More William Lutwiniak Links, and Metapuzzle Reminder

I'm pleased to announce that the litzing has continued to progress steadily over this past week.  Late Friday night, Mark Diehl sent in 35 puzzles, putting us over 10,100!  While preparing a new batch for Mark the next morning, I sent out the first puzzles from 1966!  Unfortunately, nearly all the daily puzzle authors are missing from 1966; with a few exceptions here and there, they won't appear again until February 1964.  The missing daily puzzle authors didn't slow down our "litzing juggernaut" in the least—Sunday night, Mark sent in another 14 puzzles!  On Tuesday, I litzed a reassigned batch from 1982, and on Wednesday, Denny Baker sent in 7 puzzles, which were followed by 6 more from Mike Buckley.  On Thursday, Martin Herbach sent in 34 more puzzles, putting his litzed total at more than 500—congratulations again, Martin!  And Todd Gross proofread nearly two more months of puzzles—awesome progress!  Thanks so much again, everyone!

In other news, recently Miriam Raphael's sister Laura Bobrow discovered a very interesting article about crossword history, which she kindly sent my way.  The first page of the article focuses on Arthur Wynne and the very early crossword years; the second page (which can be accessed via a tiny link at the bottom of the page reading "History of the Crossword Puzzle Part 2") goes into detail about crosswords from the 1920s and contains some information that I haven't seen elsewhere; and the third page (accessible via a similar link on the second page) lists popular crossword publications at the time the article was published back in the early 1980s.  All in all, this article was a fun, informative read.  Thanks, Laura and Miriam!

On a related historical front, Martin Herbach noticed that many of the puzzles he was litzing were constructed by William Lutwiniak, so he did a little Googling and found some very interesting links.  I've added them to the ones that were already on the Pre-Shortzian Constructors page, so if you'd like to read more about this fascinating NSA cryptanalyst who was on an NSA bowling team and who is now buried in Arlington National Cemetery, click on the tab above or here and scroll down to the links.  Thanks so much again, Martin!

Just a reminder:  Only eight more days till the first Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project metapuzzle is released!  I'll be writing about it more next Friday, and the metapuzzle itself will be released on Saturday, June 29, so mark your calendar if you want to give it a try!

Now that we're litzing puzzles from 1966, I searched for a good graphical representation of that year.  As with other years during the 1960s, 1966 was in many ways a dark time.  Rather than focus on the Vietnam War, race riots, or other major political events from that year, I thought many crossword fans might appreciate a photo of the science fiction television series Star Trek, whose very first episode aired in 1966:

Today's featured puzzle, "Rhymes from Way Out," was constructed by Edward J. O'Brien.  I've come across several groundbreaking Will Weng–era Sunday puzzles by this constructor—he was a master at getting theme entries to interlock!  (Reverend O'Brien also compiled the 1975 Compendium of Constructors, which has been—and will continue to be—very useful in determining the full names of Weng- and Maleska-era constructors.)  This featured opus was published on September 28, 1969; it was edited by Will Weng during his first year as editor and was recently litzed by Mark Diehl.  The brilliant construction features 16 symmetrically interlocking nonsensical rhymes, many of which are quite amusing (much like entries in Trip Payne's Something Different puzzles).  But what truly makes this puzzle stand out is the tri-stack of 23-letter theme entries at the center of the puzzle—I've seen very few puzzles with tri-stacks of thematic 21-letter entries, and I believe this is the only New York Times crossword, Shortz or pre-Shortz, to accomplish this feat.  (There was a 1974 23-letter triple-stack, but it was themeless.)  My favorite rhymes in terms of humor are WHITE COLLAR DOLLAR HOLLER (clued as "Clerical union's demand for a raise"), A COBBLE JOB'LL HOBBLE ("Forecast for a poor shoe repair"), and NO ROE ALSO ("Out of fish eggs, too").  And who doesn't love HEMISEMIDEMIQUAVER SAVER ("One who keeps 64th notes")?

Outside of the theme, the fill is an OMNIUM gatherum of liveliness, crazy partials, and esoterica.  Some of my favorite nonthematic entries include REACH FOR, SANTA FE, ECONOMICAL, SENSIBLE, and TEE-VEES (cleverly clued as "Living-room eyes").  Among the entries that made me say OH MY were EMAN ("Relative of a Cockney 'ero"), ANY SUIT ("Hearts, clubs, whatever"), BARRETTS OF ("___ Wimpole Street"), ELSENE ("Flemish name of Ixelles"), and SPLADS ("Chair backs: Var.").  Do you think entries like EMAN justify the addition of all "Cockneyisms" to constructors' word lists?  I'd personally be against adding arbitrary Cockneyisms to my word list, though I'm sure they could come in handy in quad- and quint-stacks—please feel free to comment if you have an opinion on this matter.

