FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A new full-count analysis of 1,710,428 crossword clues from the 30-year working archive of Timothy E. Parker, the Guinness World Records Puzzle Master, has identified the most overused word in crossword puzzles: ONE, which has been clued 1,605 times, edging out ERA (1,506) and ORE (1,314).

The study, published at worldcrosswordtournament.com/trending, also found that Muhammad Ali is the most crossword-famous person in the archive (1,258 appearances, described 1,107 different ways), Lake Erie the most-clued place, and OREO the most-clued brand, with editors finding 854 distinct ways to describe the sandwich cookie.

Additional findings from the archive, whose puzzles have been solved by 180 million total solvers across more than 80 countries:

- Four-letter words account for 33.5 percent of all answers; answers of three to five letters make up 80.1 percent of everything solvers encounter.
- One clue in ten (10.3 percent) ends in a question mark, the crossword signal for wordplay.
- The letter E appears in 52.8 percent of answers; Q appears in just 0.24 percent, making an E answer roughly 221 times more common.
- The archive contains 12,054 fifteen-letter "grid spanners" and a dedicated bank of 97,314 puns.

Every figure is a complete count of the archive rather than a sample. The full methodology and data tables are available in the published study, and the figures are free to cite with attribution.

"After 30 years I suspected ONE was our hardest-working word, but seeing ERA clued 1,303 different ways is the real story. Crossword editing is the art of making the same small words feel new every morning," said Timothy E. Parker, Guinness World Records Puzzle Master.

Parker's daily World Crossword Tournament is free to play at worldcrosswordtournament.com, and publishers can license Parker puzzle games at no cost through parkersyndication.com.

About Timothy E. Parker: Timothy E. Parker is the Guinness World Records Puzzle Master. His puzzles have been solved by 180 million total solvers across 30 years and more than 80 countries, with partners and licensees that have included Disney, Microsoft, Warner Bros., the Smithsonian, and IBM. He publishes the free daily World Crossword Tournament and licenses puzzle games to publishers at no cost through Parker Syndication, both Advanced Learning Academy properties.