NYT Mini Crossword Data - Summary Statistics

Introduction

A group of us have been doing the New York Times Mini Crossword online. For each puzzle completed a player records the date, time to complete the puzzle, the time of day when the puzzle was completed, and the number of clues in the puzzle. The results are submitted to a joint text group. I record these values in a data file stored on Github.

This report is a summary of each players puzzle completion times.

Data Summary

We have 2556 observations from 5 players starting from 2017-09-25 through 2025-04-25.

All Puzzles

The mean, median, minimum and maximum puzzle times in seconds for each player for all games they played. The median value is included as a more robust summary measure. The mean is strongly influenced by extreme values and most players have “bad puzzle days” where their puzzle time is very high.

Player	N	Mean	Median	Min	Max
SPK	1,099	93.8	78.0	16	455
JIK	750	58.4	49.0	12	264
KHR	298	69.1	61.5	18	280
DJK	279	62.4	55.0	14	244
MC	130	101.4	91.5	35	432

A graphical summary of all puzzle times by player.

10 Clues

The weekday puzzle typically has 10 clues. The Saturday puzzle is larger with 14 up to 20 clues. Here we look at a summary by player for puzzle with only 10 clues. Some players do not have many Saturday puzzle times so we do not look at other puzzle sizes.

The mean, median, minimum and maximum puzzle times in seconds for each player for all games with 10 clues.

Player	N	Mean	Median	Min	Max
SPK	511	78.6	68	16	214
JIK	441	45.1	41	12	226
KHR	257	62.0	58	18	141
DJK	239	56.2	52	14	164
MC	110	89.8	84	35	209

Time of Day

Looking at puzzle time versus time of day the puzzle is completed. A nonparametric smooth line is included to show the trend over time of day. Only observations for 10 clues puzzles are included in the plot.