| 100% | YEATS | 5 | He wrote, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity" |
| 37% | BUDPOWELL | 9 | Miles Davis said he was "the best there was of all the bebop piano players" |
| 35% | TOLSTOY | 7 | He wrote the treatise on nonviolence The Kingdom of God Is Within You |
| 34% | THOREAU | 7 | He wrote "In wildness is the preservation of the world" |
| 33% | PEOPLE | 6 | "How to Win Friends and Influence ___," self-help book written by Dale Carnegie which is one of the best-selling books of all time |
| 33% | PLATO | 5 | He wrote "Knowledge is the food of the soul" |
| 33% | DESADE | 6 | He wrote "The only way to a woman's heart is along the path of torment" |
| 33% | ERASMUS | 7 | He wrote "In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king" |
| 33% | MLK | 3 | He wrote about “a positive peace which is the presence of justice,” for short |
| 33% | KAFKA | 5 | He wrote "A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die" |
| 33% | SARTRE | 6 | He wrote "Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal" |
| 33% | SONDHEIM | 8 | Composer who wrote, about crosswords, "A good clue can give you all the pleasures of being duped that a mystery story can" |
| 32% | OPENINGSENTENCE | 15 | "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...," e.g. |
| 32% | CANDIDE | 7 | Source of the line "If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others?" |
| 32% | HOTANDHEAVY | 11 | Full of passionate intensity |
| 32% | ALI | 3 | He was bested in the "Fight of the Century" |
| 31% | WILDE | 5 | He wrote "A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies" |
| 31% | EAU | 3 | The Seine is full of it |
| 31% | BEASTS | 6 | The zoo is full of them |
| 31% | FRANZKAFKA | 10 | He wrote "I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy" |
| 31% | UGLY | 4 | "The Good, The Bad and The ___," one of the greatest Westerns of all time |
| 31% | NIGEL | 5 | Richards who is generally regarded as the best Scrabble player of all time |
| 31% | LOVEYOURSELF | 12 | Justin Bieber's acoustic pop song written by him along with Ed Sheeran and Benny Blanco which was the seventh best-selling song of 2016: 2 wds. |
| 31% | TEA | 3 | About which Orwell wrote "The best manner of making it is the subject of violent disputes" |
| 31% | GUNSNROSES | 10 | Band whose "Appetite for Destruction" was the best-selling debut album of all time |
| 30% | OMEN | 4 | Sign of the future that can be good or bad |
| 30% | REISER | 6 | He wrote the best sellers "Couplehood" and "Babyhood" |
| 30% | ROSE | 4 | "The Name of the ___," best-selling novel by Umberto Eco that was originally written in Italian |
| 30% | ROD | 3 | ___ Stewart, "Baby Jane" singer who is one of the best-selling artists of all time |
| 30% | PROTAGORAS | 10 | Greek philosopher who wrote "Man is the measure of all things" |