Quick SNITCH

How hard is each Times Quick Cryptic Crossword? A good way to judge this is to work out how long it takes a group of experienced solvers to complete the solution without errors. This site uses a group of over 100 solvers who regularly complete the crossword on the Club site. Each solver's time to complete the puzzle is compared to their average over the last six months. This is averaged again across all the solvers to provide an overall rating, the Numeric Index of Times Cryptic Hardness (NITCH). See the actual results for each six-month period at the Trends page.

A NITCH value of 100 means that the crossword is solved in the average time. A value of 150 means that the crossword takes (on average) one and a half times the normal time; a figure of 67 means that it is solved in two thirds of the normal time.

That's fine for a historical view (after everyone's completed the crossword), but it would be nice to see how today's crossword is going. So this site also calculates the SNITCH, Same-day NITCH, by updating the NITCH value regularly. Early results may be a bit misleading, so the movement of the SNITCH and the number of reference users who've completed the puzzle is graphed to give you some idea of how the value has varied during the day.

A sanity check of the NITCH code against the senitments in the Times for the Times blog has been done. Crosswords that have a high NITCH tend to be regarded as difficult in the blog, and those with a low NITCH are generally seen as easy. No measuring system will be perfect, but the NITCH seems to be a reasonable way to score the difficulty.

Did you know?

If you're new to solving the 15x15 crossword, you may find the full crossword history useful to identify the easier puzzles to practise your skills. Each has a link to the relevant Times for the Times blog entry for that puzzle, where you can check your answers.