MyCrossword is 5!

It's been five years to the day since I pressed a big red button to launch the site. Okay, the button was purple and I spent a few hours debugging why it didn't work, but that's less pithy. What started as a small side project has grown into a thriving community of users and contributors.

I was convinced that it would just be me and a few friends from work using it, but now we have thousands of active users from all over the world.

These numbers will inevitably be out of date almost as soon as I publish this, but here are a few stats from the first five years:

• Published Crosswords: 3,581
  • Mini: 201
  • Quick: 329
  • Cryptic: 3,028
  • Jumbo: 21
  • Featured: 2 (and counting!)
• Unpublished Crosswords: 3,396
• Clues: 193,454
• Comments: 37,882
• Likes: 82,062
• Code Releases: 382
• Full Site Rebuilds: 1 (18 months of work)
• Hours of Coding: ? (I'm not sure I want to know, it's in the thousands)

I’m very grateful to everyone who’s helped me or the site over the years, whether by sending suggestions, reporting issues, writing crosswords, leaving comments, or recommending it to others. That ongoing appreciation and support is what keeps me motivated to continue improving it.

Here's to many more years of crosswords and community.

And here's a completely unrelated crossword to celebrate.