Calculating 'crosswordiness' of answers: how to do it and what it shows us

Crossword puzzles are home to a selection of archaic and exotic words. Web developer Noah Veltman shows us how he has worked out the 'crosswordiness' of answers used in a selection of New York Times puzzles• More data journalism and data visualisations from the GuardianEvery budding crossword puzzler quickly learns that crosswords have their own strange vernacular. The need to interweave lots of words seamlessly puts vowels, short words, and unusual letter combinations at a premium, and puzzle constructors don't want to make things too easy by sticking to the familiar. The end result is that archaic, technical, and just plain exotic terms that would never come up in conversation routinely show up in crossword puzzles. Every serious devotee of American-style puzzles is an expert in certain Finnish architects (EERO), Great Lakes (ERIE), World War II battlegrounds (STLO), church altars (APSE), butter substitutes (OLEO), sons of Isaac (ESAU), and a whole lot more.When you start to see an unfamiliar word pop up repeatedly in your daily crossword, it's hard to know which ones are genuinely obscure and which ones are just new to you; everyone has their own idiolect. Fortunately, we can apply some data to that question, now that Michael Donohoe of Quartz has published a set of New York Times crossword clues and answers spanning all puzzles from 1996-2012.To figure out which words really are the most peculiar to crosswords, we need to look at two things: how often it shows up as a c...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Tags: Crosswords United States Blogposts guardian.co.uk Language UK news Source Type: news