Clue Topics Analysis

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Announcement
This is a repeat of the exercise carried out last May. It is based upon 24 consecutive Monday to Saturday puzzles from 1st to 28th November inclusive. No sampling techniques have been used.

Subject to what I’m about to say no judgement is made as to how obscure any particular fact may be. As we learned last time obscurity is very much a function of personal background and experience. So if knowledge of say an animal is required to answer a clue that counts a score of 1 in “natural world”. The only exception is if the word is so common as to be part of every child’s vocabulary. Thus neither “lion” nor “tiger” would count but both “tigon” and “liger” would. This introduces a slight level of personal judgement into the analysis but is not significant in the overall outcome.

The Puzzles Overall

The mean (average) score for a puzzle is 8.0 (up from 7.0 in May) with a standard deviation of 3.2 and a median of 8.5. 12 of the puzzles (50%) scored 7, 8 or 9 points whilst no less than 19 puzzles (79%) scored between 5 and 10 points. The lowest score was 1 (3 in May) and the highest 17 (13 in May). This distribution has a slight skew but is quite peaked. In May the skew was identical but the distribution was less peaked and stretched out with a long tail running from 7 to 13 points. So this time the puzzles are more tightly clustered around the average value but with a couple of atypical results at either end of the scale.

The Topics

This time Geography is just out in front with 16% of recorded events. Then comes Literature followed by Sports and Games, The Natural World and History bunched together. Between them these five topics account for 65% of all entries. Our third tier comprise Religion, Music, Popular Culture, Science and Technology, and Other (including Visual Arts) which together account for 35%. This is only slightly different to the situation last May as this comparison shows:

Geography 16% in both November and May
Literature 14% in November down from 16% in May
Sports 12% in November up from 10% in May
Natural World 12% in both November and May
History 11% in November down from 12% in May
Music 8% in November up from 5% in May
Religion 7% in November up from 5% in May
Popular Culture 7% in November up from 5% in May
Other 7% in November down from 15% in May
Science 6% in November up from 4% in May

Thus Science and Technology retains the wooden spoon.

One comment on “Clue Topics Analysis”

  1. I appreciate the difficulty of assessing which facts are obscure, but that’s surely one of the things that really matter. The other is whether an obscure fact actually gets in the way of solving a clue, or a combination of clues with obscure facts get in the way of solving a puzzle. An example here is knowing that Sardou wrote the play on which Tosca is based in 24085’s 12A – if you do, the wordplay is hardly necessary, but if you don’t, the easy wordplay gets you there anyway – and probably does even if you don’t know about Tosca. My impression is that the number of grumbles about clues marred by double obscurities has decreased since the last study was done (or was prompted by such complaints).

    I take the grumbles about knowledge with a pinch of salt, knowing that the current Championship holder:

    • had to work out “Bernese Oberland” from wordplay
    • confessed in his detailed report on Championship solving that he’s only ever read two Dickens books

    That’s an example from each of the top two topics – but then again he does know his cricket.

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