Even with these entries (and plenty of others that would make Amy Reynaldo's Scowl-o-Meter go through the roof!), this is a remarkable pre-Shortzian puzzle that I'm guessing would only have been published under Will Weng!  The answer grid (with highlighted theme entries) can be seen below:

If you thought the two recently posted typographical entries ETAOIN SHRDLU and HELLBOX were unusual, buckle your seat belts—I've now assembled three pages of cool-sounding-but-unusual pre-Shortzian entries!  Today's featured pre-Shortzian entry is SJAMBOKS, which, according to the Ginsberg clue database, has never been reused in the Shortz era (SJAMBOK, however, did appear later on in a Maleska-edited puzzle from 1990).  SJAMBOKS originally appeared in the August 14, 1970, puzzle (constructor unknown), which was edited by Will Weng and recently litzed by Nancy Kavanaugh.  SJAMBOKS was clued as "African hide whips"; Webster defines a sjambok as "a heavy leather whip often of rhinoceros hide."  It goes on to mention that sjambok comes from the Afrikaans sambok, which comes from the Malay cambok (large whip), which comes from the Hindu cābuk, which ultimately comes from the Persian chābuk.  Webster notes that a sjambok is comparable to a chawbuck.  I'm impressed by how rich an etymology the word sjambok has!  Below is a picture of a sjambok:

Image courtesy of Museum Box.

Over 9,900, June Litzer of the Month Martin Herbach, Jim Horne's XWord Info Press Conference, Fireball Newsweekly Crosswords, and Funny Typos

We've now litzed more than 9,900 puzzles!  On Sunday, Todd Gross sent in 7, followed by 14 from Nancy Kavanaugh and 7 from Denny Baker.  Then Monday, Martin Herbach sent in another five batches totaling 35 puzzles, followed by 42 (probably the largest puzzle shipment ever!) from Mark Diehl, who put us over the 9,900 mark on the litzing thermometer!  Thanks so much, everybody—it won't be long before we're at 10,000!  (Incidentally, at least one litzer has told me he's hoping to be the one to put us over that milestone—it will be interesting to see who ultimately does it!)

The proofreading is also progressing—on Thursday I received a month of proofed puzzles from Tracy Bennett.  Many thanks again, Tracy!

Tomorrow is June 1, and we now have a new Litzer of the Month:  Martin Herbach!  As I've written about before here,  here, and here, Martin has devised a very effective and fast way of using optical character recognition (OCR) to litz.  Lately he's been sending in batches of 35 puzzles at a time in rapid succession, though recently some subpar PDFs of puzzles have slowed this process down a bit and necessitated manual litzing.  Luckily the poor-quality PDFs are relatively few and far between—there doesn't seem to be any correlation between a puzzle's original publication date and the PDF's clarity.  To read more about Martin, click here or on the Litzer of the Month tab above.

If you haven't read Jim Horne's informative and entertaining 2013 XWord Info Press Conference yet, click here to take a look (and see the mention of the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project—thanks, Jim!)!  (I really wonder what got lost due to "technical issues" in those 26-minute initial remarks!)

Last week I wrote about Peter Gordon's Kickstarter campaign for Fireball Newsweekly Crosswords.  As of today, this promising project has reached more than 50% of its funding goal, and there are still 15 more days left to back it!  I have to admit, I was concerned last week when I saw how much more funding was needed, so I increased my pledge (and am looking forward to receiving a cool Fireball Crosswords baseball cap in addition to all the great puzzles!).  Increasing pledges is really easy on Kickstarter—you just log in, go to the project page, and click on "Manage Your Pledge."  Then you type in the amount of your new pledge (which isn't added to your previous pledge—the revised pledge is the total amount you'll be charged if the Kickstarter campaign succeeds).  If you'd like to increase your pledge or learn more about Fireball Newsweekly Crosswords and how to pledge, click here.

