Wordplay (2006): Solving Crossword Puzzles on Computer

The clip solving crossword puzzles on computer from Wordplay (2006)

"Member of the E.U." Three letters.
A four-letter word for "a Syrian foe. "
Eight-letter word for "a pizza order. "
Average time for a Sunday New York Times...
I'd guess on the six to eight minute range.
Let's rock. Go.
I'm Tyler Hinman here at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.
And, uh, we got coming up in three weeks the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.
I started out in puzzles way back in the day.
I had a magazine called Children's Fun Puzzles, you know...
where you had rhymes you had to figure out a fat cat rhyme, something like that.
Fill in the blanks of those words.
And then in ninth grade, I got handed a crossword during a study hall.
I did it, failed miserably and I was hooked.
Artificial intelligence is the attempt to engineer machines...
that are as smart as we are.
Is there a computer program...
that can solve the New York Times crossword puzzle?
Not perfectly.
What do you mean, not perfectly?
Because there's a lot of They try to get in new fresh clues...
and they use wordplay, which is obviously very difficult for a computer.
So your answer's no.
Right.
I would suspect that people who are really good at crossword puzzles...
do these under severe time constraints, do them very rapidly.
Uh, these are probably very, very intelligent people.
Yeah, if you reference pop culture or something like that...
or if you use wordplay or pop culture, it's very difficult for a computer to figure out.
It does slow you down as well, right?
A little bit, yeah.
If I hadn't heard of it, that would probably be, "Oh, I don't know that one. "
You can solve it perfectly.
Most of the time.
So in this particular arena, humans are still superior to machines.
Indeed.
There probably is an element of what we would call "fluid intelligence. "
Why puzzles?
I don't know.
It's, uh, just the way it worked out. It's kind of the way I'm wired.

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4. Added :29-Nov-11
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