Okay, this came out several weeks ago but I just heard about it.
Timothy Parker was the crossword puzzle editor for the Universal News syndicate and for USA Today. He’s had to resign because there’s overwhelming evidence that he’s been plagiarizing crossword puzzles.
No human could sit down and go through literally thousands of crossword puzzles looking for similarities. But computers can. A programmer named Saul Pwanson had computers scan through various crossword puzzle archives and note the similarities. Obviously, there are going to be some similarities that are coincidental. But the similarities that were found had a pattern to them.
The two main areas of similarities were between Universal and USA Today crosswords. While Parker edited both series, they were supposed to be distinct. It appears however that Parker often used the same work in both.
Worse was that the computer found that Parker’s puzzles often duplicated puzzles that had previously been published in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times. And there was a far higher rate where a Parker puzzle duplicated a previously published puzzle than one of these puzzles duplicated one of Parker’s puzzles.
The computer program found 883 instances where a puzzle had significant similarities to a previously published puzzle. In 850 of these incidents, it was a Parker puzzle that had similarities to a previously published puzzle. The others were 15 incidents where a non-Parker puzzle had similarities to a previously published Parker puzzle and 18 incidents where a non-Parker puzzle had similarities to a different previously published non-Parker puzzle.
Timothy Parker insists he never plagiarized any puzzles and any similarities are coincidences. But, as noted, he was asked to resign.
I am even more shocked he lost his job. Not that he didn’t deserve it (he did), but being lazy, doing something wrong, and lying about it seems to be SOP in this world (and especially in the US).
Good for the computer programmer. There are some other scams I’d like him/her to set their skills on.
I’ll just add that the similarities weren’t just nits and orts. His execs gave him the adze because his puzzles copied major thematic elements and structures.
I’m surprised it took a computer. So many crossword puzzle solvers seem to have eidetic memories. In any case, crossword puzzle editors don’t create the puzzles do they? They just choose puzzles from ones submitted to them, and maybe tweak the clues a bit. At least, that’s what Will Shortz seems to do. The New York Times crosswords each have a different author. Getting to know the idiosyncrasies of each particular author can help you to solve the puzzle, and is the first sign that you’re spending far too much time solving crosswords.
Oh, nowadays, there are software packages that will do ALL the work for you.
Most major publications expect their puzzles to have some kind of clever theme, so a constructor could come up with 3 or 4 lengthy entries that fit the theme… and then he/she can click “finish” and the construction software will fill in the rest of the grid automatically. The database should already have several viable clues for every entry.
The constructor HAS to come up with an original theme, and it’s helpful if he can come up with clever, creative clues for even the most hackneyed entries. Otherwise, automation can do everything.
It’s apparently hard to determine. Parker is saying that he receives puzzles that were created by other people (although he says he reviews each one of them). But there’s some evidence this isn’t true. Apparently some of the people who are identified as creators don’t actually exist; Parker presumably would make up (or copy) the puzzle himself and then attribute it to a fictitious creator.
This situation first arose when one actual puzzle creator named Ben Taussig recognized a portion of a puzzle he had made years earlier being reused under another person’s name.
Of course, even if the names are invented, that’s still not proof that he’s the one who created them. It could be that there’s someone else out there, who’s plagiarizing crosswords and sticking fake names on them, then selling them to him.
Mostly true, but not all crosswords have themes (for example, the NYT tough Saturday crosswords generally don’t), but those themeless crosswords typically have to have longer and more interesting words to make up for their lack of theme.
OK, I read through the second of those articles, and I’d say the smoking gun is the clues being changed in such a way as to break the theme. That, to me, says that somebody knew they were plagiarizing, and was deliberately trying to avoid getting caught.
It also doesn’t make much sense: Why bother stealing a theme if you’re just going to throw it away? If you want long answers that aren’t related to each other, then just make them up yourself. Easy.
I’m speculating he did it to make things look realistic. I’m assuming if he had taken credit for all the puzzles he was plagiarizing, his supposed creativity would have been unusually high and other people would have questioned how he keep up the pace.
