ChatGPT: can artificial intelligence create crosswords?
This week, some Things of Interest to Puzzlers That You Might Otherwise Miss. …
Five chats with crossword makers
First, if you’re a solver of the Mephisto series – which is unusual in giving the actual names of its setters – and have wondered what Paul McKenna does when he’s not setting, you can now find out. The same setter is the Financial Times’ Jason, and that paper interviews him as part of “an occasional series”:
Happily, the Telegraph has also interviewed a setter, explaining:
That setter is sometime languages teacher and novelist Robyn, known locally as Picaroon. Funnily enough Robyn was also interviewed by the FT, under the name of Buccaneer. (Before that it was guinea pig enthusiast and library manager Zamorca, known locally as Hectence).
The last interview for now is a lengthy chat with New York Times crossword editor and general puzzle nabob
Will Shortz. Because it’s conducted by the New Yorker’s puzzles and games editor, Liz Maynes-Aminzade, it’s pleasingly technical.
They also discuss the experience of finding love at 70.
… three chats trying to make crosswords …
We’ve looked at the topic of artificial intelligence and crosswords before and we’ll return to it before long; in the meantime, some experiments with varying results.
Software engineer James Williams has asked chatbot ChatGPT to try to solve some cryptic clues. The results are often bizarre …
… but by no means all bad. When it does work, James suggests, it identifies a definition and “forces the cryptic solution backwards from there”. Don’t we all.
Less successful are the efforts from Australian setter David Astle, encouraging ChatGPT to write a cryptic clue for “marmalade”:
And far, far less successful – counterintuitively – is ChatGPT’s attempt at a definitional crossword under the guidance of Nayanika Mukherjee of the Indian Times. Here’s a sample clue:
You will literally never guess the answer.
… and some chat about crosswords
Finally, good news for your ears: Find a collection of explainers, interviews and other helpful bits and bobs at alanconnor.com. The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book by Alan Connor, which is partly but not predominantly cryptic, can be ordered from the Guardian Bookshop