USA Today - Weekly Tournament and UI

A place to discuss regular (non-meta) crossword puzzles.
Post Reply
User avatar
MamaE
Posts: 334
Joined: Tue May 05, 2020 6:15 pm
Location: Maryland

USA Today - Weekly Tournament and UI

#1

Post by MamaE »

Hello all - I only recently discovered that Erik Agard had taken over the USA Today puzzle. Since I love his puzzles, and want to support his aim of more inclusivity in the puzzle world, I subscribed. Which brings me to my two questions -

1. Does anyone else do the weekly tourney and, if so, can you explain to me the scoring cutoffs? Is there a third "final" puzzle for those who do well enough on round 2?

2. Does anyone know of a better App to do the puzzle? The USA Today app is *terrible*. Also, it appears that I can't log on to the puzzle with my laptop?

Anyway, any insight would be much appreciated!

- Mama E
- Just puzzling it out here in Delmarva :D
User avatar
MikeM000
Posts: 579
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2020 11:31 am
Location: Metro Detroit

#2

Post by MikeM000 »

I signed up for a year last year sometime right after the pandemic started, and my subscription just expired a few weeks ago.

As far as I could tell, the cutoff was 1 point for every full minute, as 4:57 would be, say, 7896, and 5:05 and 5:43 would be 7895. If you miss a square in round 1, you're unlikely to qualify for round 2. I don't think the timeliness of when you solved mattered for points, but you'd be behind an earlier solver with identical time and points. I wasn't a fan of the inability to see the grid or make edits once your last square went filled.

Round 2 is the final - whoever gets the most points there is crowned the week's champion.

Your app comment... HA! Yes, yes it is absolutely horrible. I could only manage to get in using the app on my tablet, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone says it's impossible.
User avatar
MamaE
Posts: 334
Joined: Tue May 05, 2020 6:15 pm
Location: Maryland

#3

Post by MamaE »

MikeM000 wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 2:20 pm I signed up for a year last year sometime right after the pandemic started, and my subscription just expired a few weeks ago.

As far as I could tell, the cutoff was 1 point for every full minute, as 4:57 would be, say, 7896, and 5:05 and 5:43 would be 7895. If you miss a square in round 1, you're unlikely to qualify for round 2. I don't think the timeliness of when you solved mattered for points, but you'd be behind an earlier solver with identical time and points. I wasn't a fan of the inability to see the grid or make edits once your last square went filled.

Round 2 is the final - whoever gets the most points there is crowned the week's champion.

Your app comment... HA! Yes, yes it is absolutely horrible. I could only manage to get in using the app on my tablet, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone says it's impossible.
Thanks for confirmation on how preliminary scoring works. I am still a bit confused by the second round though, as it appeared that I did well each time in the second round, but then I ended up in bottom half. I dislike that there is no way to go back and confirm my standings from past tournaments. Ah well....that's how it goes I guess.

As for the app - Yep, even with my tablet I absolutely detest the app. Just not intuitive in any way and ugly to boot.

Thanks for the info,
Ellen
- Just puzzling it out here in Delmarva :D
User avatar
MikeM000
Posts: 579
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2020 11:31 am
Location: Metro Detroit

#4

Post by MikeM000 »

MamaE wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 2:43 pm
Thanks for confirmation on how preliminary scoring works. I am still a bit confused by the second round though, as it appeared that I did well each time in the second round, but then I ended up in bottom half. I dislike that there is no way to go back and confirm my standings from past tournaments. Ah well....that's how it goes I guess.

As for the app - Yep, even with my tablet I absolutely detest the app. Just not intuitive in any way and ugly to boot.

Thanks for the info,
Ellen
Yes...if you think you did well on filling the grid and you didn't, there's no way of knowing where you messed up. And if you are into achievements, prepare to be annoyed...you'll get some achievement...say completing 25 puzzles. Then a month or so later, you'll get the same achievement again. And I seem to remember some of the awards you get would disappear from the screen when you went to look at ones you had gotten. A good app developer could probably sit down for a day and make that a LOT better just with simple fixes.
User avatar
mokelfish
Posts: 38
Joined: Mon Jun 29, 2020 8:42 pm
Location: Boston, MA
Contact:

#5

Post by mokelfish »

I agree the USA today is now consistently great. It's not a difficult solve, but almost always a fun one.

In regards to accessing the puzzles, I'd like to recommend the Xword software puzzle solver: https://mrichards42.github.io/xword/

It's like Across Lite, but it's open source and has a lot of extra customizable features, like the ability to load variety puzzles. It's also able to automatically import all the free daily puzzles from the major papers. USA Today is one of them, along with WSJ, BEQ, LAT, Universal, WasPo, etc. Very clean interface and no ads. It's my main go-to program for solving online.
Post Reply