A place to discuss the weekly Wall Street Journal Crossword Puzzle Contest, starting every Thursday around 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. Please do not post any answers or hints before the contest deadline which is midnight Sunday Eastern time.
In case anyone was wondering, from the beginning of written records (April 29, 2016), the solve percentages by constructor are:
Matt Gaffney - 72.4% for 132 metas
Mike Shenk - 78.0% for 109 metas
Peter Gordon - 82.1% for 6 metas
Patrick Berry - 85.6% for 16 metas
Overall average of metas is 74.8%
Weighted average (total solves/total entries) is 79.7% - A lot more submissions on the easier contests
Interesting data! Thanks for sharing.
I’d love to see the Gaffney puzzle success rate by “with parentheses in the clues” vs. “sans parentheses.” I bet those parentheses puzzles are what make his puzzles the most difficult.
If you go back through the puzzles the Joe Ross has posted and tell me which ones had parentheses vs sans parentheses, I can give you those statistics.
Sent you a PM.
For my fellow dataheads out there:
- 19 of 136 Gaffney puzzles (14%) since 4/29/2016 have had parentheses in the clues as a step in the mechanism
- Of the 19, 13 puzzles (68%) had what I am calling “cryptic numbers only.” For example: “(4,7)”
For my fellow dataheads out there:
- 19 of 136 Gaffney puzzles (14%) since 4/29/2016 have had parentheses in the clues as a step in the mechanism
- Of the 19, 13 puzzles (68%) had what I am calling “cryptic numbers only.” For example: “(4,7)”
For my fellow dataheads out there:
- 19 of 136 Gaffney puzzles (14%) since 4/29/2016 have had parentheses in the clues as a step in the mechanism
- Of the 19, 13 puzzles (68%) had what I am calling “cryptic numbers only.” For example: “(4,7)”
By "cryptic" you mean? Sorry for my density.
Numbers that have no designated meaning. Some of his puzzles have years in parentheses, and one recent one, for example, had number of miles. Others are just things like “(4,7)” and the solver must determine what the numbers represent.
Dang! I think I might have been able to get this one - I was looking for periodic table clues - but I only printed out the finished grid and didn't keep the clues. Oh well......
Hello all - Zach asked an interesting question this week about the dreaded parentheses. Are Matt Gaffney's metas with parentheses more difficult than ones without parentheses. The second part of the question is that there are two kinds of parentheses - those where he tells you what they mean and those which are just there.
So Zach went through Matt's metas and sorted out which ones had parentheses and which ones did not. He also separated the two kinds of parentheses but I have not gotten to them yet. I merged Zach's work with the data I had and concluded the following:
Matt has done 133 metas of which 18 had the dreaded parentheses and 115 did not have any parentheses
The average of the 18 metas with parentheses is the WSJ submissions were 68% correct
The average of the 115 metas without parentheses is the WSJ submissions were 73% correct.
More analysis to follow but there is good reason to dread the parentheses
I wonder, if Matt reads these comments, what he thinks about Muggles and our relationship with parentheses. Aren’t they like asterisks? Helpful pointers toward the meta? Isn't it the numbers inside the parentheses that are really the problem? Yeah, that’s the ticket! Blame it on the numbers!!
Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Wed Jul 14, 2021 9:50 pm
The average of the 18 metas with parentheses is the WSJ submissions were 68% correct
The average of the 115 metas without parentheses is the WSJ submissions were 73% correct.
My conclusion: Parentheses = better odds for getting the MUG!