xword-dl is a command-line tool to download .puz files for online crossword puzzles. For a supported outlet, you can easily download the latest puzzle, or specify one from the archives.
Currently, xword-dl supports:
- The New Yorker
- Newsday
- The LA Times
- The Wall Street Journal
- The Washington Post
- USA Today
- The Atlantic
To download a puzzle, install xword-dl and run it on the command line.
To install xword-dl, download or clone this repository from Github. From a terminal, simply running
python setup.py install --user
in the downloaded directory may be enough.
But you probably want to install xword-dl and its dependencies in a dedicated virtual environment. I use virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper personally, but that's a matter of preference. If you're already feeling overwhelmed by the thought of managing Python packages, know you're not alone. The official documentation is pretty good, but it's a hard problem, and it's not just you. If it's any consolation, learning how to use virtual environments today on something sort of frivolous like a crossword puzzle downloader will probably save you from serious headaches in the future when the stakes are higher.
If you are installing in a dedicated virtual environment, run the above command without the --user flag.
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 code, it will print some usage instructions and then exit.
For example, to download the latest New Yorker puzzle, you could run:
xword-dl tny --latest
or simply:
xword-dl tny
To download the Newsday Saturday Stumper and save it as stumper.puz, you could enter:
xword-dl nd --date saturday --output stumper
The resulting .puz file can be opened with cursewords or any other puz file reader.