November 7, 2013
by Alex
Comments Off on NPR Puzzle for 2013-11-03: a perl solution
Edit: This post has been updated with a better version of the code. Here’s the most recent NPR puzzle: A famous actress and a famous director share the same last name, although they are unrelated. The first name of one … Continue reading
September 5, 2013
by Alex
2 Comments
Here’s this past week’s NPR puzzle: Think of a well-known celebrity who goes by a single name — the last two letters of which are alphabetically separated by only one letter (like A and C, or B and D). Replace … Continue reading
July 9, 2013
by Alex
5 Comments
So I released my list of famous names the other day, and as promised the first thing I did was to try to beat 35 in the Gaffney-Gordon pangram challenge. If you’re not familiar with that challenge, here’s a little … Continue reading
April 28, 2013
by Alex
Comments Off on Code first, optimize later (but don’t forget to optimize!)
I am totally on board with the “code first, optimize later” school of programming. But sometimes one can forget to optimize, which can be a minor issue (if the code was already pretty optimized) or a major one (if there’s … Continue reading
April 10, 2013 by Alex | 2 Comments
Here we are trying something new.
Every week for a few weeks I’ll be participating in a crossword race against one of the greatest crossword solvers of all time. But since I’d never have a chance in a fair fight, he’s going to get an increasingly ludicrous handicap each time out. In this first episode, he has to enter all the entries in the grid backward. Will that be enough for me to win? THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME.
Huge thanks to Brendan Emmett Quigley for allowing us to use his puzzles and to Mike Richards for allowing us to use the awesome XWord software for these videos.
Once I get a blog up on Crossword Nexus you will be able to find these videos there. Enjoy!
February 24, 2013
by Alex
6 Comments
Consider two problems you’ve probably heard before: Given a five-gallon bucket and a three-gallon bucket, measure exactly four gallons of water. Given a five-minute hourglass and a three-minute hourglass, measure exactly seven minutes. These problems are clearly related, but how? … Continue reading
November 17, 2012
by Alex
5 Comments
So the Crossword Butler domain expires in a month, and I’m not sure if I should re-up. It hasn’t really been used the way I thought it might. The idea was that puzzlemakers would just make the puzzles and I … Continue reading
November 5, 2012
by Alex
Comments Off on Joon’s puzzler
Joon recently posted the following on Twitter: wordplay #puzzler: think of two unrelated phrases, both with enumeration 3, 4. the 3-letter words are synonyms; so are the 4-letter words. Well, I had just recently downloaded the unbelievably awesome natural language … Continue reading
May 16, 2012
by Alex
3 Comments
The Crosswords LA 2012 puzzles are here! Get them while they’re hot! CROSSWORDS LA 2012 Puzzles should be e-mailed to you almost immediately. If you don’t get them right away, check your spam folder. If you still don’t see them, … Continue reading
April 13, 2012
by Alex
3 Comments
For more on this project, see the FillBot Jr. category As I mentioned in the comments of the last post, FillBot Jr. has successfully solved a crossword! Now admittedly, it was low-hanging fruit — a Monday Newsday by Gail Grabowski … Continue reading