My list of funny typos is getting longer and longer, so I thought I'd include a few of the best today:

• Entry:  CORRS
• Wrong:  They report for news
• Right:  They report for. news
• Entry:  ALAI
• Wrong:  Part of a front on game
• Right:  Part of a fronton game
• Entry:  ILE
• Wrong:  Marine land
• Right:  Marne land
• Entry:  EIGER
• Wrong:  Peak in the Burmese Alps
• Right:  Peak in the Bernese Alps
• Entry:  LPS
• Wrong:  Disco ducks
• Right:  Disco disks

Today's featured puzzle (constructor unknown) was originally published on March 24, 1972.  It was edited by Will Weng and recently litzed by Mark Diehl.  As I've continued to review litzed packets of puzzles from the early 70s and late 60s, I've come across many daily puzzles with repeated-word themes.  Some of them have impressive theme entry interlock, but ultimately, the vast majority aren't interesting enough to feature.  This innovative puzzle puts a novel twist on the traditional repeated-word theme—it contains four arrangements in which a theme entry containing the word BUTTER appears to be on top of a theme entry containing BREAD!  The puzzle works on many levels:  The BREAD and BUTTER theme entries are the same length and feel in-the-language, the BUTTER entry is always above or to the right of the BREAD entry, and the theme entries are arranged symmetrically in a pinwheel formation.  In addition, the fill is exceptionally clean—an extraordinary feat, considering that the theme entries are stacked on top of each other!  I especially like the entries DAINTY, DICTATE, SHUSH, and CRUSH!  Among the very few not-so-great entries are ARCT (clued as "North: Prefix"), SIRUP ("Pancake coating: Var." [have you ever seen this spelling outside of crosswords?]), and ASHAKE ("Trembling").  Nevertheless, this daily puzzle is a tour-de-force—the constructor clearly knew which side his solvers' bread was buttered on!  The answer grid (with highlighted theme entries) can be seen below:

Today's featured pre-Shortzian entry is HELLBOX, which originally appeared in the November 28, 1970, crossword (constructor unknown).  This puzzle was edited by Will Weng and recently litzed by Denny Baker.  According to the Ginsberg clue database, HELLBOX has never been used in a Shortz-era puzzle.  This unusual entry was clued as "Printer's trashcan"; Webster defines it as "a receptacle into which a printer throws damaged or discarded type material."  The printing industry has lots of bizarre slang—I'll be featuring another typographical oddity next week!  For now, below is a picture of a hellbox:

Image courtesy of gochipmunk.com.

Miriam Raphael's Maleska Stories, Helene Hovanec's "Creative Cruciverbalists," May Litzer of the Month Vic Fleming, Herbert L. Risteen Article, Another Litzing Script, Over 9,300—and in 1968 and the Farrar Era!

Several weeks ago I received an e-mail from master solver and crossword editor Miriam (Mimi) Raphael (whose National Puzzlers' League nom is Ditto).  Mimi won first place in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in 1979 and first place in the Seniors Division 18 times between 1988 and 2011.  She had some Maleska stories she thought I might be interested in—and I was!  With her permission, they appear below, followed by a photo of the Fairfield County Puzzlers:

Back in the 1980s and '90s, there was a group of puzzle people—Will Shortz and a number of constructors and others interested in crosswords—in this area that called themselves the Fairfield County Puzzlers, after Fairfield County, Connecticut, where most of them lived.  I was actually just across the border in Westchester, New York, but I was a member, anyway.  Will Shortz was our leader—he was not puzzle editor of The New York Times in those days.  Norton Rhoades, who had been a school principal in Stamford, Connecticut, was a member, as was Stephanie Spadaccini, Maura Jacobson, and a few others whose names you might be familiar with.

We met every other month, as I remember, and one time decided to have a Maleska Roast (to which he was not invited).  Everyone was encouraged to bring a nasty letter they had received from Eugene.  I had one.  Through a strange combination of circumstances, I was editing a series of puzzle books—Champion Crosswords, for Simon & Schuster.  There were eight books published in the series before it died.  When Margaret Farrar found out about it, she was very helpful.  One of the best pieces of advice she gave me was to be gentle with constructors when I had to refuse their puzzles.  This was their "baby," she reminded me, and they sent it to me with many hopes and misgivings.  I took her advice seriously and once even received a thank-you note for a letter I had written to a constructor explaining why I couldn't use her puzzle—it wasn't very good, but I didn't say that in so many words.

