How Our Puzzles Are Made — and Checked Twice
Every puzzle on this site is made by computer, and — this is the part we are particular about — every puzzle is then checked by a separate computer process before it is published. Here is what that means in plain terms.
Word searches: placed, then searched again
First, a program places the word list into the grid one word at a time, in straight lines in the eight possible directions, then fills the remaining squares with random letters.
Then a different check runs: the checker scans the finished grid in all eight directions, square by square, looking for each word on the list — exactly the way a solver would. If even one word cannot be found in the finished grid, the puzzle is rejected and never published. The check also records where each word sits, so the answer key is guaranteed to match the grid.
Sudoku: one solution, proven
Our sudokus start as a completed, valid grid. Numbers are then removed in symmetrical pairs — but after every removal, a solving program counts how many different solutions the puzzle still has. If the count is ever anything other than exactly one, the numbers go back in. The finished puzzle therefore has a single solution, and we store that verified solution as the answer key.
This matters more than it might sound: cheaply made sudokus sometimes have several solutions, which means a "wrong" answer can be perfectly logical — a frustrating experience that is always the publisher's fault, never the solver's.
Trivia: answers checked against sources
The 1950s trivia questions come from the same question bank as our books, where each correct answer was cross-checked against published reference timelines during production, and the three wrong options for each question were written to be plausible but clearly incorrect.
The daily queue
New daily puzzles are generated thirty days in advance and held in a queue, so a technical hiccup can never leave the site without a fresh puzzle — and nothing reaches the queue without passing the same checks described above.
