The Best Crossword

...It's a stunning 56-word themeless puzzle from the Saturday, May 7 Times, written by the much-admired North Carolina wordsmith Patrick Berry...

...But before we get to that, a little history to set the scene...

...This left the two papers going head-to-head on Monday-through-Thursday puzzles, then the Friday Sun and the Saturday Times going at it...

...Sun puzzles are free of charge...

...It's one of the most impressive crossword puzzles I've ever seen...

...This novel creature is the New York Sun crossword, and is driven by the vigor of its puzzle editor, Peter Gordon, who used to work for Shortz at the Times...

...Competing daily crosswords began to have more trouble syndicating their puzzles, and started to position themselves not so much as rivals to the Times, but rather as "somewhat easier than the Times crosswords" or otherwise different in some way...

...The New York Times crossword established its household-name brand dominance under the skillful eye of Margaret Farrar, who edited the crossword from its debut in 1942 to her retirement in 1969...

...If and when it feels the need, I have no doubt that the Times will throw its institutional weight behind punching its puzzles up to even higher heights...

...They might well be right...

...Out those three went, and then, to even things up, I discarded one average-scoring Times puzzle from the tally, leaving 28 crosswords from each paper to be compared...

...But under the editorship of Weng's successor, Eugene T. Maleska, the puzzle's reputation began to slide, at least in crossword circles...

...Shortz's dry wit comes through consistently in the Times, however, on clues like "Leaves for a drink" for the answer TEA...

...Within weeks of his hire in 1993, the reputation and the reality of the Times crossword were back in alignment: Artistic standards were raised, puzzle writers' fees were increased, and the Times's puzzle audience widened...

...There is no "better" choice between the two...

...On the New York Times crosswords forum, moderator Will Johnston ranked the Sun puzzles as being "tougher" than the Times puzzles (not necessarily an indication of quality, but still interesting...

...Until recently...

...When the New York Sun began publishing in 2002, Peter Gordon jumped ship from the Times to edit its crossword...

...By general consensus, this title bout is between the venerable New York Times, under its brutally witty editor Will Shortz, and the upstart New York Sun, under its scrappy, full-of-new-ideas editor Peter Gordon...

...The Sun puzzles also had slightly punchier clues, probably thanks to Gordon's no-repeat rule...

...As a normal American, I have an unhealthy fascination with the concept of "best," so I decided to run an experiment to see which of these two puzzles would come out on top in head-to-head competition—a crossword smackdown, if you will...

...If, however, someone prefers Ashlee Simpson to both, we may discount their musical opinion without guilt...

...His intention was to make the Sun puzzle the best in the country, no easy task...

...Rival editors like Stan Newman at Newsday had begun successfully syndicating their own daily crosswords, pointing out in their promotional literature how obscure and practically unsolvable some Times puzzles had become...

...But recently, a rival has emerged upon the crossword veldt to challenge the Times's supremacy and its puzzle editor, Will Shortz...

...Ask 10 people at your next dinner party and all of them will say, "Why, the New York Times, of course," while shooting you a doesn't-everybody-know-that...

...Rating the Sun as tougher than the Times "may be controversial," Johnston wrote, "but I think Peter Gordon's clues are in general harder on the tricky days...

...The Times did score the top overall single puzzle, however, the only one of the 56 to receive a 10 rating in either category—and it got a 10 in both artistry and technical merit (and, unsurprisingly, a bonus point...

...Some people prefer Beethoven to Mozart...

...What we have here, you might say, are the Mozart and Beethoven of crossword editors...

...look...

...This example was atypical of the Times puzzles, but the Sun's grids were a bit cleaner overall...

...One Sun and one Times puzzle I already happened to have solved, and another Sun puzzle was a crossword variant that wouldn't fit in with my analysis...

...It stands out for its total lack of cross-wordese and abundance of lively words and phrases in the grid—both extraordinarily difficult to pull off in a grid as wide open as this one...

...I want to know what the best daily crossword puzzle in the country is, and so do you...

...I respect both greatly and have no grudge, bias, or bile against either, but I solved blind anyway to remove any possible slant, conscious or not...

...This made many of his puzzles less a fun, fair challenge than an unsolvable, headache-inducing battle with a set of encyclopedias...

...three years ago, they indisputably were right...

...Matt Gaffney is a professional crossword writer living in Washington, D.C...

...Despite the Sun's slim win, there's no real threat to the Times's cultural and syndication superiority...

...For example, he virtually never allows himself to repeat a clue, even in crosswords published years apart, which leads to even frequent puzzle words like ALI and ERA being clued freshly every time...

