In terms of how my average solution time for each day varied around its average, there was a distinct shift on Wednesday. ((Even NYT crossword constructor Merl Reagle’s on-camera best for a Monday puzzle was just over two minutes in Wordplay.)) Instead, I averaged 7:15 on Mondays, 10:02 on Tuesdays, 16:58 on Wednesdays, 28:26 on Thursdays, 42:11 on Fridays, and 59:59 on Saturdays. If a linear difficulty trend prevailed, I would have finished Mondays in an average time of 56 seconds, Tuesdays in 11:33, Wednesdays in 22:10, Thursdays in 32:47, Fridays in 43:23, and Saturdays in 54:01. In fact, given the R 2 of 99.5%, I’m confident in saying that the impact of day on solution time - at least based on my brain in 2007 - is exponential. Shortz doesn’t explicitly make a claim that there’s a linear progression of difficulty from Monday to Saturday (e.g., Tuesday puzzles are 2x as difficult as Monday puzzles, Wednesdays are 3x as difficult as Mondays, Thursdays are 4x as difficult as Mondays, and so on), so it seems worthy - or at least a bit of fun - to test the question, “Based on my solution times in 2007, is NYT crossword difficulty linear?” This is why, as editor, I vary the weekday Times crossword difficulty from easy-medium on Monday up to what the actor and puzzle aficionado Paul Sorvino calls “the bitch mother of all crosswords” on Saturday. The perfect level of difficulty, of course, differs from person to person. ((Everyone assumed someone else was getting me the 2014 calendar, and, as I detailed on this week’s Three Cone Drill Podcast, I wasn’t in a mood to give many shits about gifting failures in 2014.)) Methinks I should do some statistical analyses and publish it as a part of Random Rounding! What follows are a couple of interesting observations I made based on my overall results in 2007. So, I’m sitting on daily crossword data from 2007 to 2013, and I have my own site now. Amazingly, I’ve kept all of these results to this day. Since then, my morning routine has consisted of making breakfast, brewing coffee, and timing how long it takes me to solve the next crossword challenge that the calendar has to offer. ((Incidentally, the speed-accuracy trade-off is a big deal in sport psychology research, which I’ll be writing about on Wisdom Wednesday.)) Inspired, I got my first NYT crossword calendar in 2007. Ostensibly, Wordplay‘s main character is longtime NYT crossword editor Will Shortz, but the real star of the movie - its emotional compass, if you will - is the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, where entrants try to solve crosswords as quickly and accurately as they can. So, when I saw Worplay, I immediately thought, “People actually compete at this? For money?” Given my aforementioned puzzle-solving proclivity as a child, it should come as no surprise that I frequently daydreamed about winning a ton of money on Wheel of Fortune, The Price is Right, $25,000 Pyramid (R.I.P.), Classic Concentration (R.I.P.), and Scrabble (R.I.P.), the last of which was a Chuck Woolery-hosted show that, although based on a vocabulary game, was actually a crossword game. When I was a kid, my dad used to take me on his weekend journeys to the brick-and-mortar newsstands around Miami, and my reward for a six-hour date with paper was a haul of various puzzle books that ran the gamut of nerddom: invisible ink quizzes, logic problems, brain teasers, word searches, mazes…and crosswords.įast forwarding from 1986 to 2006, one day I happened upon the movie Wordplay, a documentary about, in part, the world of competitive crosswording. (Apparently, drinking and wordplay are my base desires.)Īlcohol aside, I’ve always been a big fan of puzzles. Really, there are only three things that I make sure someone gets me each December: A bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin, a bottle of 18-year old Jameson Irish Whiskey and the upcoming year’s New York Times ( NYT) Crossword Calendar.
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