Cryptograms / Drop Quotes Updates

Nearly two years ago we purchased was what reputed to be an extensively researched and thoroughly “clean” database of more than 40,000 quotations, which we intended to use straight away on two of our quote-based puzzle sites, www.Cryptograms.org and www.DropQuotes.com.  Unfortunately, it was only after purchasing said database that we realized it was in a near-complete shambles.  The same quotations were repeated 2, 3, 4 or more times, at least 15-20% of them had spelling or grammatical errors, a good portion of them were just fragments, and a fair percentage were either modern movie nonsense quotes or similarly otherwise unusable dreck.  Blah!

Of course, there was usable content in there – but it took nearly eighteen months of going through the database, quotation by quotation, before we could get all the worthwhile quotes out of it.  We released the first batch of about 3,000 new quotes in early 2009 – and thankfully, finally, we released the remaining 13,000 just this week to both sites.  Each quote has been carefully checked for errors and duplication (though a few typos may have slipped past us, sorry!)

Anyway, a long, long project, finally over and done with.  If you’re a long-time player on either our Cryptograms or Drop Quotes sites, these should give you plenty of new meat to chew on for a while.  (You’ll know if you’ve got a new quote, because solving statistics and records won’t yet be available for them.)

As for the future of new quotes?  Well, we’re experimenting with some new ideas, including user-submitted quotations.  No news yet on that front, but watch this space.

Happy solving!