Leban shared a bit of insight behind his analysis with GeekWire, and we also hopped on the phone with Will Shortz, the renowned crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times, to get his reaction to it all. Leban described the project in a blog post Monday, explaining that every future Times crossword will have the Difficulty Index added to its Puzzazz leaderboard page automatically “as soon as we have collected enough data to calculate one.” Here’s the new twist: Puzzazz has come up with a way to calculate a “Difficulty Index” for The New York Times crossword based on anonymized data from its own users for every Times crossword going back to July 1, 2015.

Puzzazz works with the Times to offer its wildly popular crossword for solving through the Puzzazz app at no additional charge to New York Times digital puzzle subscribers. Roy Leban is founder and CEO of Puzzazz, an 8-year-old puzzle technology company whose apps allow people to buy and solve puzzles digitally. But for the first time, thanks to Redmond, Wash.-based Puzzazz, an analysis of the difficulty of the Times crossword has been completed - validating popular thinking and offering some surprising results. The New York Times crossword puzzle is a daily ritual for many people around the world, and for those who play often enough, it’s clear that the puzzles become more difficult with each passing day of the week. A screen shot of a New York Times crossword puzzle on the Puzzazz website.

New york post crosswords