...I look forward to the ride, and suggest readers enjoy both crosswords, with Wolfgang or Ludwig playing in the background, as you prefer...

...His book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Solving Crossword Puzzles and Other Word Games, will be published in October...

...Not bad for the challenger, especially since Gordon disputed certain aspects of how the survey was conducted...

...But Gordon, with remarkable energy, has applied innovation after innovation to the crossword editor's job, and the results have gotten puzzle people talking...

...The Times (circulation 1.1 million) syndicates its puzzle to hundreds of newspapers around the country, meaning its crossword is probably solved by a few million people on a given day...

...The Sun (circulation 50,000) does not syndicate its puzzle to any papers, meaning its crossword is probably solved by only a few thousand people on a given day...

...But please, not Ashlee...

...Then, if we are lucky, the Sun will feel the need to reply in kind...

...After solving a few dozen puzzles from the Sun during the past year, I was impressed, and discovered that others were, too...

...The average well-educated person simply couldn't be expected to know that LOA, in an infamous clue example of the era, was a "Town in Utah"—a town with around 250 people, as it turned out...

...In other words, it's time for a crossword smackdown, so let's do it...

...Methodology: For the low, low price of one dinner, my long-suffering girlfriend printed out 30 Times and 30 Sun puzzles from the papers' websites, cut off the bylines and titles, and blacked out the copyright beneath the puzzles...

...It had no rivals...

...if one prefers Ashlee, the TV Guide crossword will provide it...

...The so-called "New Wave" style of crossword puzzles, which shunned obscurities in favor of familiar words, humor, and pop culture, held little appeal for Maleska, and when he passed away in 1993, the Times puzzle was in need of a savior to keep pace with the zeitgeist...

...All 60 puzzles were published in April or May of this year...

...Because it only appears Monday through Friday, the Sun puzzle cannot be easily syndicated to papers that publish six or seven times per week...

...This isn't a huge spread, but broadly speaking, the technical score was higher for the Sun because of its somewhat better job of keeping crosswordese out of the puzzles...

...And that winner is, by a score of 432 to 419: The New York Sun crossword...

...others prefer Mozart to Beethoven...

...For better or worse, then, this is an article for crossword snobs...

...Disclosure: I've written a few dozen crosswords for Shortz in the Times, and have worked with Peter Gordon on several crossword books...

...For instance, I was surprised to see both YSER (a small river in Belgium and France) and ESNE (a medieval serf) in one Times puzzle—both words are oft-mocked instances of crosswordese...

...Of these 12, 8 were from the Sun and 4 from the Times...

...Before we get to the results, let me stress, paradoxically, both the subjective and objective natures of judging any kind of art, crosswords included...

...Because the Sun publishes only Monday through Friday, I omitted all Times Friday and Sunday puzzles from the competition...

...Thanks to the Internet, however, you can solve it online at www.nysun.com...

...Not with these puzzles...

...artistically, the Times was back on top...

...I solved all 60 puzzles, then assigned each one a score for artistry and a score for technical merit, each on a scale from 1 to 10...

...Maleska was known for filling his puzzles with "crosswordese," those painfully obscure words you never see anywhere in life outside of the crossword page...

...She was followed by Will Weng, who edited to mostly favorable reviews until 1977...

...At that time, the puzzle was regarded as the best daily crossword in the land, and it was...

...There were other good daily puzzles around, but the big kid on the block had reasserted himself...

...Twelve of the 56 puzzles earned a star (and a bonus point) for being especially brilliant in theme, construction, cluing, or all three...

...For the first time in recent memory, the answer to the question posed in the opening sentence of this article is seriously debatable...

...Enough qualifying remarks: This is America, dammit, and people want a winner...

...Capitalism's finest spiritual feature is that it elicits ever-improving work from us...

...This took away all identifying features and left me solving without knowing which puzzles were which...

...I also gave myself the option of assigning a star, worth one bonus point, to any puzzle that had some extra flash of brilliance...

...Times puzzles, available at www.nytimes.com if you can't find them in your local paper, cost $34.95 per year...

...This seemed fairer to the Times than omitting its Saturday puzzle, since the Saturday Times is generally the toughest of the week...

...Another forum member conducted an informal survey on which of the two puzzles readers preferred, and solvers came down about 60-40 in favor of the Times...

...Enter Will Shortz, the genial former editor of GAMES magazine, who famously possesses the world's only college degree in enigmatology (the study of puzzles...

...Of the 60, three puzzles (two Sun and one Times) had to be discarded from the tally for various reasons...

...The Sun outscored the Times by the smallest possible margin in artistry (210 points to 209), and by a rather larger margin in technical merit (214 points to 206...