I recently read a very interesting article describing how analytics is being used to detect cheating/copying/re-use in crossword puzzle creation, in some of the major news publications. This inspired me to try my hand at creating a totally new & unique crossword puzzle ... of course using SAS software! :)

My grandmother was a retired English teacher, and she loved to go through the local newspaper and mark all the incorrect spelling and grammar with a red pen, and then solve the crossword puzzle. But I was never much into crossword puzzles - I think I might have tried one or two when I was young, and never completely solved them. My complaint (or 'excuse') was that they used obscure words that I'd never heard of, and their clues were sometimes nonsensical.

So I decided to create a crossword puzzle using words that people familiar with statistics & analytics could relate to, and provide clues that were a bit more on-point (or at least hopefully clever).

So I dug out my good old colored grid code (that I had previously used to create a Pikachu, and a voter graph), and decided how I would structure my data to most easily plot on the grid, and in about 1/2 a day I came up with the following crossword puzzle grid:

Click the image above to see the interactive version, where you can hover your mouse over the boxes to see the 'hints' (if you have a mouse), or scroll down below the crossword to see the hints in a text table below it. My crossword is just a simple png file, so it won't let you enter text - you'll have to either print the file and fill it in with a pen, or copy the png file and scribble on it using an image editor like Paint.

I created my crossword using Proc Gmap and annotate, followed by a Proc Print table of the hints. Note that my crossword is the 'lazy' version, and the dark/non-letter boxes are not laid out in a symmetrical design like the major newspapers & magazines typically have. But as long as you're a statistician or analyst, and not a crossword puzzle aficionado, I think you'll have a lot of fun with it!

Check back in a few days, and I'll post the solution...