The Times Crossword Championship
­ Unofficial information ­

2008 Championship announced

The Times Crossword Championship will take place again this year at Cheltenham on Sunday, October 12. Full details will appear with the first qualifying puzzle on Thursday, April 3. Further qualifiers will appear on May 1, May 22 and June 26. Last year, any entrant claiming to have completed one of these puzzles in less than 30 minutes qualified.

Introduction

Much of the information here is written as if you're pondering entering the championship and want to know what happens. I hope it's informative if you're just curious about the event. Some of it is still based on the "4 single puzzles with 30 minute time limit for each" format which was used up to 2000. If you have any additions or corrections (especially about what happened before 1989), use the 'mailto' link at the end of the page.

Legal note: The information on this page is provided without the assistance or official approval of Times Newspapers, and the author has no connection with The Times except for buying it and competing in this championship.

Overview

The Times Crossword Championship is the best-known current competition for testing your ability to solve cryptic crosswords quickly and accurately. The championship is held annually. Since 2006, entrants have qualified for a finals day by being one of the quickest 50 solvers of one a series of four qualifying puzzles printed in the paper. The best 50 contestants on finals day (25 per preliminary heat) are exempted from this process the following year. At each of the three sessions on finals day, contestants tackle a set of three puzzles, with a time limit of one hour. Solvers are ranked first on the number of clues solved correctly. Among the solvers equal on clues solved, the ranking is determined by the time taken to complete the puzzles, so the slowest "all correct" solver ranks ahead of the fastest person with one mistake. 24 solvers, the first 12 from each of two preliminary heats, contest the Grand Final. To be in with a chance of qualifying for the Grand Final, you need to be able to complete most Times crosswords in less than fifteen minutes, and your personal best time is likely to be five minutes or less.

Up to 2000, the system was different. Competitors initially solved a puzzle printed in the Times. If correct, they went on to the next stage, usually one of about six Regional Finals. At each one, around 200 competitors competed for places in the National final - one place for every 60 competitors at the Regional final. If a particular Regional Final was oversubscribed, an Eliminator puzzle was set. This was printed in the paper, but deliberately made very difficult so that the number of correct solutions received was less than the number of places available.

In Regional and National finals, competitors attempted to solve four different puzzles, each one inside a 30 minute time limit. Each correct answer to a clue scored one 'puzzle point'. A correct solution inside the half-hour also scored a 'time bonus point' for each unused minute of the half-hour (e.g. 23 time bonus points for a correct solution in 6 and a half minutes). Competitors were ranked first by puzzle points, then by time bonus points.

A History of the Championship

All of the championships from 1971 to 1996 were organised in a more manageable way. Only one qualifying puzzle was used, and competitors chose one of six regional finals in various cities in the UK. Eliminator puzzles were used to ration places at popular regional finals - usually the two London ones. The qualifiers from the Regional Finals contested a National Final in London. Both types of final used four puzzles. At first, only the Regional champions qualified for the National final. At some time in the 1970s, the system of qualification changed to the current one - one National finalist for every 60 regional finalists.

The Times has not usually been willing to meet the cost of running the championship on its own, so the Championship has often had a sponsor. In the early years (1970-1981) this was Cutty Sark scotch whisky. After a one-year break in 1982 when no sponsor could be found, Collins Dictionaries took over from 1983 to 1991. Inter-City trains were the sponsors in 1992, and the distillers then returned. Knockando malt whisky was the sponsor from 1993 to 1995, and Aberlour took over in 1996. In 1997, the championship was unable to find a sponsor and was in danger of not taking place. It found a home when The Times became involved in the Mind Sports Olympiad. This event also hosted the 1998 and 1999 championships. The 1997 event had a similar format to that of 1970 - a qualifying puzzle of eliminator standard was used to reduce the field to the 300-odd who could be accommodated. These 300 contested a four-puzzle final. The 1998 and 1999 events were organised with more time to spare, but had fewer regional finals than usual.In 2000, the event found a new sponsor - wordcross.net, a crossword web-site. Unfortunately, they did not stay in business long enough to sponsor any more championships.

