{"id":39787,"date":"2026-04-04T01:13:40","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T05:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/?p=39787"},"modified":"2026-04-04T01:13:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T05:13:42","slug":"nyt-crossword-answer-analysis-1993-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/visualization\/nyt-crossword-answer-analysis-1993-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"NYT Crossword Answer Analysis: 1993-2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Overview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n


The data for this visualization comes from https:\/\/www.kaggle.com\/datasets\/darinhawley\/new-york-times-crossword-clues-answers-19932021?resource=download<\/a>, a public dataset containing all clues and answers used in the New York Times crossword puzzles from 11\/21\/93 through 10\/31\/21. Having recognized multiple repeat words in the daily crossword, I wanted to find the most commonly re-used crossword answers across time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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https:\/\/public.tableau.com\/views\/NYTCrosswordAnswerFrequency1993-20211\/Sheet1?:language=en-US&publish=yes&:sid=&:redirect=auth&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This first sheet, while a bit clunky, filters the list of crossword answers to show those that occur at least 10 times across the entire dataset. Following the link, each year can be filtered to show the most frequently occurring word in that year. A few interesting patterns start to emerge here (such as ACAI being introduced in 2011, and frequently occurring after that).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The next view filters the word list down to the top 10 most frequently occurring words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Being a large dataset, this view quickly became difficult to read. Moving forward I would like to use the sets I’ve created in Tableau filtering by days of the week to create more views analyzing word frequency and possibly also word length (though I am not sure yet how to do this). I would also like to analyze trends in word usage over time– being hosted by the New York Times, the crossword word usage often reflects trends in the news cycle as well. This work has a lot of room for improvement and is very much a work in progress. I hope to create a more thoughtful, readable, and concise analysis of this data as I become more comfortable working in Tableau.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Overview The data for this visualization comes from https:\/\/www.kaggle.com\/datasets\/darinhawley\/new-york-times-crossword-clues-answers-19932021?resource=download, a public dataset containing all clues and answers used in the New York Times crossword puzzles from 11\/21\/93 through 10\/31\/21. Having recognized multiple repeat words in the daily crossword, I wanted to find the most commonly re-used crossword answers across time. This first sheet, while a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4626,"featured_media":39788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1932],"class_list":["post-39787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visualization"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/04\/1_rss.png?fit=800%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paBdcV-alJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4626"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39793,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39787\/revisions\/39793"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39787"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/infovis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=39787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}