The xd Crossword Corpus

Copyright renewal check: New York Times 1942-1963 and Judge 1931-1939

• Question: were the copyrights in the New York Times issues of 1942 through 1963, and in Judge magazine’s issues of 1931 through 1939, renewed? This decides which of the corpus’s older puzzles can be listed as public domain in DATASETS.md tier (a).
• Checked by: Alex DeJarnatt (drafted with Claude, to be reviewed by the maintainers)
• Checked on: 2026-11-06
• Scope: the corpus’s 5,267 New York Times puzzles (1942-1963) and 531 Judge puzzles (1924-1939). No puzzle files were read; this is a check of the copyright records only.
• This is a record of what the Copyright Office’s published records show. It is not legal advice.

Background. US works published before 1931 are in the public domain as of 2026. A US work published from 1931 through 1963 kept its copyright only if the renewal was registered in the 28th year after publication; works from 1964 on were renewed automatically. So New York Times renewals for 1942-1963 would have been filed 1969-1991, and Judge renewals for 1931-1939 in 1958-1967. Renewals registered through 1977 are printed in the Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE), Third Series, Part 2: Periodicals. Renewals from 1978 on are in the Copyright Office’s online records (the Copyright Public Records System, CPRS, which replaced cocatalog.loc.gov).

Summary

New York Times: renewed. The New York Times Company renewed the copyright in each daily and Sunday issue of the paper, as a whole, throughout 1942-1963. Every renewal is registered by “The New York Times Company (PCW)”, that is, as proprietor of copyright in a composite work, the claim that covers the issue as a collective work rather than a single article. Each issue has its own renewal number. The CCE lists them issue by issue for 1942 (in the 1969 and 1970 volumes), 1946 (1974 volume) and January to August 1950 (1977 volume), and CPRS holds an individual renewal record for 96% of the days in 1951-1963 and for every day of September to December 1950. The few days without a record mostly fall in known New York newspaper strikes, when there was no paper to renew. The belief behind the puzzles-pre1965 release on century-arcade/xd, that the Times did not renew, is contradicted by the records. The renewed terms run 95 years from publication: the 1942 issues until the end of 2037, the 1963 issues until the end of 2058.

Judge: no renewal found. No renewal of any Judge issue, or of any contribution to Judge, appears in the CCE periodicals renewal sections for 1958 and July 1959 through 1967. The January to June 1959 volume, which would hold renewals for issues published in roughly the first half of 1931, is not on the Internet Archive and was not checked directly, but John Mark Ockerbloom’s compilation of periodical renewals, which covers every CCE volume for 1958-1977, also records no issue or contribution renewals for Judge. Judge puzzles published 1924-1930 are public domain because of their date; on these records, those published 1931-1939 are public domain because they were not renewed.