Maleska, on the other hand, returned Maura Jacobson's early effort with, "You have a long way to go before you're ready to submit to the NY Times."  I received a letter from Maleska saying, "It has come to my attention that you are editing Crossword Puzzle Books for Simon & Schuster.  What are your credentials to be a crossword puzzle editor?"  I responded (and this was my letter in full) that "my credentials were sufficient for my publisher to offer me a contract," and I didn't hear from him again.

Just about everyone at that Fairfield County Puzzlers meeting at my house had a similar nasty letter from the great Eugene M.  We had a great time!

The Fairfield County Puzzlers on Miriam Raphael's front porch.  Front row:  Miriam Raphael, Stan Newman, Mark Oshin, Robert Carroll, Unknown.  Second row:  Doug Heller, Nancy Schuster, Bonnie Sirower, Unknown, Grace Frary, Will Shortz.  Back rows:  Unknown, Norman Landis, Halloween Man, Mike Shenk, Evie Eysenburg, Robin Landis, Ted Fishman, Unknown, Unknown, Unknown, Ed Snarski. 

Thanks so much, Mimi!  (And thanks, too, to Will Shortz and Stan Newman for helping to identify some of the people in the photo!  If anyone else knows who the remaining "Unknowns" are, please contact me.)

Coincidentally, I've been reading a wonderful book I recently found out about that offers a few quite different impressions of Maleska.  Helene Hovanec's Creative Cruciverbalists contains fascinating profiles of many pre-Shortzian constructors, and the one for Karen Hodge notes that "Hodge submitted several puzzles to Maleska, who although rejecting them, kept on encouraging her for he felt that she showed a flair for constructing."  When he finally accepted one of Hodge's puzzles, Hovanec writes:  "His congratulatory note, which elated her, began:  'Your avian opus is certainly not for the birds.'"

Similarly, the profile of Henry Hook shows another side of Maleska, who was so impressed with Hook's initial submission that he offered "to critique his crosswords and send him a style sheet (which Hook hadn't known existed)."  In fact, Hovanec writes, as "Hook developed under Maleska's tutelage, Maleska further assisted him by sending his work to other editors."

And the profile of Maleska himself is truly amazing.  Maleska's own puzzles did not meet with immediate acceptance.  His first efforts, which he sent to the Herald Tribune, were repeatedly rejected:

Maleska remembers the route he traveled:  "First I bought the newspaper every day and studied the style of the puzzle very carefully.  Months later I submitted my first professional effort—and held my breath.  I had enclosed a self-addressed stamped envelope, but did not bother to write an accompanying letter.  I had too much amour propre to plead.  My bubble of self-esteem burst abruptly.  Not even a formal rejection slip!  I was tempted to give up right then and there.  But persistence emerged to take the place of pride. . . .  I set some sort of record for initial failure—over forty rejections from a silent editor in a two-year period!"

Even more surprising to me was learning that Maleska actually tried to "jazz up" the clues in his puzzles:

He vividly remembers the first puzzle in which he "broke the log jam."  "'Nest' was defined as 'Nutcracker's suite' and the clue for 'noon' was 'When both hands are up.'  For 'ironer' the solvers were confronted with 'He has pressing problems.'"

And the first stepquote Maleska published, under Margaret Farrar, created a furor, with very polarized reactions on the parts of solvers.

Maleska seems to have been someone with many different sides—he could be arrogant and harsh with some constructors but was also apparently very encouraging to others.  And although the "educational" aspect to his puzzles could be stifling, some of his innovations, such as with cluing and stepquotes, were very creative.

In other news, I'm delighted to announce that Vic Fleming is the May Litzer of the Month!  To read about "Judge Vic," click here or on the Litzer of the Month tab above.

Also, I was thrilled to get an e-mail from litzer and proofreader Todd Gross on Wednesday about an article he'd found on pre-Shortzian constructor Herbert L. Risteen.  Todd had been reading the interview with Litzer of the Month Vic Fleming, who mentions the entry VIC SEIXAS, and remembered that he'd seen Vic Seixas mentioned in an article he'd read about Risteen.  I've now linked to this article from the Pre-Shortzian Constructors page; to read it, click on the link there or go directly to the Risteen article here.  Thanks so much, Todd!  If anyone else comes across articles on pre-Shortzian constructors, please let me know.

Herbert L. Risteen.  Image courtesy of
The Milwaukee Journal.

