The majority of the words and phrases are included in the book because they

appeared in the nation’s most popular crosswords sometime over the past ten

years. These include the crosswords we edited or created ourselves.

The previous edition of the book (published in 1996) was assembled under similar

criteria. But we were surprised to discover that many hundreds of obscure

words in the previous edition, once common to puzzles, don’t appear in crosswords

anymore. So all those words, like GHARRY (horse-drawn cab of India)

and TOURACO (African bird), were deleted.

Thanks to the sharper skills of crossword constructors and the vigilance of

modern-day crossword editors, uninteresting obscurities have all but vanished

from today’s crosswords. Credit must also be given to the computer software

that assists many constructors and editors.

As mentioned on the Introduction page, this new edition has over 50 percent

more entries, more than 400,000, that weren’t in the previous edition. Many

months were spent ensuring we included not only those words that have

appeared in crosswords recently, but also words that might reasonably be

expected to appear but haven’t as yet.

This “word gathering” task included checking the latest dictionaries, standard

reference sources, and “popular culture” reference books, plus reading newspapers

every day (including all the ads) in search of “the latest.”

The process yielded such contemporary words as ALITO (2006 Supreme Court

appointee), CSI: NY (CBS TV series), EGOSURF (to search the Internet for

one’s own name), GAG REEL (frequent DVD extra), KIA RIO (imported auto)

and ROOMBA (robotic vacuum).

Two categories of words that were intentionally excluded from this book were

plurals of names (like HARRYS and DAVISES) and multi-word partial phrases

(like A HAT and IS MY). The book’s word base goes up to seven letters

because well over 90 percent of all crossword answers are seven letters long

or less, and because adding eight-letter words would have required a book over

2,500 pages long!

One final point about the word selection. These words reflect the current usage

of America’s best-known crossword editors, but editors’ individual tastes and

preferences vary. There are some words listed in this book that not every editor

would allow (including some that neither of us would use), and words that

some solvers might think inappropriate for crosswords. The appearance of any

word does not necessarily imply the endorsement of the authors, whose job is,

as the compilers of any dictionary, merely to report its existence.