times-puzzles

Scripts to scrape and print The Times daily puzzles.

Overview

This repository contains two utilities:

• app.js: Scrapes The Times printable puzzles page, finds puzzle PDF links, downloads them, and tracks already-downloaded dates in puzzleScraperDatabase.json.
• print_crosswords.sh: Prints selected pages from a puzzle PDF based on the day of the week.

Requirements

• Node.js (for app.js)
• npm
• pdftk (required by the print script)
• CUPS printing tools (lp, lpstat, lpoptions)

Installation / Setup

1. Install Node.js dependencies:

   npm install

2. Install pdftk (example for Debian/Ubuntu):

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install pdftk

3. Ensure you have a default printer configured in CUPS using lpoptions:

   lpoptions -d YOUR_PRINTER_NAME

   You can list available printers with:

   lpstat -p -d

4. Create your local environment file and set your puzzle directory path:

   cp .env.example .env

   Then edit .env and set:

   PUZZLE_DIR=/your/path/to/puzzles

Usage

Download puzzle PDFs

Before running, make sure PUZZLE_DIR in .env points to your own puzzles folder.

Run:

node app.js

This downloads newly found puzzle PDFs into the folder configured by PUZZLE_DIR and records downloaded dates in puzzleScraperDatabase.json.

Print puzzle pages

Before running, make sure PUZZLE_DIR in .env points to your own puzzles folder.

Run without arguments to print today's puzzle file (expected as DDMMYY.pdf in the folder configured by PUZZLE_DIR):

./print_crosswords.sh

If today's file is missing, the script will first run node app.js from this repository to fetch puzzles, then continue printing.

Run with a specific file path:

./print_crosswords.sh /path/to/your/file.pdf

The script prints a day-specific set of pages and sends the output to your default printer.