NYT Sunday Crossword Error Causes First-Ever Unsolvable Puzzle

by

The Sunday scaries recently took on new meaning for avid New York Times crossword solvers.

A printing error has made the popular puzzle unsolvable for the first time in its 84-year history.

A puzzle by Michael Lieberman, called “Nuclear Fusion,” appeared in the April 19th issue of the New York Times Magazine, but it was missing a clue for the answer to 5-Across.

On April 18th, The New York Times alerted followers on X (formerly Twitter) that the crossword puzzle in the print version of The New York Times Magazine had an error: the grid didn’t align with the clues. They explained that the correct puzzle was located in the news section of the Sunday print edition of The Times, and the puzzle available on their app was accurate.

So, how did the wrong puzzle get included in the Sunday edition of the newspaper?

We found a mistake in the puzzle grid after the magazine was already printed,” said an online note published on April 18. “We’re very sorry for any confusion this caused.

Will Shortz, the editor of the New York Times crossword, also apologized for the mistake. He told Vulture it happened because of a recent change to the Times magazine’s design.

The 73-year-old stated that the current system lacks templates for the puzzle pages, so they’re temporarily being copied from an older edition. He believes once new templates are in place, they won’t have to print any more puzzles that can’t be solved.

 

This wasn’t the first error to appear in the New York Times crossword. According to a 2007 article Will Shortz wrote for “Word Play,” observant readers typically point out around twelve mistakes each year.

I want to point out that most of the mistakes are minor, and very few people have even noticed them. Also, about 10% of the errors actually came from incorrect information in the sources I used.

There’s a lot of room for error, as the Times crossword puzzle includes roughly 32,000 clues and answers each year, any of which could be incorrect in several ways, he explained. But ultimately, a mistake is still a mistake.

Read More

2026-04-23 04:50