Famous contestants over the years include Alvar Liddell (war-time BBC radio newsreader), Tom Driberg M.P. (who wrote the first series of Private Eye puzzles), Sir David Hunt (a former Mastermind champion), and the chess grandmaster Jon Speelman.

In 1996 a "pairs" competition was tried (at the suggestion of the sponsor, I believe), to give those who solve the puzzle "in tandem" a way of taking part. Not many pairs entered, to the relief of the organisers. No recent national finalists competed in this event, and the fastest pairs didn't turn out to be any quicker than the best "solo" solvers. You may think this says something about the ability of successful cryptic crossword solvers to work well in teams or to consider the possibility. I couldn't possibly comment! The pairs event returned in 2000, when there was also an internet-based version of the championship.

After the 2000 championship's sponsors were unable to sponsor further championships, there was a period of five years with no championships. After the Times held a Su Doku championship in 2005, they decided to revive the crossword one in 2006, using a different qualifying process, so that the 'live' part of the championship could be completed in one day.

Past Champions

Multiple winners:

John Sykes

When I first attended a National Final, and discovered that the same John Sykes spent part of his life working for Oxford University Press on the production of dictionaries (he's the J.B. Sykes who may be shown as the editor of your old Concise Oxford), I thought he had a rather unfair advantage. It was only when I read his obituary in 1993 that I realised he would have been just as formidable a competitor if he had stayed in any of his previous jobs. I'm pretty sure the obituary included the phrase "one of the cleverest young men in England", and told a story of a meeting between Russian and British scientists, one of whom was John Sykes. On discovering that the papers for discussion had not been translated, John Sykes, who had taught himself Russian, did the necessary translation overnight and gave copies to some astonished Russians in the morning.

How to Enter

Watch out for a statement printed with the puzzle, giving the dates of the qualifying puzzles and possibly other details. When the qualifying puzzles are printed, they will be accompanied by complete instructions.

What happens on finals day

In each session, you get 3 puzzles to solve, with an hour to complete all three. No dictionaries or other solving cribs are allowed. If you finish the puzzles inside the time limit, you put your hand up (after you've checked your work).

If you have a different answer to a clue which you think can be justified, tell the crossword editor as soon as possible. You will need to be able to convince him that your answer is at least as good as the official one, so try to check your facts before presenting your case. Alternative answers are sometimes accepted, but not often - I've only known it to happen once in 20-odd regional and national finals, which means once in about 2,500 clues.

Usually, more than 12 competitors in each preliminary will solve all three puzzles correctly. This means potential qualifiers for the Grand Final have to tread a very fine line between writing in answers which "feel right" without wasting time working out exactly why they are right, and making sure that wrong answers don't get handed in.

The average solving time required to qualify for the Grand Final is usually between 9 and 15 minutes. Occasionally, a few people with one wrong answer will qualify for the grand final if the puzzles are more difficult than intended.

Grand final

The puzzles

How difficult are they?

Traditionally, when championship puzzles were printed in the newspaper, the percentage of correct solutions inside the time limit was stated. This often looked horrifyingly low, but the pressure of competition undoubtedly played a part in this.

The puzzles used for preliminary heats on finals day are a fair sample of Times puzzles as far as difficulty is concerned, but sometimes rather harder than average. The puzzles used for the 2006 Grand Final were quite difficult. There will always be traps (intentional or not) into which the quick but careless solver can easily fall, and crucial bits of 'general knowledge' not familiar to all solvers.

As with other Times puzzles, the grids are symmetrical in the usual way and all the words have at least half the letters checked by other words.

The contestants

Who are they?

The programmes for National Finals used to show each competitor's profession and age. From this and observation at regional finals:

• Most competitors are male (about 80%). The best explanation I can find for this is that many solvers are commuters, and most commuters of the average age (see next point) are male.
• The average age is about 50.
• Most are university educated, often to postgraduate level.
• Most, but not all, work in an office, laboratory or educational institution. Those from technical or "problem-solving" professions (e.g. programmers, mathematicians, scientists) seem to be more successful than those who work with words (e.g. writers, translators, professors of English lit.).
• Many have done well in quizzes and competitive Scrabble, bridge and chess.
• Some are cryptic puzzle setters for other newspapers. Spurius (Formerly in The Independent) and Enigmatist (The Guardian) are both former champions. Phi (The Independent) was a finalist before being banned from entering by becoming a Times setter.

