On 7 June ( No 25,656, 9 across) Gordius had: 'An artist ran word processing in the right way (6,3,6)', where the anagram led to STRAIT AND NARROW. _ The homonyms 'straight' and 'strait' have been causing trouble of late. So I would welcome feedback on whether a) there is a widespread impression that the Quick puzzles have become easier and b) whether the Quick crosswords should, as a matter of policy, be made easier, or harder, or remain roughly the same. I know one well-educated, Guardian-reading, mid-40s teacher who manages to complete the Quick crossword so infrequently that, when he does, he tears out the page, folds it into a cocked hat and capers triumphantly round the house wearing it. "This is supposed to be a Quick crossword, you know, not an hour's work" is the burden of these songs. (This is the more so since the website brought us a large number of overseas solvers.)Ī second comment is that, over the years, I have had regular complaints that this or that Quick puzzle has been far too difficult for the average Guardian reader to solve in a reasonable time. And, in any case, even within the population of Guardian-reading crossword solvers, one person's 'easy' is another person's 'hard', depending on the range of topics covered by a particular puzzle. More generally, such comments are more likely to be made by people who find the puzzles too easy for their taste, rather than by those who find them too difficult. My immediate comments are that there has been no conscious change of policy to make these puzzles easier and that they are the work of the same team of three setters who have been labouring on your behalf for some time. "The Guardian Quick crossword is becoming a cake walk. This seems to be objective data (rather than some value feeling) pointing to the conclusion that the puzzles during that week were easier than in the past. Then, one week in June, he produced a run of four sub-4 minute performances (including one of 2 minutes 43 seconds).
More specifically Johan S, who does the Quick regularly and times himself doing it, tells me that over the last year or so he has taken between 4 and 17 minutes for each puzzle, averaging perhaps around 8/9 minutes a time, but never breaking the 4-minute barrier. For example, of late the comments posted under the online version of the Quick puzzles indicate that some people think that in June these were particularly easy.
#DO NYT CROSSWORDS GET HARDER HOW TO#
One problem of a crossword editor's job is how to evaluate comments/complaints about the level of difficulty of the puzzles.
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