A Web-Based Agent Challenges Human Experts on Crosswords

Since the birth of artificial intelligence (AI), games and puzzles have received much attention. The game that has captured most of the attention of computer scientists is chess. The founding fathers of AI such as McCarthy, Simon (Simon and Schaeffer 1992), Samuel, Shannon (Shannon 1950), Turing, and Von Neumann have all been involved in automatic chess playing. After decades of unsuccessful attempts (Mittman and Newborn 1980, Munakata 1996), the IBM machine Deep Blue achieved the astonishing result of defeating world champion Gary Kasparov in May 1997 (Campbell, Hoane, and Hsu 2002). Games play the role of a laboratory where machines can safely be tested by a direct competition with humans.