co-written by Celia Abernathy and Lisa Bao December 2012
A unigram crossword solver using Matt Ginsberg's comprehensive database of clues and answers. For more information than you ever wanted to know, read our paper. Here's the abstract:
We implement a single-module computational crossword solver applying natural language processing methodologies. The solver, called CRIS, first parses crossword puzzle clues using a unigram model to compute probabilities for possible answers to each clue from similar clues in a clue database. CRIS then executes one of three iterative algorithms to fill in the crossword puzzle grid with its best guesses: word-by-word, letter-by-letter, or combination fill methods. When tested on a selection of New York Times crossword puzzles from different days of the week, our results showed that CRIS could solve many puzzles well and a few puzzles perfectly using one of its three fill methods.
Happy crosswording!