The most common NYT crossword clues

I recently posed the question, what are the most common clues Will Shortz has used in NYT crosswords? Jeffrey Krasnick and joon pahk quickly came up with “Jai ____” which, sure enough, is #1. ALAI is a convenient combination of letters (75% vowels) and there aren’t a lot of good ways to clue it. That’s the secret sauce for rising up the Clues We’ve Seen Before list.

Here are the top twenty:

1. Jai ___
2. “Dies ___”
3. Architect Saarinen
4. ___ Lingus
5. ___-Magnon
6. Mauna ___
7. ___ Lanka
8. Alley ___
9. From ___ Z
10. ___ avis
11. Inter ___
12. Pro ___
13. Coach Parseghian
14. ___ Na Na
15. Otherwise
16. "... ___ saw Elba"
17. Singer Sumac
18. Part of Q.E.D.
19. Actress Thurman
20. Rap's Dr. ___

Other interesting clues near the top are Director Kazan, Actor Morales, Sault ___ Marie, Actress Gardner, ___-majesté, Singer Guthrie, and Nobelist Wiesel. I find it interesting that ___'acte and ___ nous (clues for ENTR and ENTRE) are tied with 35 occurrences each.

Most are fill-in-the-blank clues or names. Several are non-English including a few Latin words.

So, should constructors avoid these clues? I suppose so, in as much as they should avoid overusing ALAI and IRAE and EERO and AER at all, but there’s something comforting for new solvers when they finally get enough experience to slap those answers in with certainty.

Comments

[Christopher Hurt]

Interesting, too, that at least three of these probably clue different entries, maybe more than 2.

[Taylor]

And some more: The Beach Crossword (23/01/2009); The Little Piggy Crossword 920/03/2009); The Highway Crossword 910/04/2009); The Goodbye Crossword (15/05/2009); The Something Old, Something New Crossword (29/05/2009); The Footnote Crossword 24/07/2009) and The Orwell Crossword 14/08/2009). Still looking for the Dylan Crossword. Also I seem to relacl a Premiers Crossword in May one year. Maybe it was 2003?