
What 74 Years of Crossword History Says About the Language We Use - sunraa
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/07/opinion/what-74-years-of-times-crosswords-say-about-the-words-we-use.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0
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donohoe
I wrote a mini NYT crossword search engine many years ago (only covers 1996 to
2011).

[http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/hacker](http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/hacker)

Its funny to see how terms changed over the years. A few interesting ones:

[http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/aol](http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/aol)

[http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/google](http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/google)

[http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/facebook](http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/facebook)

~~~
pgrote
Very cool site!

A few I liked:

[http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/router](http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/router)

[http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/mci](http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/mci)

[http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/streaming](http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/streaming)

Thanks for sharing.

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konschubert
Alternatively: What 74 Years of Crossword History says about the New York
Times.

I am not dismissing the observation, but I think other factors have to be
taken into account.

~~~
stinkytaco
Or what it says about the specific subset of words that are used in crossword
puzzles. I find this article very interesting because it does outline some
general trends in language usage (the migration in foreign language words, for
example), but one could also draw the conclusion that Ulee's Gold is America's
favorite movie from crosswords.

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personlurking
Maybe this already exists but I could see crosswords, etc (ex, Jeopardy-like
A&Qs), being used as a learning tool for things like geography and history,
allowing students to mentally visualize subject-specific associations (ie,
including backwards and sideways) rather than just memorize first-this-then-
that type facts.

One could throw in identical problems here and there, either stated exactly
the same way or differently, in order to create spaced-repition learning, as
well as an inside-out understanding of the subject.

To give a random example - US geography, and if the student enjoys it or does
well, let them continue on with it and grade them on the successive tests for
State-specific or foreign country geography, for example. Throw in historical
changes to make it multidisciplinary. In other words, let students explore
their interests within the larger subject, rather than standardizing
everything for everyone.

______

The Crossword article and the article link that follows, on Horizontal
History, inspired my comment. [http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/01/horizontal-
history.html](http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/01/horizontal-history.html)

~~~
Panagrama
It's heartening to hear you think it's a good idea, because I actually run a
foreign languages learning site which uses bilingual crosswords for vocabulary
memorization, and until now it has experienced an extremely lukewarm reception
from teachers. Well, I had a hunch this kind of learning puzzles were a better
fit for autodidacts anyway.

If you care to check the site, its URL is
[http://panagrama.org](http://panagrama.org)

Comments very much welcome!

(And as this is HN, I should also mention that the crosswords are written in
BiwaScheme.)

EDIT: mistyped URL

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kleiba
_Uber (a car service) is no longer clued as a German preposition (over or
above)_

Perhaps because it isn't? The latter is written with an umlaut.

(Note that umlauts can actually be a distinguishing factor for very different
meanings, e.g., "schwül"->humid vs "schwul"->gay. In the case of "uber", there
is simply no such word in the German language; the preposition is "über".)

(Note also that in cases of typed German where there is not umlaut key
available, the standard way to transcribe is to insert an "e" after the vowel.
So you would write "ueber" for the German preposition.)

~~~
tdjoe89
New York Times crosswords use the 26 letters of the American alphabet. Accents
and other letter modifications are stripped out of answers.

~~~
kleiba
How would a word that contains the German s-ligature "ß" be written?

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viewer5
Are there actually any words like that that have made their way into English?

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conceit
yes, ueber became uber.

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viewer5
That does have the 'ß' character in it, though, which is what I was asking
about.

~~~
yorwba
Words in the category "English terms derived from German" on Wiktionary[1]
that contain "ss" instead of "ß":

ahlspiess, edelweiss, Federweisser, frass, Preussen, stoss, sussreserve,
weissbier, weisswurst

[1]
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_terms_derive...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_terms_derived_from_German)

