Draft, November 2026, for a corpus begun in 2016 (see HISTORY.md). Marked [established] where it describes what we already do, [proposed] where it is new.
Most of the puzzles in the corpus are copyrighted by their publishers and constructors. We hold them for research, under the terms below, and we do not publish puzzles that are still under copyright. This document says what is available, to whom, and on what terms.
The corpus exists so that crosswords can be studied and preserved as literary works. [established] It is not a source of puzzles to solve. Puzzles for solving are available from their publishers, and we point people there.
From most to least open:
Open an issue in this repository, or write to xd@centuryarcade.org if you would rather not ask in public, saying who you are, what you want to do, and which form of access you need. We answer within a few weeks. We say yes to most research requests; the questions we ask are whether the purpose is research, whether a less open form of access would do, and whether the result could put puzzles back into circulation.
The maintainers decide together (see GOVERNANCE.md). Each grant is recorded privately: who, when, what form of access, and for what purpose. [proposed]
By accepting access to the corpus or to derived data you agree:
Access is personal. A grant to one person or group does not extend to their collaborators, employer or successors. [established]
If you publish or constructed puzzles that are in the corpus, we are glad to hear from you. We will tell you what we hold from your publication, correct any errors you find, and record the constructor’s name as they wish it recorded (see EDITORIAL.md, “Headers”).
If you want puzzles removed, say which and why, and we will remove them. The removal is recorded (see PRESERVATION.md, “Removing puzzles”), and anyone with a copy is asked to delete them. [proposed]
Editors, constructors and publishers who want to give us puzzles should read CONTRIBUTING.md; nothing there requires access to the repository. Volunteers who convert and submit puzzles themselves get access in order to do so, and the same terms apply to the rest of the corpus. The import guide is in the private corpus repository.
Rights. We do not own the puzzles. Copyright in them stays with the publishers and constructors who hold it, and nothing here transfers, licenses or weakens it. For most of the corpus we hold no licence. We keep the puzzles privately for research, and publish only data that cannot rebuild a puzzle, in the belief that both are lawful; no court has said so, and we have not asked one. A rights holder who disagrees should tell us rather than wonder: we remove puzzles on request (above), and we keep a record of each publication we have told what we hold. Anyone who receives data from us is responsible for their own use of it. Our terms say what we ask of you; they are not advice about what the law allows. [proposed]
Accuracy. The puzzles were converted from many sources over many years: publishers’ files, solvers’ downloads, scanned pages read by OCR, and hand-typed transcriptions. Headers are normalized, some dates are inferred from filenames or page order, and constructor names are recorded as we found them until someone tells us otherwise. Errors exist. We fix the ones we find and the ones reported to us, and every fix is a recorded change, but the corpus is not the publisher’s authoritative text and should not be cited as if it were. Counts and statistics describe what we hold, not what was published. [proposed]
Data. The corpus and the public datasets are offered as they are, without warranty. They change between versions as errors are fixed and puzzles are added or removed, and a dataset can be withdrawn if a rights question requires it. Cite the version you used (see README.md). [proposed]
This policy is reviewed once a year with the project’s preservation assessment (see assessments/). Changes are logged in DECISIONS.md.