Evidence

New York Times

Issues	Where	What it shows
Overview	J. M. Ockerbloom, First copyright renewals for periodicals, entry “The New York Times”, https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html and https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/cinfo/nytimes	“issues actively renewed from January 1, 1931 (v. 80 no. 26640)”; contributions renewed from May 13, 1933. Also lists issue renewals for the New York Times Magazine from January 4, 1931 and the Book Review from August 4, 1940. A secondary compilation, used as a guide; the rows below are the primary records.
1941-Apr 1942	CCE Third Series vol. 23, Periodicals Jan-Dec 1969, Renewal Registrations, pp. 401-403 (the run continues from 1941 on earlier pages). Scan: https://archive.org/details/catalogofcopy19693232libr	Heading “THE NEW YORK TIMES. © New York Times Co. (PCW)”, v. 91, one entry per issue. Feb 15, 1942 (the first Times crossword, in the Sunday paper): no. 30703, © 15Feb42, B529980, renewed 19Aug69, R467361 (p. 402). Every day from no. 30599 (3 Nov 1941) to no. 30777 (30 Apr 1942) appears on pp. 402-403 with its own R number.
May-Sep 1942 and on	CCE vol. 24, Periodicals Jan-Dec 1970, Renewal Registrations, pp. 416-417 and following. Scan: https://archive.org/details/catalogofcopy19703242libr	Heading “THE NEW YORK TIMES. © New York Times Co. (PCW)” (p. 416), continuing day by day: no. 30778 (1 May 1942) renewed 12Feb70, R479111; no. 30789 (12 May 1942), R479122; no. 30839 (1 Jul 1942), R482262; no. 30927 (27 Sep 1942), R484469; v. 92 begins at no. 30918 (18 Sep 1942) (p. 417).
1946	CCE vol. 28, Periodicals Jan-Dec 1974, Renewal Registrations, pp. 487-491. Scan: https://archive.org/details/catalogofcopyrig3282libr	Heading “THE NEW YORK TIMES. © New York Times Company (PCW)”, v. 95. Example: no. 32270 (1 Jun 1946), B21803, renewed 12Apr74, R574272 (p. 488). Read from the scan’s OCR text only; page images not inspected, and page numbers are from the scan’s page index.
1949-Aug 1950	CCE vol. 31, Periodicals Jan-Dec 1977, Renewal Registrations (Jan-June part pp. 435-437; July-Dec part pp. 473-475). Scan: https://archive.org/details/1977periodicalsj3312libr	Heading “The New York Times. © The New York Times Company (PCW)”. 1950 examples: no. 33587 (8 Jan 1950), B226405, renewed 11Oct77, R673248; no. 33797 (6 Aug 1950), B258457, R678026; the last entry is no. 33822 (31 Aug 1950), B260542, renewed 12Dec77, R678047. Read from the OCR text; page images not inspected, and page numbers are from the scan’s page index.
Sep-Dec 1950	CPRS, title search “New York times 1950”, registration class RE (https://publicrecords.copyright.gov/, queried through its search API)	122 individual renewal records, one for each day from 1 Sep to 31 Dec 1950. Sep 11, 1950 (the first daily crossword): RE0000004840, registered 1978-07-17, no. 33833. Dec 31, 1950: RE0000005562.
1951-1957	CPRS, as above, one search per year	Renewal records for 363, 328, 360, 359, 358, 312 and 356 days of 1951-1957. Most gaps are single days. Two longer runs: January 1952, where the records exist but the title has the issue number written with a comma (“no. 34,322, Jan. 13, 1952”: RE0000054983), which the count missed; and 1-31 December 1956, which a search by date did not find.
1958	CPRS, as above	Renewal records for 339 days. Examples: Jan 5, 1958, RE0000279231 (registered 1986-01-10); Mar 4, 1958, RE0000288249 (1986-03-07); Jun 22, 1958, RE0000288574 (1986-04-02). No records for 12-29 December 1958, the time of the New York newspaper delivery strike.
1959-1962	CPRS, as above	Renewal records for 360, 362, 365 and 353 days. The 1962 gaps include the Sundays of 16, 23 and 30 December and 25 December; the 1962-63 New York newspaper strike began on 8 December.
1963	CPRS, as above	Renewal records for 347 days. Examples: Apr 4, 1963, RE0000526410 (1991-03-07); Jun 2, 1963, RE0000526466 (1991-03-07); Dec 29, 1963, RE0000539459 (1991-08-05). No Sunday records from 1 January to 31 March 1963, which is the 1962-63 New York newspaper strike, though weekday issues from those months (e.g. Feb 12, 1963, RE0000517452) were renewed.
1964	CPRS, as above	Renewal records for 353 days, although 1964 issues did not need renewing. The Times renewed out of routine.
Crossword-specific	CPRS, keyword searches “crossword puzzle” and “New York times crossword”, class RE; CCE 1969 and 1970 text searched for “CROSSWORD”	No separate renewal of the Times’s newspaper puzzles found. The Times did renew its puzzle books (“Crosswords from the Times”, Sunday ser. 27, RE0000843747, and daily ser. 26, RE0000843751, both 2001, claimant New York Times (PWH)); those are book reprints and are separate works.