Last week I wrote about the litzing script Martin Herbach had sent me, and today I just received some additional information from him::

fyi, the following one-line sed script merges any line that doesn't begin with a number, with its previous line:

sed ":a; $!N;s/\n\([^0-9]\)/ \1/;ta;P;D" fromfile >tofile

It took a bit of messing with before I got it working.  It's for gnu sed on windows.  Other sed versions will take some syntax  changes.  I'm not an osx expert, so I have no idea what sed is built-in or available.

As you can tell, I hate doing something manually that can be automated.  I run it right after the ocr.

Thanks again, Martin!

It's been a very busy week on the litzing front, with some huge puzzle shipments!  On Sunday, Mark Diehl sent in 21 puzzles; Jeffrey Krasnick, 7; and Todd McClary, 7.  The next day, Mike Buckley sent in 6, and then on Wednesday, Martin Herbach sent in five batches totaling 33 puzzles.  Early today, Mark sent in 35 puzzles—putting us over 9,300 on the litzing thermometer!—and then three hours later, Martin sent in another five batches totaling 35 puzzles!  And on the proofreading front, Tracy Bennett, Todd Gross, and Kristena Bergen all sent in lots of proofread puzzles.  Thanks so much, everybody—awesome job!

One final piece of news:  We're now in the Margaret Farrar era, where we'll remain till the very end!  We're also now in 1968, a very eventful, dark time in history.  On the lighter side, here's a photo from the sketch comedy TV show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, which debuted on January 22, 1968:

Image courtesy of sixties60s.com.

Today's featured pre-Shortzian puzzle (constructor unknown) was edited by Will Weng, litzed by Mark Diehl, and originally published on August 11, 1972.  It features a mind-blowing 11 symmetrically interlocking theme entries . . . based on the entry NUDIST CAMP!  The theme clues are a riot—here are a few of the wackier ones:  NUDIST CAMP [15 Across] (clued as "Mosquito heaven"), NUDES PAPER ("House organ of 15 Across?"), RAW DEAL ("Poker round at 15 Across"), CLOTHES ("Eyesores at 15 Across"), GAZA STRIP ("Locale of 15 Across?"), and BARE HANDS ("The help, at 15 Across").  This puzzle exemplifies Weng's sense of humor and willingness to publish surprising, bizarre-but-awesome themes!  Unfortunately, we don't have the constructor for this outré masterpiece; however, based on all the authored Weng puzzles I've seen, I'm guessing this puzzle was by master cruciverbalist A. J. Santora.  A. J. Santora was known for his ability to fit an incredible amount of theme entries into a daily-sized grid.

Regardless of who the constructor was, he or she did a great job filling around the 11 theme entries, and I noticed that even the ordinary clues feel a bit more playful than normal.  Some of the more interesting nonthematic entries include I'M GAME, the combination of CAESAR and CESAR, and the combination of DARNS and DAMNED; interesting nonthematic clues include "Taffy event" for PULL and "Wields a needle" for DARNS.  There are some clues and entries that elicited a "Sound of anguish" (GROAN) from me:  BLS ("Beer containers: Abbr."), ORDU ("Turkish army corps"), IRAK (Baghdad's land: Var."), APAR ("Armadillo"), PLUVIAL ("Showery"), SMUT clued as "Plant disease," BRUH ("Macaque of East Indies"), ASEM ("Old gold alloy"), and ACCA ("Old silk brocade").  Nevertheless, this is a brilliant and fun pre-Shortzian puzzle!  The answer grid (with highlighted theme entries) can be seen below:

Today's featured pre-Shortzian clue is almost as risqué as the featured puzzle!  It originally appeared in the March 27, 1976, puzzle by H. Hastings Reddall, which was edited by Will Weng and litzed by Nancy Kavanaugh.  The clue for TOPLESS read "Like some waitresses."  This clue feels slightly off-color—I'm pretty sure that, of all the pre-Shortzian editors, Will Weng would've been the only one to allow it!  I can see that Maleska used much less suggestive clues for this entry ("Extremely high" and "' . . . ___ towers of Ilium': Marlowe."  Below is a picture of the seemingly topless Mt. Everest:

Image courtesy of Mount Everest Summit Climb.

