The Story:

About two years ago I was traveling with some close friends. Amidst long travel days they brought me in to the wild world of the New York Times crossword. Those guys could solve the hardest puzzles in minutes. I could solve the easiest ones after an hour of googling, revealing letters, and yelling at my phone. Initially, the crosswords felt more like a punishment than a pastime. For beginner or intermediate crossword cruciverbalists, some puzzles are harder than scaling Everest in flip flops. Understanding this frustration I wanted to lower the barrier for solving any New York Times crossword puzzle by allowing users to generate new clues. Ideally this would lower the barrier for starting to learn how to solve crosswords.

What ClueDown can do:

What is it? ClueDown leverages GenAI to give you a second perspective to ANY New York Times crossword clue. Given the day of the crossword ClueDown will find all the clues. Once you find the clue thats got you stumped you can generate a new clue that will lead you to the same answer. Coming at the puzzle from a different perspective might help you finish the puzzle on your own.

1. 1. Select any date in the last 5 years
2. 2. Click Get Clues. This will fetch and display ALL clues from the date of your puzzle, both across and down
3. 3. If you are stuck, click New Clue. ClueDown will generate a new clue for you. This new clue leads to the same answer.