xword-dl 2025.10.14
CLI download tool for online crossword puzzles
Requires Python: >=3.10

# xword-dl

`xword-dl` is a command-line tool to download .puz files for online crossword puzzles from supported outlets or arbitrary URLs with embedded crossword solvers. For a supported outlet, you can easily download the latest puzzle, or specify one from the archives.

Supported outlets:

|Outlet|Keyword|Download latest|Search by date|Search by URL|
|------|-------|:-------------:|:------------:|:-----------:|
|*Atlantic*|`atl`|✔️|✔️||
|*Crossword Club*|`club`|✔️|✔️|✔️|
|*Billboard*|`bill`|✔️|||
|*The Daily Beast*|`db`|✔️|||
|*Daily Pop*|`pop`|✔️|✔️||
|*Der Standard*|`std`|✔️||✔️|
|*Guardian Cryptic*|`grdc`|✔️||✔️|
|*Guardian Everyman*|`grde`|✔️||✔️|
|*Guardian Prize*|`grdp`|✔️||✔️|
|*Guardian Quick*|`grdq`|✔️||✔️|
|*Guardian Quiptic*|`grdu`|✔️||✔️|
|*Guardian Speedy*|`grds`|✔️||✔️|
|*Guardian Weekend*|`grdw`|✔️||✔️|
|*Los Angeles Times*|`lat`|✔️|✔️||
|*Los Angeles Times Mini*|`latm`|✔️|✔️||
|*New York Times*|`nyt`|✔️|✔️|✔️|
|*New York Times Mini*|`nytm`|✔️|✔️|✔️|
|*New York Times Variety*|`nytv`||✔️||
|*The New Yorker*|`tny`|✔️|✔️|✔️|
|*The New Yorker Mini*|`tnym`|✔️|✔️|✔️|
|*Newsday*|`nd`|✔️|✔️||
|*Observer Everyman*|`ever`|✔️||✔️|
|*Observer Speedy*|`spdy`|✔️||✔️|
|*Puzzmo*|`pzm`|✔️|✔️|✔️|
|*Puzzmo Big*|`pzmb`|✔️|✔️|✔️|
|*Simply Daily Puzzles*|`sdp`|✔️|✔️|✔️|
|*Simply Daily Puzzles Cryptic*|`sdpc`|✔️|✔️|✔️|
|*Simply Daily Puzzles Quick*|`sdpq`|✔️|✔️|✔️|
|*Universal*|`uni`|✔️|✔️||
|*USA Today*|`usa`|✔️|✔️||
|*Vox*|`vox`|✔️|||
|*Vulture 10x10*|`vult`|✔️|✔️|✔️|
|*The Walrus*|`wal`|✔️|||
|*Washington Post*|`wp`|✔️|✔️||

To download a puzzle, install `xword-dl` and run it on the command line.

## Installation

The easiest way to install `xword-dl` is with the [`uv` package manager](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/). After [installing `uv`](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/#installation), you can install the latest released version of `xword-dl` with:

```
uv tool install xword-dl
```

You can also invoke it without installing, by running:

```
uvx xword-dl
```

Run an unreleased version or alternative branch, with or without installation.

```
uvx --from git+https://github.com/thisisparker/xword-dl.git<@featurebranch> xword-dl
```

It is also available through a standard `pip install`, if you want to manage your own virtual environments.

## Usage

Once installed, you can invoke `xword-dl`, providing the short code of the site from which to download. If you run `xword-dl` without providing a site keyword, it will print some usage instructions and then exit.

For example, to download the latest Newsday puzzle, you could run:

```
xword-dl nd --latest
```

or simply

```
xword-dl nd
```

You can also download puzzles that are embedded in AmuseLabs solvers or on supported sites by providing a URL, such as:

```
xword-dl https://rosswordpuzzles.com/2021/01/03/cover-up/
```

In either case, the resulting .puz file can be opened with [`cursewords`](https://github.com/thisisparker/cursewords) or any other puz file reader.

Due to the constraints of the .puz format, the `xword-dl`'s conversion may be a bit lossy. For example, the most common form of .puz files only support [Latin-1 text encoding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_8859-1), which means that some special characters (and even “curly quotes”) need to be converted before saving.

`xword-dl` will also, by default, convert provided HTML to plaintext markdown. If you want to skip that step, you can provide the `--preserve-html` flag at runtime or set the `preserve-html` key to `True` in your config file. 

### Specifying puzzle date

Some outlets allow specification of a puzzle to download by date using the `--date` or `-d` flag. For example, to download the Universal puzzle from September 22, 2021, you could run:

```
xword-dl uni --date 9/22/21
```

The argument provided after the flag is parsed pretty liberally, and you can use relative descriptors such as "yesterday" or  "monday". Use quotes if your date contains spaces (such as "June 16, 2022").

### Specifying filenames

By default, files will be given a descriptive name based on puzzle metadata. If you want to specify a name for a given download, you can do so with the `-o` or `--output` flag. The following tokens are available:

|Token    |Value|
|---------|-----|
|`%outlet`|Outlet name|
|`%prefix`|Hardcoded outlet prefix|
|`%title` |Puzzle title|
|`%author`|Puzzle author|
|`%cmd`   |Puzzle outlet keyword|
|`%netloc`|Network location (domain and subdomain)|
|`date tokens`|[`strftime` tokens](https://strftime.org/)|

### Configuration file

When running `xword-dl`, a configuration file is created to store persistent settings. By default, this file is located at `~/.config/xword-dl/xword-dl.yaml`. You can manually edit this file to pass options to `xword-dl` at runtime.

Most settings are specified by the command keyword. For example, if you want to save *USA Today* puzzles in this format:

```
USA Today - By Brooke Husic  Ed. Erik Agard - Right Turns - 221115.puz
```

you can specify that by editing your config file to include the following lines:

```
usa:
  filename: '%prefix - %author - %title - %y%m%d'
```

In addition to command keywords, you can also use the keys `general` (to apply to all puzzles), `url` (to apply to embedded puzzles selected by URL at runtime) or with a given `netloc` (to apply to embedded puzzles at a given domain or subdomain).

### New York Times authentication

New York Times puzzles are only available to subscribers. Attempting to download with the `nyt` keyword without authentication will fail. To authenticate, run:

```
xword-dl nyt --authenticate
```

and you will be prompted for your New York Times username and password. (Those credentials can also be passed at runtime with the `--username` and `--password` flags.)

If authentication is successful, an authentication token will be stored in a config file. Once that token is stored, you can download puzzles with `xword-dl nyt`.

In some cases, the authentication may fail because of anti-automation efforts on New York Times servers. If the automatic authentication doesn't work for you, you can [manually find your NYT-S token](https://xwstats.com/link) and save it in your config file.

## Contributing

`xword-dl` is open-source and freely licensed, and I welcome contributions. It is usually helpful to start by opening a new issue for discussion. Generally, only downloaders that pull crossword data from a first-party source are included in official releases.

Any merged code should pass `pyright` and `ruff` checks, which are run automatically on open pull requests. Both tools are included as dev dependencies and configured in `pyproject.toml`, if you'd like to run them locally:

```
uv sync --dev
uv run pyright
uv run ruff check
uv run ruff format
```