Mel Rosen Interview, Periods after Clues, Over 9,200, Mark Diehl Litzes 2,500 Puzzles, Martin Herbach's Litzing Script, Marbles Tournament, and Puzzazz Year of Puzzles

This week I'm thrilled to present a wonderful interview with pre-Shortzian constructor and author Mel Rosen!  Mel has published hundreds of puzzles, and according to my (still incomplete) records, 26 of his crosswords appeared in The New York Times during the pre-Shortz era and 10 under Will Shortz's editorship.  He is also the author (with Stan Kurzban) of The Compleat Cruciverbalist, which was later revised and became the classic Random House Puzzlermaker's Handbook.  To read my interview with Mel Rosen, click here or on the Pre-Shortzian Constructor Interviews tab above.

There's lots of news this week!  First, we're now almost in the Margaret Farrar era.  Many Will Weng–edited puzzles being sent out now for litzing continued Margaret's style of putting periods at the ends of clues.  Although adding in the periods makes litzing a bit trickier—to my knowledge, no one has discovered a way to automate this process in Crossword Compiler—it quickly becomes habitual.  The periods after clues will continue all the way back to 1942, so we have lots of time to get used to them!

We've now litzed more than 9,200 puzzles!  This was an amazing week in litzed-puzzle submissions, starting off with a batch of 21 puzzles from Mark Diehl on Saturday.  On Sunday, Martin Herbach sent in 35 puzzles, which put us over 9,100, and then Mark sent in another 14.  Finally, on Wednesday Martin sent in another 35 puzzles, putting us over 9,200!  In between these large batches, other litzers continued sending in packets of 7, which all added up to a huge increase from our total at the end of last week—almost as if we were running another litzing contest (which, by the way, will be coming this summer!).  Thanks so much, everybody—great, great job!

Mark Diehl also reached an amazing milestone this week in his personal litzing total, having digitized more than 2,500 puzzles!  That's also more than 15 percent of the entire pre-Shortzian puzzle canon!  Congratulations and thanks again, Mark—maybe this will eventually go down in the Guinness World Records!

This week Martin Herbach also sent me an e-mail about a litzing script he wrote for use with .txt files.  Here's his description of it—if you'd like more details, please contact him (or me, and I'll forward your e-mail):

I don't know how many people give you Across Lite source (.txt) files, but I just wrote a script that automates a bit of the work.  Editing the clues is still the labor-intensive step, but I build the clue file in Notepad (which automatically deals with smart quotes), including clue numbers and the script scans a directory for clue files of the form nytyymmddclues.txt and turns each one into nytyymmdd.txt, stripping the clue numbers and adding the rest of the tempate.  It uses the date from the filename for the template header, including correct day of week.

It's not very user friendly but if you think anyone would want to use it, I'll provide further info. 

A couple of other announcements:  Last weekend, Marbles:  The Brain Store's 5th Annual Crossword Tournament took place at various locations around the country, and litzer Doug Peterson and I were judges at the one in Sherman Oaks, California.  It was a lot of fun, with great puzzles and plenty of yummy popcorn, and litzer Todd Gross was one of the contestants!  Here's a picture of Doug, Todd, and me at the tournament:

Finally, the Puzzazz Year of Puzzles has begun, and litzer Parker Lewis built the very first one, which came out last week.  I took a break from studying for AP tests to do his double spiral puzzle and had a blast!  There'll be a metapuzzle to solve at the end, and I'm already looking forward to the next installment, which will be by Patrick Berry!  To find out more about the Puzzazz Year of Puzzles, click here.

Today's featured puzzle, "Fuller Explanations," was constructed by Mel Rosen and edited by Will Weng.  It was originally published on July 13, 1975, and was recently litzed by Howard Barkin.  In this "reversed-out" puzzle, a piece of pre-Shortzian  crosswordese is used as a clue and its typical definition as an answer for each of the twelve theme entries!  For example, the clue "Orts" leads to TABLE SCRAPS, and the clue "Amah" leads to ORIENTAL NURSE.  I'm amazed that Mel was able to get all these definitions to interlock so nicely with (drumroll, please) so little crosswordese in the nonthematic fill!  Instead, he used lots of fun pieces of fill, such as GONDOLA, GOES FAR, and PREENED.  On top of all that, Mel even managed to sneak his own name into the grid at 18-Down (clued as "Allen or Brooks" rather than "Allen or Rosen").  All in all, this is a very innovative pre-Shortzian puzzle with an interesting, original, and humorous theme!  The answer grid (with highlighted theme entries) can be seen below:

