
A plagiarism scandal is unfolding in the crossword puzzle world - k4jh
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-plagiarism-scandal-is-unfolding-in-the-crossword-world/
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jordanpg
Longtime NYT solver here.

The most interesting thing about this to me is that it belies the common
impression that many have that the NYT crossword is "elitist". I mean, how can
it be "elitist" if it's routinely copied by USA Today??

I think people try it, find it to be impossible to penetrate on the first try,
see a couple of clues about 1930's opera or NYC-specific stuff and then punt.
However, like many other things in life, there is a learning curve to basic
competency. There is a common, shared vocabulary among professional crossword
constructors that provides a foundation for even the most difficult puzzles.
The point is that you can still finish the puzzle even without knowing
anything about 1930's opera by knowing something else nearby and some
intelligent guesses.

Among most solvers, the quality of a puzzle is proportional to how fun it is
to solve and that is closely related to non-repetition _of the theme_. Good
puzzles minimize this and solvers take it for granted that every puzzle will
be genuinely new. The best case is a theme that is never before seen,
something completely original.

The problem with plagiarism in this case is easier to understand if it's seen
through the lens of an inveterate solver. It's a betrayal of this unspoken
(but still very casual) ethic of originality.

See almost any post from:
[http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/](http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/) for
an example of typical daily thoughts along these lines.

~~~
bbanyc
The NYT crossword has a steep difficulty curve increasing over each week. It
took me a few years of regular solving before I could consistently finish a
Saturday puzzle. If people are only seeing the NYT puzzles on weekends, no
wonder they think it's elitist. Try a Monday puzzle!

(Also, the obscure 1930's opera references have been on the decline since Will
Shortz took over for the late Eugene T. Maleska. Maleska was an admitted
elitist who filled the puzzles with high culture, while Shortz prefers
misleading wordplay. You see a 5-letter clue, "Pentagonal part of a diamond",
and it takes a while for the baseball reference to click - but once it does,
PLATE is the obvious answer.)

I've looked at the USA Today crossword a few times, but found the quality
relatively poor. Lots of dull clues and obscure three-letter words to make the
fill fit together. No wonder he got away with plagiarism for so long, the
people who'd notice wouldn't bother sticking around long enough to find
anything wrong.

~~~
iconjack
Back in the 90s, there was a piece in _Wired_ by Will Shortz about then-
president Bill Clinton's crossword prowess—he claimed he could solve the NYT
puzzle in about 10 minutes, if I recall. But readers who would care about this
would also know that there's no comparison in difficulty between a Monday and
a Friday. Which puzzle could the president do in 10 minutes? I couldn't
believe Will Shortz of all people would leave this out.

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halo
It has been drilled into us that plagiarism is theft and therefore bad, but
there is nothing more natural in the world than taking others work and
building on it or sharing it. Ownership of thoughts and ideas is a modern
invention, and harmless "plagiarism" has been going on since the dawn of time.
Not every sentence, idea, story or indeed puzzle should need to have a wholly
original formulation, and it's not hard to see how stringent citations might
stifle creativity or distract from the ideas being presented.

In particular, I wonder to what degree this sort of plagiarism causes any real
harm, repeating others clever ideas from years ago in a way that can only be
discovered by data mining. Are the puzzles less fun knowing they have shared
elements with ones from years ago?

~~~
forrestthewoods
Plagiarism is wildly overrated.

I remember in middle/high school writing research papers for English class. I
spent more time trying to NOT plagiarize than I spent on any other aspect of
the paper. Which doubly absurd when you consider that there is literally not a
single original thought a 14 year old is capable of having with respect to the
War of 1812. When the entirety of my knowledge on a subject is based on a half
dozen sources how the hell can I _not_ plagiarize.

In that instance I say plagiarize away! Focus on idea sharing. On how to
explain complex ideas to your classmates. On how to build consistent
abstractions or arguments. On literally anything other than how to rewrite the
three sentences so it says the same thing as those three sentences but with
different words so you don't get kicked out of school.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
All ideas are built upon.

There is a very clear line between simply copy pasting an idea and
reformulating that idea in your own words.

I agree that we should focus more on coming up with ideas independently, and
that if they so happen to coincide with an idea someone came up before, no big
deal.

In today's diverse world, however, what are the chances that you were even
remotely going to say something word for word how someone else before you said
it?

~~~
halo
Why do we care so much about reformulating ideas in our own words? If someone
expresses an idea in a good way, why shouldn't we be able to repeat it
verbatim without being raked over hot coals for it?

~~~
slvv
You can totally repeat excellent wording verbatim! It's just that you have to
add quotation marks and cite your source.

~~~
halo
That's my contention - why? Isn't that slavish devotion to quoting and
sourcing all turns of phrase somewhat limiting? Why do we irrationally
consider plagiarism such a horrible blight to be eradicated at all costs?

~~~
Karunamon
Respect for your reader, for one. Citations ensure your reader knows that:

A) It isn't your original thought or original words

B) They can look up some certain work by the person if they're interested in
more

There's no doubt some level of it that's just academic elitism (don't even get
me started on "authoritative sources"), but not deceiving your reader is a
good portion of the requirement. It's not just about the fact that you used
someone else's words, it's the fact that you did so, and _passed off that work
as your own_.

