Brian

Always up for a rebus puzzle. But it has to be consistent across and down. Unlike this one.

Some data that can be used to begin to understand the relative difficulty of puzzles “now” and “back then”. In early COVID days, I did an extensive analysis of my personal solve times across a 1600+ streak that was broken in October 2019. My average weekly sum of solve times, Sunday to Saturday, was x minutes. I obviously had way too much time on my locked down hands. Using similar methodology my weekly solve times across my current 700+ streak is 0.98x. Good samples sizes, similar solving conditions, highly similar results. Using the weekly average suppressed a lot of variability, but leveled the playing field. I’m not gonna do a chi squared or t test to refine the results ( my Minitab subscription lapsed years ago) but from my viewpoint, over the long game, puzzles today are of similar difficulty to puzzles a decade ago. My results could be argued either way.

Lotsa comments on relative ease. Perhaps that is just increased solver’s skill as the Gladwell 10k hour rule kicks in and the Crosswordese is recognizable. On another note, CBS Radio shutting down. Murrow, Collingwood, Shirer, Hottelet et al looking down with disfavor. The revenue generated by the NYT Games hopefully going to support real journalism in their spirit.

Solved about 1.5 sigma under average. Sailed through the puzzle. Took me way longer to figure out the theme than to solve the puzzle.