Today's featured pre-Shortzian entry is LOXODROMIC.  LOXODROMIC originally appeared in the Will Weng–edited July 29, 1972, puzzle (constructor unknown), which was recently litzed by Mark Diehl.  Not surprisingly, the Ginsberg database shows that LOXODROMIC has never been reused in a Shortz-era puzzle!  The original clue for LOXODROMIC was "Of map-projection lines"; Webster defines it as "Relating to a rhumb line or to sailing on rhumb lines."  It defines a rhumb line as "a line on the surface of the Earth that follows a single compass bearing and makes oblique angles with all meridians."  In my book, both loxodrome and rhumb line are a mouthful—then again, I doubt I'll be using either of these terms anytime soon!  Below is a picture of some loxodromes/rhumb lines:

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Bernice Gordon Interview, Over 9,000, In 1969, Marbles Tournament, and Pre-Shortzian Stumpers

Today I'm delighted to present another interview with a pre-Shortzian constructor, the amazingly creative and prolific Bernice Gordon!  At 99, Bernice is the oldest constructor in the history of The New York Times; according to my (incomplete) records, she published 112 puzzles in the pre-Shortz era and has published 18 under Will Shortz's editorship, but she reportedly has published more than 150 puzzles in the Times.  To read my interview with Bernice Gordon, click here or on the Pre-Shortzian Constructor Interviews tab above.

I'm also thrilled to announce that we've now litzed more than 9,000 puzzles!  On Sunday, Todd McClary sent in a batch that put us over 8,900, and then, in very short order, more puzzles came in—including a batch of 34 from Mark Diehl—that put us over 8,950!  Finally, on Wednesday, Martin Herbach sent in five batches totaling 35 puzzles, putting us well over 9,000!  Thanks so much, everybody—great job!

We also reached another milestone this week:  On Tuesday, litzer Nancy Kavanaugh received the first batch of 1969 puzzles!  Here's a representative photo from that very eventful year.  It's of astronaut Buzz Aldrin walking on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission, which, on July 20, 1969, landed the first humans there:

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Although there won't be any pre-Shortzian puzzles to solve, I wanted to help spread the word about this weekend's Marbles 5th Annual Crossword Tournament at various locations throughout the country.  This should be a very fun event, and litzer Doug Peterson and I will be judges at the one taking place in Sherman Oaks, California!

Finally, if you haven't checked out the Pre-Shortzian Stumpers on Twitter, many of the previous stumpers are listed there under #psstumpers.  Litzers Jeffrey Krasnick, Martin Ashwood-Smith, and Denny Baker have come up with some doozies, and I'm sure there'll be more to come!

Today's featured puzzle was constructed by the legendary Bernice Gordon.  As Bernice mentioned in her interview, this puzzle caused something of a controversy—in fact, Margaret Farrar initially rejected it!  The puzzle, titled "Words and Words," was published on May 30, 1965.  It features ten common phrases containing a word, AND, and then another word; the catch is that AND is squeezed into a single square, making this puzzle the earliest Sunday rebus I've seen so far.  This puzzle is way ahead of its time thematically—Sunday rebus themes didn't catch on until much later during the Maleska era!  In addition to using a completely innovative theme, Bernice also chose a wide-open grid and did a lovely job filling it.  Some highlights of the nonthematic fill include RASPBERRY, CONDUCTOR, QUAKING, and AESTHETES, but perhaps the most interesting/unusual entry is ODTAA.  At first, I thought it had to be a mistake—litzers have found several errors in the solutions to Times puzzles recently.  But ODTAA, clued as "Masefield novel, 1926," is indeed a legitimate entry.  My first thought was that the title had something to do with TAA, a piece of pre-Shortzian crosswordese commonly clued as "Chinese pagoda"; I couldn't have been more wrong, however—ODTAA is an acronym for "One Damn Thing After Another!"  In sum, this is a very futuristic and creative pre-Shortzian puzzle!  The answer grid (with highlighted theme entries) can be seen below:

A few months ago, one of our proofreaders came across a very clever clue in the Maleska-edited Saturday, June 7, 1986, puzzle, constructed by Irene Smullyan.  The clue, for the entry SMASHED, was "Under the alfluence of incohol."  This clue, like the featured puzzle, feels way ahead of its time—both are exceptionally clever!  Below is a picture of SMASHED in a different sense of the word:

Image courtesy of 123RF.

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.