'We depended on extremely fast computers with vast memory and disk storage, and used tremendous amounts of data in machine-readable form.' In their research paper, Littman's team acknowledged that Proverb is still 'not competitive with the very best human solvers.' But 'the level of success we achieved would probably not have been possible five years ago,' they added. 'In a much more wide ranging and, frankly, complex game like crosswords, we humans still rate just fine.' 'So if you were one who lamented the loss of the human to the computer in chess, don't despair,' Shortz wrote. He gave examples of clues he felt computers would miss, such as 'Event That Produces Big Bucks' referring to 'Rodeo,' 'Pumpkin-colored' translating as 'Orange,' or 'It Might Have Quarters Downtown' meaning 'Meter.'Д¬omputers loaded with the most encyclopedic databases of facts, including volumes of solutions to past crossword puzzles, would be apt to miss clues like those, Shortz suggested. 'Is the computer going to be able to solve the clues involving puns and wordplay? I don't think so,' Shortz wrote in an introduction to a volume of The New York Times daily crossword puzzles.

Shortz contended that crossword puzzles, unlike chess, draw on particular human skills and thought processes that can be inaccessible to computing machines. Shortz, who provides the clues on a National Public Radio Sunday puzzle contest, besides serving as the Times' crossword puzzle editor, first issued his challenge to computer designers in 1997 after world champion chess master Garry Kasparov was defeated by an IBM chess playing computer program, Deep Blue. Shortz expressed admiration for Proverb's results, posting them on a web site with the comment: 'The results were so interesting (in fact, so amazing) that I printed them out on large sheets of paper and posted them, along with Michael's analysis, after each round at the event.' When these 'errors' were corrected by hand, Proverb was able to solve the puzzle perfectly, putting it solidly in the top half of competitors at the tournament.' 'All 78 clues were transformed in the same way. 'However, this tough puzzle used the trick that all the clues were 'Spoonerized' - for example, instead of the clue 'Nome is here' for 'Alaska,' the puzzle used 'Home is near,'' said Littman. 'But on another, particularly nasty puzzle, Proverb only got three words correct and came in 251st place. 'On one puzzle, Proverb had the 20th highest score,' said Littman.

Had Proverb actually competed, its score computed according to a formula that combines accuracy and speed, would have put it in 147th place. The competition included 254 human competitors, and for the first time in its history no one completed all seven puzzles perfectly.

Proverb has already been tested against human opponents, tackling the puzzles used in the 22nd Annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament held March 12-14 in Stamford, Conn. 'And we thought crossword puzzles would be a very exciting addition,' Littman said. In past years, the conference has included competitions pitting computers against humans in games such as chess, backgammon and Scrabble. Littman's team described these results in a research paper to be presented in July at the annual conference of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence in Orlando, Fla. 'Computer honor was being questioned,' added Littman, an assistant professor of computer science, in an interview. The puzzles, chosen randomly from The New York Times and several other sources, were each solved in under 15 minutes. Littman, Duke doctoral students Greg Keim and Noam Shazeer and other students and faculty designed 'Proverb,' a crossword solving program that achieved an average of 95.3 percent words correct and 98.1 percent letters correct when given a sample of 370 crosswords.

New york times crossword editor garry