#Download crossword forge 01 archive
#Download crossword forge 01 Offline

To be fair, I am not unsympathetic to Ms. We did it because we knew years ago that solvers switching to digital was inevitable (and we were clearly right), we believe that the best crossword should be available in the best app, we felt that solvers deserved to get the puzzle as intended by the editors, and that “a rising tide floats all boats.” Empathizing with the Times The Times, not Puzzazz, made money from every subscriber who solved in Puzzazz. We have never received any revenue from doing this - in fact, it costs us money every year. I think the Puzzazz founder Roy Leban sums things up nicely in his open statement on the NYT Crosswords situation: One such application, Puzzazz, asked to just receive any format at all, and their app can parse it. Many third-party puzzle app and program developers have reached out to Ms. This begs the question, just how difficult is it to prepare puz files? And other than printing your puzzle on paper, this announcement ends the ability to solve puzzles offline, such as when you’re flying.

#Download crossword forge 01 archive

Why the sudden notice, and not a transition period to give the community time to make an orderly transition to this new “something”? Why is the archive of puz files being removed, given that the problem is with preparing puz formatted files, not maintaining them? Almost overnight, scripts have popped up to convert the NYT website crossword into puz format, and similar scripts have been around for some time. It takes a lot of time, and I’m confident this is the best move for my teamīased on the information made available so far, several things don’t make sense to many in the community. I’m trying to build something where the editors can actual edit and make games rather than adapt things for tools we can’t control. I’m the one who made this call and I did it for editorial reasons. Her tweet a few days later attempted to explain the decision, but only seemed to agitate fans even further: Mason wasn’t simply dropping support for Across Lite, but she appears to be killing off this entire ecosystem, much to the chagrin of puzzle fans. The Across Lite team even developed a new format at the request of NYT in back 2015, but strangely, the NYT has never used it. There are various newer formats floating around, but with the entrenchment of the puz format none has emerged as a clear winner. Not only are puz files used to distribute daily crosswords, the NYT maintains an archive of all its crosswords in puz format going back to 1993, even before online puzzles were introduced.

Despite being aged and proprietary, an entire community of solvers, developers and checkers has sprung up around the availability of puz files, making them a de-facto standard.

puz files, a format which hasn’t been upgraded in twenty years. Naturally the NYT joined the party as well, offering the crossword puzzles online and via smart phone apps.Ĭentral to this issue are Across Lite.

#Download crossword forge 01 Offline

Modems aside, this basic method has continued until now, and a variety of programs and apps have sprung up over the years that allow not only offline play, but with tailored feature sets, such as support for the visually impaired, puzzle fanatics, puzzle creators, team playing, etc. The NYT online crossword puzzles first appeared in 1996 - puzzle files could be downloaded by modem and solved offline using the program Across Lite. In 1993, Will Shortz was chosen as the fourth Crossword Puzzle Editor, a position he still holds today. The NYT first published its now-famous crossword puzzle back in 1942, appearing every Sunday, and in 1950 it became a daily feature. But the ramifications extend much deeper than just one application. Mason announced the end of support for the crossword-solving program Across Lite, abruptly terminating a relationship between the two organizations spanning 25 years. In a short article published in early August, Ms. Over at the New York Times (NYT) crossword puzzle desk, newly-appointed Games Editorial Director Everdeen Mason has caused a bit of a ruckus and hubbub (both six letter words with U as the 2nd and 5th letter) among digital puzzle solvers.