How good are they?

As a rough guide to standards, here's a summary of the overall results of the preliminary heats on the 2006 finals day.

Should you enter?

• If you want to meet some other solvers (and some of the Times setters) and are just curious about how good you are, have a go. Most of the good solvers can remember when they used to struggle, and are more likely to share a few tips than belittle your efforts. Conversely, if you're fortunate enough to do well you'll be surprised by the amount of support you get from total strangers.
• If you want to be in the hunt for a good finishing place in the Grand Final, then you should be able to solve the Times puzzle correctly in less than seven minutes when it's an easy one, and inside 15 minutes nearly all the time. You can increase these times by around 50% to get a standard for potential qualifiers from preliminary heats. It's only fair to say that in both cases, the competition is fierce, and a personal record time under 5 minutes is no guarantee of success. It may be too late for you, but the most important thing to do if you really want to be a champion is: start trying to solve cryptic crosswords before you leave school.

Helpful hints on quick solving

If you expect me to reveal everything I know about speedy solving here, you'll be disappointed. You'll have to work some of it out for yourselves!

Check your answers (I mean it)

As you will be told before hostilities commence, it is always worth checking that the answer sheet is filled in completely and legibly, and contains the solutions you intended to write down. You are about twenty times more likely to let a mistake slip through by not checking than to miss a prize by losing the time which this checking takes.

On the day of competition

• Use pencil and rubber, not a pen. If you think that a letter is unclear, be prepared to rub it out and write it again.
• Remember that accuracy is more important than speed - be very reluctant to write down an answer you're unsure of. Finding mistakes and correcting them takes time.
• Try not to panic if you fail to solve the first few clues you look at.

On other days

• Practise fast solving with 'Concise' or 'Quick' crosswords.
• Put yourself under pressure by timing yourself or having informal competitions with others, even if this means betting your partner that you can finish a puzzle before they can finish washing the car, or counting how many stations it takes on the Underground (seat recommended!).
• Try to develop fast but legible writing - ensuring, for instance, that the following sets of letters can't be confused with each other: D/P, H/M, U/V, W/N/M, C/S, E/F, F/P, G/C, L/V, L/C, U/C, X/Y, V/Y, R/P/B, T/J.
• Practise "slow solving" (i.e. extend your vocabulary of unusual words and setter's tricks) by solving harder puzzles such as:
• Guardian and Independent daily puzzles. These can both be harder than the Times puzzle, especially Guardian puzzles by Araucaria, Paul, Shed, Taupi and Enigmatist, and Independent ones by Bannsider, Monk, Nestor, and Scorpion.
• Inquisitor - Saturday Independent Magazine
• Mephisto - Sunday Times
• Beelzebub - Independent on Sunday
• Enigmatic Variations - Sunday Telegraph
• Azed - (Observer) Simply the best - If I was only allowed to do one crossword a week, it would be this one.
• Listener - Saturday Times Books section. Can be extremely difficult, but offers something different every week.
• The Spectator - weekly thematic puzzle.

How I got on in past years

It's up to you whether you view this section as bragging or as encouragement to those who have finished in the top 50-odd of a London regional final. Some of these positions are approximate. 2 London Regional finals, each with around 220 competitors, were held each year except 1997.

Other championships

• Wordcross speed-solving contest: This was held the weekend after the 2000 Times championship. There were about 3 puzzles to solve, with a time-limit of seven minutes. Remarkable for a couple of reasons: the only outdoor crossword championship I've ever heard of (Covent Garden, outside St Paul's church -the sun was out), and my only experience of solving with the audience able to see your progress by way of a fiendish arrangement of acetate grids and cameras under glass tables. The prize - a Mini painted all over with wordross.com's logo - was won by Michael Trollope, a regular Times finalist.
• Mind Sports Olympiad: Held in 2001, at the event that had hosted a few recent Times championships. I turned gamekeeper and helped to organise it. Four puzzles, two American style and two cryptic (I removed an absurdly difficult puzzle about the occult.) Very low attendance and a pretty easy win for Mark Goodliffe.
• Daily Telegraph: I didn't enter or attend this, but I believe they held a one-puzzle race for about 3 years (roughly 2002-4), and that Mark Goodliffe won at least once.

