In Crosswords, It's Man Over Machine, for Now

Over the weekend, an impressive crossword-solving computer program, called Dr. Fill, which I wrote about earlier, matched its digital wits against the wetware of 600 of the nation's best human solvers at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn. Before the tournament, Matthew Ginsberg, the creator of Dr. Fill and an expert in artificial intelligence, predicted a range of likely outcomes for his clever code. In simulations of 15 past tournaments, Dr. Fill finished on top three times. But at other times it stumbled. Dr. Ginsberg said the program would probably finish in the top 50, among the 600 contestants.