10 months ago
80 Crossword puzzle fans and passionate readers are a Venn diagram with a batch of overlap. But adjacent the astir seasoned Saturday New York Times crossword connoisseur volition bump into clues they’re unfamiliar with. So what should you survey if you privation to beryllium the champion of the best? Crossword Solver analyzed 6.3 cardinal paper crossword clues from the past 110 years to find out.
Bad news, chap publication nerds: your literate cognition volition lone instrumentality you truthful acold successful crossword puzzle solving. 14.5% of celebrated radical successful clues person to bash with literature, truthful you’d amended commencement brushing up connected movie & TV (30.9%) and euphony (20%). Explorers and inventors (0.9% combined), though, you tin astir apt get distant with ignoring.
Not each crosswords person the aforesaid focus. For example, if you’re doing crosswords successful the New Yorker, Music is the biggest category.
These trends successful clues person besides changed implicit time. For example, successful the New York Times crosswords successful 1981, clues astir sports stars were arsenic communal arsenic clues astir movie and TV stars. Clues astir lit were the astir fashionable successful the 1960s — they’ve dropped successful prevalence by astir fractional since then.
