The amazing data analysis of The Times crossword solving times, called the SNITCH, continues to be enhanced by its creator Sewart. He now includes automatically scraping the times from peoples' responses in TimesforTheTimes (who give their permission to do so), including me, and his results page now includes the ability to sort on any of the columns.
So here you can see I solved today's crossword in just under 10 minutes. Comparing that to my average time posted over a 6 month period for the weekday crosswords, I did it in 49% of my average time, hence my Personal NITCH of 49.
Today's SNITCH (which compares a group of reference solvers' times to their average times and then averages them) is currently at 79, which means on average people have solved today's in 79% of their average time.
The WITCH, then, is the ratio of the personal NITCH to the SNITCH, which for me gets to 62%. That means I solved the crossword 38% faster than I should have taken, which means I was "on the wavelength" of the setter today... and more so than anyone else so far today.
As far as actual solving time goes I am, of course, not the fastest. Just look at some of the times of the real whizzo solvers!
But 13th on the SNITCH leader-board at 9 am is about as high up as I've ever got.
I don't suppose I will still be in the top 20 by the end of the day, though!
[Edit: As you can see here, in the end I was pipped by one other (and 2 neutrinos) to top of the Witches and ended up 29th out of 122 genuine tracked solvers.. Still pretty good for me!].
No comments:
Post a Comment