[SAJ]

Not that easy, particularly with NYT puzzles. Back when Will Weng was the puzzles editor...LONG time ago... here was one clue of one of his published puzzles. Never forgotten it. Ready?

Clue: American author's bus station, perhaps.

Five letters. Have a go, then tell me (I am assuming you'll solve it) how to program a computer to generate such a clue.

If you toss in the towel, I'll provide the answer.

[Flycatcher]

A guess:

DePoe...?

[Svartalfiar]

Five letters. Have a go, then tell me (I am assuming you'll solve it) how to program a computer to generate such a clue.

The hard part with crosswords isn't so much the word/clue, it's getting all the crossed words to fit into the puzzle. You can have a full database of words and clues, then have the computer generate a crossword key using those words.

[ken5050]

I miss Merl Reagle. Always enjoyed his puzzles. He lived in the Tampa area, as do I. I met him a few times. Really nice guy..

BTW, when I was talking about computers doing puzzles...I was referring to the easier, daily ones, and the types you see in hundreds of puzzle books. It should be easy to program a computer to generate those..