![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Oct. 14th, 2020 10:34 amAs I mentioned a few weeks ago, I signed up for the the Boswords crossword league, which is running weekly timed themeless puzzles through October and November on Monday nights. It has three divisions ranging from hardest cluing to easiest (all three use the same grid, they just use more or less obscure ways to clue words.) I decided to sign up in the hardest division, knowing it was something of a reach. I'm reasonably good at crossword puzzles but definitely not elite.
The first week's puzzle destroyed me. Every clue was a misdirect, often a brilliant misdirect. It wasn't an unfair puzzle, and a lot of the solve was really satisfying when you figured something out, but it was brutally difficult and at the end I finished in 25 minutes with three mistakes, putting me just shy of last place. Of 300 people in the hardest division, I finished 269th.
This week I did much better. Perfect score in 13:23, putting me preliminarily in 124th place for the week, with at least 75 solvers in the division slower than me. (The league is semi-asynchronous, with people having until Wednesday to attempt the week's puzzles, so more scores are still to be reported and my score presumably will drop a bit when those people are added.) I'm capable of being faster on puzzles like these, but it's still a pretty good score for me. So I'm not outclassed quite as badly as I feared, which hopefully bodes well for future rounds.
Regardless, it's fun, chatting with other puzzlers between puzzles, being competitive but also playful. I'm glad I signed up even if I'm not going to win anything, this kind of competition has mostly been out of my life since college. And the puzzles are well written and well-edited. In particular, the week two puzzle was a lot of fun, full of slangy internet phrases but in a way that didn't feel obnoxious to me.
Edit I now stand at 231st place after two weeks. With the late scores I ended up in 186th for week 2, way better than my week 1 269th, but still plenty of room for improvement.
The first week's puzzle destroyed me. Every clue was a misdirect, often a brilliant misdirect. It wasn't an unfair puzzle, and a lot of the solve was really satisfying when you figured something out, but it was brutally difficult and at the end I finished in 25 minutes with three mistakes, putting me just shy of last place. Of 300 people in the hardest division, I finished 269th.
This week I did much better. Perfect score in 13:23, putting me preliminarily in 124th place for the week, with at least 75 solvers in the division slower than me. (The league is semi-asynchronous, with people having until Wednesday to attempt the week's puzzles, so more scores are still to be reported and my score presumably will drop a bit when those people are added.) I'm capable of being faster on puzzles like these, but it's still a pretty good score for me. So I'm not outclassed quite as badly as I feared, which hopefully bodes well for future rounds.
Regardless, it's fun, chatting with other puzzlers between puzzles, being competitive but also playful. I'm glad I signed up even if I'm not going to win anything, this kind of competition has mostly been out of my life since college. And the puzzles are well written and well-edited. In particular, the week two puzzle was a lot of fun, full of slangy internet phrases but in a way that didn't feel obnoxious to me.
Edit I now stand at 231st place after two weeks. With the late scores I ended up in 186th for week 2, way better than my week 1 269th, but still plenty of room for improvement.