Judge

Years	Where	What it shows
Overview	Ockerbloom, First copyright renewals for periodicals, entry “Judge”, https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html	“no issue renewals found in CCE; no contribution renewals found in CCE”.
Renewals filed 1958	CCE vol. 12, Periodicals Jan-Dec 1958. https://archive.org/details/catalogofcopyrig3122libr	No entry under “Judge” anywhere in the volume, including the renewal section.
Renewals filed Jan-Jun 1959	CCE vol. 13 no. 1, Periodicals Jan-June 1959	Could not check. Not found on the Internet Archive under the usual identifiers; HathiTrust not tried. Covered only by Ockerbloom’s compilation.
Renewals filed Jul 1959-1964	CCE vol. 13 no. 2 (Jul-Dec 1959), vols. 14-18 (1960-1964). https://archive.org/details/catalogofcopyrig3132libr, catalogofcopyrig3142libr, catalogofcopyrig3152libr, catalogofcopyrig3162libr, catalogofcopyrig3172libr, catalogofcopy19643182libr	No entry under “Judge” in any volume.
Renewals filed 1965-1967	CCE vols. 19-21 (1965-1967). https://archive.org/details/catalogofcopy19653192libr, catalogofcopy19663202libr, catalogofcopy19673212libr	No entry under “Judge” in any volume.

The Judge searches were text searches of the Internet Archive’s OCR for “Judge” in any case, excluding “judges”, “court” and similar. As a check that the OCR is usable, every one of these volumes contains matches for other titles in the same section (THE NEW YORKER, ESQUIRE and THE NEW YORK TIMES all appear in each).

Sources that do not apply

• Stanford Copyright Renewal Database (exhibits.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals): books only, so not searched.
• NYPL’s transcriptions of the CCE renewals: books only. Ockerbloom’s compilation (above) is the corresponding resource for periodicals.
• cocatalog.loc.gov has been retired; its records are now searched through CPRS. The CPRS website shows a bot-verification page to automated browsers; the same records were read through its public search API.

Limits of the check

• New York Times 1943-1945 and 1947-1948 were not sampled individually. 1942, 1946 and 1949-1950 were, and each shows the same day-by-day renewal by the same claimant. Ockerbloom also describes the renewals as continuous from 1931. A gap in those years is unlikely but has not been ruled out.
• The 1946 and 1949-1950 CCE entries were read from OCR text, not page images; the 1942 entries were checked on the page images.
• The CPRS counts come from title searches and depend on how each record’s title is typed. Days without a record have not been checked one by one, and a missing day is not evidence of non-renewal. December 1956 is the only long run without records that is not explained by a strike or a typing variant; it was searched by date and not found.
• The Sunday crossword ran in the New York Times Magazine. The renewals checked here are for the whole Sunday issue. Ockerbloom also lists separate renewals of the Magazine, which were not checked.
• Renewing the issue as a collective work covers what the Times owned in it. Whether that reaches a particular freelance constructor’s puzzle depends on what rights the Times held in that puzzle, which these records do not show. That question only matters for deciding whether a puzzle is still under copyright. It does not make any 1942-1963 Times puzzle public domain.
• For Judge, one half-year volume (January to June 1959) was not checked directly. A renewal could also have been filed under a different title, or as a contribution under an author’s name rather than “Judge”. Author names were not searched.

Recommendation for DATASETS.md tier (a)

• Judge, 1924-1930: state as public domain. Published before 1931.
• Judge, 1931-1939: state as public domain, citing this check. The records show no renewal. If certainty about early 1931 is wanted before release, the remaining step is to look at the January to June 1959 CCE periodicals volume (on HathiTrust or in print) for “Judge”.
• New York Times, 1942-1963: keep gated. The issues were renewed and remain under copyright, until 2037-2058.
• Separately: the puzzles-pre1965 release on century-arcade/xd publishes NYT puzzles from 1942-1964 on the belief that the Times did not renew. These records show it did. The maintainers should decide what to do with that release.