“A second measure is whether people can do a puzzle at all, and by that measure I think our Friday puzzles are harder than Thursdays. And that’s one measure of difficulty,” Shortz said. “The one little surprise to me in Roy’s analysis was that Friday was slightly easier than Thursday, and I pointed out to him that he was measuring difficulty only on one scale - the amount of time it takes a solver to finish a puzzle. While agreeing that Leban’s work “corroborates” what he does, Shortz was intrigued by the data related to Thursday puzzles, and had his own theory. But if you do the puzzle long enough, the trend shows that it does get harder as the week goes on.” Will Shortz of The New York Times. If you do the puzzle on a daily basis through the week, the Wednesday may not always be harder than Tuesday, Thursday may not always be harder than Wednesday. I’m proud of myself for editing and presenting crosswords that generally do increase in difficulty through the week. “I’m impressed,” said Shortz, who has been the crossword editor at the Times since 1993 and is just the fourth in the paper’s history. The degree of difficulty varies the most on Thursday, which is known for its tricky puzzles.The Sunday puzzle is solved by more people than any day except Monday, but, on a percentage basis, fewer people complete it than any other day.
More people solve the Monday and Sunday puzzles than any other day of the week, but more solvers complete the Tuesday and Wednesday puzzles.
Leban said that he was most surprised that his analysis shows Thursday puzzles to be harder than Fridays, but he attributed that to the fact that Thursday puzzles are known for incorporating more tricks. The popular understanding is that Monday’s puzzle is the easiest of the week and by Friday and Saturday, the puzzles are the most difficult. Leban’s data relied mostly on the amount of time it took solvers to complete a puzzle. The term “complete” refers to when a person solves a puzzle, finishes it, and gets the correct solution.) The Difficulty Index - “Hard for a Sunday Puzzle” - is shown on the leaderboard page for the Nov. (For the sake of clarity, as mentioned by Leban in his post, both men use the term “solve” to refer to when a person works on a puzzle, whether or not they finish it and get the correct solution. Leban shared a bit of insight behind his analysis with GeekWire, and we also hopped on the phone with Will Shortz, the renowned crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times, to get his reaction to it all. Leban described the project in a blog post Monday, explaining that every future Times crossword will have the Difficulty Index added to its Puzzazz leaderboard page automatically “as soon as we have collected enough data to calculate one.” Here’s the new twist: Puzzazz has come up with a way to calculate a “Difficulty Index” for The New York Times crossword based on anonymized data from its own users for every Times crossword going back to July 1, 2015.
Puzzazz works with the Times to offer its wildly popular crossword for solving through the Puzzazz app at no additional charge to New York Times digital puzzle subscribers. Roy Leban is founder and CEO of Puzzazz, an 8-year-old puzzle technology company whose apps allow people to buy and solve puzzles digitally. But for the first time, thanks to Redmond, Wash.-based Puzzazz, an analysis of the difficulty of the Times crossword has been completed - validating popular thinking and offering some surprising results. The New York Times crossword puzzle is a daily ritual for many people around the world, and for those who play often enough, it’s clear that the puzzles become more difficult with each passing day of the week. A screen shot of a New York Times crossword puzzle on the Puzzazz website.
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