I haven’t noticed any recent threads addressing this matter, but if I’m offering a theory someone else here - or elsewhere - has already advanced, I can only plead ignorance.
Part of it comes down to the fact(?) that many of the finer puzzle constructors are composing under their own names and aliases as well. So, when you see a relatively distinctive word in one puzzle and see it again soon after in another puzzle, it just might be that both puzzles were done by the same person. And with a bit of a twist.
When composing, let’s say the PC (puzzle constructor) chooses to use PROFLIGATE as a DOWN word in his grid. Going across he can intersect with words like APE, PERISH, LOST, etc.
So he completes that puzzle, but to increase his output (and thus more efficiently increase his $ intake), he takes the same PROFLIGATE turns it ACROSS in another grid, makes some adjustments of intersecting words and he’s taken a big shortcut to getting another puzzle off to a different publisher.
Then, to avoid being obvious, the PC uses a different name.
Of course the PC can use the same distinctive word as an ACROSS word in two grids. Maybe we wouldn’t notice. But if I were a PC I wouldn’t want to risk it.
Anyway, that’s what I think is going on.
I won’t be surprised if Twickster pooh-poohs all this.
I doubt if very many puzzle constructors use more than one name. It’s a small field and everybody knows everybody else. You make your name by your puzzles; using a pseudonym doesn’t help your reputation. Maybe the small-time puzzle mags get second-rate puzzles by big names using an alias (maybe; I doubt it, but maybe) but the major newspapers are going to credit the right person.
Much more likely is that certain words are good for puzzling because they contain letters or patterns that are useful.
Next most likely is that the puzzle editors have certain favorites that they use when they redo puzzles to make them work better.
Also likely is that you are noticing certain words and not noticing others used just as frequently.
Some part coincidence, some part the paucity of words that have good noun vowel combinations. When a name shows up in the news with good characteristics, everyone puts it in.
BTW, there used to be a column in a Baltimore independent paper commenting on comics. They also tracked the use of “oreo” in the Sun xword and the Times crossword. It showed up at least once a week.
There are people who use pseudonyms – but they are used with the full knowlege of the people buying the puzzles. Since it is a financial transaction, the buyer needs full, legal name, SSN, etc., of the seller. Pseudonyms are used for other reasons, such as to make it slightly less clear that the same constructor wrote 20 of the 60 puzzles in one issue of a magazine.
Exapno’s various theories are all good – esp. the “good vowel/consonant combo” theory. Note for PROFLIGATE, for instance, that the pattern is CCVCCVCVCV – a very workable pattern. SHRINKPROOF, for instance, would be CCCVCCCCVVC – much uglier.
The question “where are you seeing the repetition” is relevant. Seeing the same word twice in one week – once in a daily puzzle and once in a collection or magazine – I’d have to call that coincidence. Twice in the same collection or magazine – if it’s not a theme word, the editor may or may not notice; may or may not care (if the use in neither case is a theme entry, e.g.); or may or may not be able to do anything about it.
And sometimes it’s just sheer, raw coincidence. Once I spent about 20 minutes putting SUPERMARKET into a puzzle to solve some other problem – and then noticed that it was elsewhere in the grid. That also happened to me once with DIPSTICK. In neither of these cases was this a theme word – just something fun and (I thought, mistakenly) different.
I do the NYT and the local paper (Danbury, CT) News-Times.
I see the dupes in these two publications. Not recently, but often enough, involving words that one would not expect to crop up to suspect the absence of coincidence.
That’s a cumbersome sentence, but I ask your forgiveness. I have to go do my photography class homework assignment.
There have to be some words that are better for crossword puzzle makers than others, just due to frequency of use. I used to see “Etna” in so many crosswords it made me mad; it really cuts down on the challenge.
I think there are also “favorite words” that are used because they’re easy to intersect with other words. I can’t tell you the number of times EWE and EWER and ESE (for wind direction) has come up.
Granted, I don’t do the extremely hard puzzles, but when the clue is ABC_ _ _ GHI it’s obvious the puzzle maker is just phoning it in.
I’ve wondered about this too. I’ve seen the same word in the same week in two different crossword puzzles too often for it to be a coincidence. These aren’t short crossword-puzzle type words (like epee or erne)–they’re longer words. I’ll try to find some examples, but I haven’t been doing a lot of crosswords lately.
I don’t understand why you guys are convinced it can’t be a coincidence. It’s not really any stranger than any other odd repetition of a word (in two different tabloid stories about two different celebrities, or two different book reviews, one of a novel and one of a biography).
Crossword constructors tend to have good vocabularies. They tend to use words with useful combinations of vowels and consonants. There are thousands of crosswords written every year. The fact that two using the same word should appear before your eyes within X amount of time … coincidence.
I’m with you, since sometimes I see the same word in a Times Sunday puzzle and a Games puzzle from two different people. (Well known enough that I’ve read their bios.)
On the other hand, some people do have favorite words. I’ve dug up an old Middleton acrostics book. These get easier as you go along, since he had favorite words with letter combinations that were useful.
I haven’t noticed a lot of duplications myself, and I do the Times puzzle everyday. I wonder if the automatically generated puzzles for low class syndicates have lots of duplicates?
Shhhh! If you have not sacrificed your Ticonderoga #2 in the Temple of Shortz and been shown the Sacred Scrolls of the Four-Letter Words Beginning and Ending with “E”, you cannot know those secrets!
