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Crossword Database Analysis Spots What Looks Like Plagiarism
Seattle software developer Saul Pwanson has a hobby of developing crossword puzzles, but another related hobby, too: analyzing the way that existing puzzles have been constructed. He created a database that aggregates puzzles that have appeared in various publications, including, crucially, the New York Times and USA Today, and sorts them based on similarities. Puzzles that have a greater percentage of the same black squares, or the same letters in identical positions, are ranked as more similar. Crosswords often re-use answers; puzzle-solvers are used to encountering some of the usual glue words that connect parts of the grid. As 538 reports, though, Pwanson noticed something odd in the data: Many of the puzzles that appeared in USA Today and affiliated publications, listed under various creators' names but all published under Timothy Parker as editor, were highly similar to each other, differing in as little as four answer words. These Pwanson classifies as "shoddy" -- they seem to be about as different as test responses based on a passed-around answer sheet. These seem to shortchange readers expecting original works, but may represent no real copyright problem, since Universal Uclick holds the copyright to them all. Perhaps puzzle enthusiasts aren't surprised that a publishing syndicate economizes on crosswords with slight variations, or that horoscopes are sometimes recycled.
However, another tranche of puzzles Pwanson calls "shady": these are puzzles that bear such strong resemblance in their central clues and answers to puzzles that have appeared in the New York Times that it's very hard to accept Parker's claim that the overlap is coincidental. In one example given, for instance, the answers "Drive Up the Wall," "Get On One's Nerves," and "Rub the Wrong Way" appeared in the same order and the same position in a Parker-edited puzzle that appeared in USA Today in June 2010 as they had in a Will Shortz-edited puzzle published nine years before in the New York Times.
However, another tranche of puzzles Pwanson calls "shady": these are puzzles that bear such strong resemblance in their central clues and answers to puzzles that have appeared in the New York Times that it's very hard to accept Parker's claim that the overlap is coincidental. In one example given, for instance, the answers "Drive Up the Wall," "Get On One's Nerves," and "Rub the Wrong Way" appeared in the same order and the same position in a Parker-edited puzzle that appeared in USA Today in June 2010 as they had in a Will Shortz-edited puzzle published nine years before in the New York Times.
Horoscopes are always recycled. Otherwise how would they ever get it right?
The only surprise is that anyone reads that rag. Their circulation numbers are as made up as their crossword puzzles; every hotel in the country has a stack of them that customers won't touch.
America's crosswords are used to communicate to a ring of secret agents.
The only question is whose? The Russians use the Chess column, the Chinese use Sudoko, the French use the personals...
Government regulation of crossword puzzles is the only answer. It's time for the Obama administration to appoint an undersecretary of Commerce for crossword puzzles and word jumbles. Congress must immediately enact the Comprehensive Crossword Puzzle Reform Act of 2016 and fund the new office before it's too late!
I’ve never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!
#DeleteChrome
[...] these are puzzles that bear such strong resemblance in their central clues and answers to puzzles [...]
My parents gave me a Coleco Quiz Wiz game in the late 1970's. The trivia book had 1,001 questions with an electronic keyboard that could plug into different trivia books. I went through three trivia books before I discovered that I had a memorized the answers for all 1,001 questions, which were identical for all the trivia books. In fact, you don't even need a trivia book. You could punch in the same numbers and letters to get the correct answer. I threw it away in disgust because I expected the answers for each trivia book to be different. As an adult who have gotten back into electronics as a hobby, the circuits in many electronic games from that era were quite simple to implement repetitive game play.
https://steveffisher.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/retro-coleco-quiz-wiz-computer-game/
There was a long conversation about Cross words and Copying. The problem they ran into was how few 13 and 12 letter words are out there. Those words define your axis. Thus if you give 3 cross-word makers the same basic setup (13 x 13) you will end up with the same words.
All those cheaters who graduate from universities without getting caught care. Now they know where they can get a job.
If you own a copyright, modify your original work and then sell the derived work as something new that's shady. Maybe illegal, but I'd need to talk to a lawyer about that one.
If you don't own the copyright, modify someone else's original work and then sell it as something new then that's clearly illegal.
There's that word again. My own hobby is watching the evolution of word usage over time; this one seems to be at the beginning of a trend(let). Maybe it will be Enron's one contribution to society.
I know for a fact lots of Bollywood music is totally pirated from the West. Actually there is one actor in Tamil who keeps remaking Hollywood hits in Tamil, not sure he is paying royalties. I am looking at you Kamal Hasan. Superstar Rajnikant does not plagiarize Hollywood because he is making the same movie again and again for the last 25 years. (Rajni good. Other guy bad. Dishoom dishoom! bang! Everyone is happy, the end.)
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
How sad for him.
Venus is in Aquarius right now, it will remain there for almost a week. That explains your negative attitude. Wait until it moves to Pisces on Saturday, joining Neptune; you'll see things differently then. Unless you were born in the house of Mercury and have an Aries ascendant; then you'll have to wait until Pluto goes retrograde in Capricorn to see a change, and that won't happen until mid-April.
You should see a certified astrologist (or a women, according to Yahoo) to learn more.
lucm, indeed.
He would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids!
Who cares?
Maybe someone who pay money for the paper and expects an original crossword?
There are clues that appear commonly in crosswords and people have been compiling lists of them for years now (e.g. a five letter word starting in "O" and ending in "A" with the clue "works" --> "opera"; four letter word beginning and ending in "A" with clue "largest of 7" --> "Asia").
I suppose you could call using commonplace clues and answers "plagiarism", or you could call it "part of the game". But even if it's part of the game, wholesale copying of clues/answers from another puzzle would be plagiarism.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
And now we need to get rid of the person who cracked the code.
Plagiarism, or syndication?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The copyright lawyers themselves do this too. Most legal licenses, including IP are copies from existing docs at least in part, without attribution.
It's easy to write a program that generates large numbers of crossword puzzles from a list of words/cues. So what's the point in copying entire regions of existing puzzles?