~~~
halo
Why does rephrasing a sentence magically turn a derivative thought into an
original one? Why is using someone else's uncited phrasing considered the
worst thing in the world? Why is it so vital that every single creative idea
goes back to its root source with a full quotation and citation, distracting
from the core idea, and shouldn't be creatively remixed or reworked?

It's bizarre and irrational. It's not just academic elitism, it's also about
how the notion of copyright has changed our natural creative and communication
processes. The natural copying, sharing and evolution of ideas has gone from
being a natural of expression and communication into something verboten. Our
collective culture, our modern folk tales and songs, are controlled in
perpetuity with zero tolerance for "plagiarism". Any derivative ideas may not
be retransmitted, reproduced, rebroadcast, or otherwise distributed without
the express written consent of the copyright holder.

~~~
dalke
Quotes help the reader identify possible alternative and even conflicting
world views in the source materials. For example, suppose sources A and B come
from two different schools of thought about the role of TDD in modern software
development. Now I come along at write a new piece on TDD which uses their
writings, without citation or quotes.

It's unlikely that my new piece will be cohesive, because source A's quotes
use the London school while source B uses the classic school, which use the
same terms albeit with different nuances. I might not even realize there is a
difference.

While if I quote them, it's possible for a reader to figure out patterns I
hadn't noticed in my sources. The citations also act as a normalization (in
the relational sense) for how the different ideas are connected. With "Steve
Freeman writes '...'" then a reader knows that I'm talking about London
school, even if I don't know that.

As an example, look at all of the study of the Bible in order to identify
anonymous changes in authorship. The fact that such details can be teased out
of the text shows that textual analysis does provide useful information.
(Stylometric analysis, which identified Joe Klein as the author of 'Primary
Colors', also shows that there is extra information in the text than just the
words.) Quotes help reduce the cognitive load for future readers by making
these cognitive shifts more clear.

Perhaps the most extreme example of this is Borges' short story 'Pierre
Menard, Author of the Quixote', which "is often used to raise questions and
discussion about the nature of authorship, appropriation and interpretation."
\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Q...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Quixote)

> Any derivative ideas may not be retransmitted, reproduced, rebroadcast

You are exaggerating. For example, there are any number of derivative work of
Tolkien, including parodies like National Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings", or
Pat Murphy's rewrite of "The Hobbit" as the space opera "There and Back
Again".

These neither infringe upon copyright nor are generally considered plagiarism.

Copyright infringement and plagiarism overlap in how they are created, but
they are not the same.

If I quote pages of text, with citation but without permission and beyond the
limits of fair use, then that is copyright infringement but not plagiarism.

If I pass off an out-of-copyright 19th century play as my own, then a
playwright would call that plagiarism, even though there is no copyright
infringement.

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programd
Crosswords ara a beautiful example of a rich data set which can be sliced and
diced in many interesting statistical ways. I wonder if a data visualization
wizard out there can come up with some high impact graphics to illustrate the
problems uncovered in this story. Maybe a job for the terrific New York Times
data visualization team? Given that it appears that the NYT was plagiarized
that would be some poetic justice indeed.

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Ftuuky
I love reading about scandals like this one or the tennis online betting one.
Data scientists are going to ruin so many schemes and frauds.

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wpietri
The New Yorker just had a great story about cheating in Bridge, with a similar
theme of digital technology suddenly making it much easier to detect and
expose shenanigans that would have otherwise gone unnoticed:

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/07/the-cheating-
pr...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/07/the-cheating-problem-in-
professional-bridge)

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hanoz
Can't see anyone getting away with this in the world of British cryptic
crosswords somehow. Any repetition within living memory would surely be met by
an en masse raised eyebrow.

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n0us
> 'made him a “multimillionaire.”'

Certainly an interesting way to make money. I wonder exactly how he managed to
do this.

~~~
cfcef
I wonder about the legal aspects. The reuse in one set of cases may be legal,
but what about the others? If nothing else, you would think that the NYT or
USA Today would have a clause in their contracts that puzzles are guaranteed
new and unique...

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Kiro
I don't understand the problem with "shoddy" crosswords. It's edited by the
same person so what's the big deal? Are you not allowed to repeat a crossword?

~~~
ubernostrum
I've occasionally used daily-crossword sites as a way to relax and keep my
mind working when I need to take a break from code, and the repetitiveness is
one of the big drawbacks.

Crossword puzzles have a certain vocabulary of words which are rare in
conversational English but appear with high frequency in puzzles
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosswordese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosswordese)
\-- how many times have you used 'olio' or 'etui' in conversation?), and
poor/mass-produced crosswords take this to an extreme, which in turn takes
both the challenge and the fun out of the puzzle.

Also, if you do enough puzzles you will end up noticing ones which are more
subtly repetitive, and again there's less fun in re-solving one you've already
"done".

~~~
jordanpg
Non-repetitiveness is _precisely_ what makes a crossword good. If you are
seeing a lot of repetitiveness, you are doing the wrong puzzles.

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WalterBright
The older I get, the more nebulous the concept that someone can own an idea.