American Crossword Puzzle Tournament

Azed Competition

If I remember rightly, there were three consecutive qualifying puzzles on the second, third and fourth Sundays of September 1984. When it emerged that several hundred solvers had managed correct entries to all three, a further qualifying puzzle was set, and competitors were asked to provide a cryptic clue to Superbrain (the name of the competition being the Observer/Oxford Crossword Superbrain contest) to be used as an eliminator if necessary. I believe about four hundred correct entries were whittled down by this means to the sixty people invited to attend the final, held in the Examination Schools in Oxford.

The final puzzle was a 15 x 15 barred-grid advanced cryptic of fifty-seven lights, based in considerable measure on OUP reference sources. Contestants were provided with reference books, each person being supplied with the full (then 13-volume) OED, the ODQ, and three or four of the Oxford "Companions"; all other reference books were banned.

Contestants were allowed two hours for solving, and the rules resembled those of The Times competition in that the person with the quickest all-correct solution would be the victor. One contestant finished the puzzle in a little under fifty minutes, followed at intervals by a handful of others. It turned out, however, that the fastest finisher and most of those finishing a little later had a mistake of just one letter.

The time bonus system was thus relied upon only for awarding the places from second to fifth, and the person with the only all-correct solution was declared the winner, in a rather exciting prize-giving session in which most of the contestants were unaware of the outcome until the very last (i.e the first) prize was awarded.

Appropriately, in view of his connection with OUP, the sponsors of the event, and his own illustrious record as a crossword solver, the late Dr John Sykes made the after-lunch speech at the prize-giving ceremony. It was a wonderfully informed and informative survey of crossword puzzles and language use. I wish now I had asked for a copy of it subsequent to the event.

Miscellaneous Information

Stuff that fits nowhere else...

• The organisers seem to be pleased when people outside the set of 20 or so "frequent finalists" reach the final or win prizes in it.

• Useful information about the Times "style rules" for puzzles:

• Since Brian Greer became Crossword editor in 1995, quotation clues have been banned.
• There is never more than one hidden word clue in a Times puzzle. There's also a limit of 5 or 6 pure anagram clues.
• The names of living people never appear as answers unless they mean something else as well, like JOHN BULL..

Mistakes can happen - there were two hidden words in one of the puzzles for the 1997 final.

• Etiquette: While the crossword editor will probably listen patiently to your comments on the unfairness of references to Gilbert & Sullivan, or Victorian children's literature, you should remember that most of these grumbles will have been made before, and that one man's obscurity is another's common knowledge. Likewise, other competitors will sympathise with your frustration at your mistakes or lack of knowledge, but may have a good stock of their own hard-luck stories. Good-natured confessions of your own ignorance will go down a lot better than (usually unjustified) moans about unfair clues.

• Last but not least: No coverage of this competition would be complete without some words of thanks to those who organize it. These include the Crossword Editor of the Times (Richard Browne, preceded by Mike Laws, Brian Greer, John Grant and Edmund Akenhead), David Levy, John Grimshaw and the late Mike Rich, who have done much of the organization of the competition and sponsorship, other Times setters who have helped, and many who have acted as invigilators. Much of this work is done for free.

  If they were allowed to compete, many of the Times setters could achieve high placings in the Grand Final, or even outright victory. In his "Cross Words" column, Brian Greer once recalled a couple of attempts at the Championship, including an appearance at the National Final. I remember John Grant informing competitors at one regional final that Mike Rich had tested the puzzles we were about to be "invited to solve", finishing all 4 in under 8 minutes. I don't think anyone present matched this performance.

Back to Peter's Puzzle Corner ...

Back to our home page ...

Author: Peter Biddlecombe
Page status: finished
Last change: