Festive Survey 2012 – Results

30 comments on “Festive Survey 2012 – Results”

1. Thanks for doing this again. Most salient finding for me is the love of Dickens, especially pertinent as I’m currently around two thirds of the way through his canon – worth at last a week of blog posts!
2. Yes, thanks for doing this, Sotira. It’s very interesting. The large majority of contributors living in the UK should not really come as a surprise but it goes against the impression I have gained judging by the contributors to the blog in recent years. Of course in many cases I am only guessing where I think commenters live but one gets to know about most of the regulars. Obviously there must be many more reading than contributing.

   I am pleased to see the overwhelming majority are against or at least not actively in favour of naming setters in the daily Times. The decision to name in the Sunday Times has spoiled my enjoyment to a degree.

3. I think both the age range and location of participants are very interesting and should be of interest to The Times. It is heartening to see so many young people involved and perhaps being assisted by our blog. It also demonstrates that the number of readers far exceeds the number of those actively participating.

   Great work Sotira and many thanks

4. So I’m going to die in my seventies.
5. Some very interesting results. I wonder if there’s a “statistics for dummies” answer to an apparent anomaly. On the one hand only a tiny sliver of current respondent/solvers are between 18 and 25, whereas by far the largest wedge in #17 say they started solving around that age.
   Lovely job Sotira!
6. It’s a bit hard to tell. It could simply mean that the 18-25 age group nowadays just doesn’t do crosswords, whereas in the past that age group did (that age group in the past now being represented by some of the 36-90 year-olds who make up the bulk of the survey respondents). Or it could be that lots of 18-25 year-olds DO do the crossword but they just don’t use this site (or like filling in surveys, or both).
7. Thank you Sotira for an interesting exercise. I’m not sure how the musical instrument and chess questions tell us anything though. As 3/4 of solvers are graduates (plus), might be interesting next year to ask what was first degree subject… not often relevant to occupation (certainly not in my case!). Also perhaps, who does other cryptic crosswords as well / if so which ones? And frequency of solving TC – every day, most days, once or twice a week…
8. Another thanks from me for these fascinating titibits (I’m AndyOwl on the main site, btw – don’t know why I’m not logged in here).

   The survey makes depressing reading. Times crossword solvers have a similar age profile to many other declining groups. Unless younger people are involved, there won’t be sufficient solvers to justify the continuing existence of the puzzle. The answer to the statistical anomaly is that it isn’t one: it’s simply that not many young people are taking up the Times (you only have to see the age profile at the championships to see this).

   The solution? Not sure. Publish the crossword in the Mail too? (that’a a joke, by the way). Less elitist references to cricket, plants and literature, and more to modern things (IT, social media, etc)? Accept decline gracefully? Not sure …

   Incidentally, at 48 I’m one of the spring chickens!

   1. Isn’t it at least as likely that a liking for (and proficiency at) crosswords is something that typically comes to people later in life?
   2. AndyOwl, I drew a similar conclusion: things look a bit gloomy. I suppose with fewer printed newspapers lying around, it’s just inevitable that youngsters will not even see crosswords often enough to be tempted by them.

      Perhaps it’s up to the older generations (that would be us – I’m another forty-something) to be more active about it. I know that at least a couple of our regulars are in teaching and actively introduce their charges to the delights of cryptic puzzles. Well done, them. And others evangelize in a more ad hoc way.

      As for modernizing, I’m torn. The Times puzzle already had a sense of the venerable about it when I began solving, a light dusting of ancient nobility on its typeface. That’s part of what drew me to it. If it changed too much it might lose its soul.

      Perhaps the answer is less to change the content, more to change the marketing (which has always mattered, even 100 years ago). Some responses to Q32 showed a real antipathy to social media, which I entirely understand. But that’s part of life for teenagers and young adults now. Where’s The Times crossword’s Facebook page? (the NY Times puzzle has one, with more than 5,000 ‘likes’). A case of change or die, I think.

      Of course, Inspector Morse drew a whole new raft of solvers into the fold. It would sure help if the next Jason Bourne, or Russell ‘Stringer’ Bell, or Sarah Lund, for that matter, were to be a crossword addict.

   3. When I first attended the championship back in 1998, I was one of the youngest there. When I attended the championship last year, I was still one of the youngest there (another 40something). So that’s some anecdotal evidence that there hasn’t been any great uptake amongst youngsters over the last ~15 years.

      I don’t know whether the problem is reputational (Eton provosts boiling eggs), or if youngsters try puzzles but find the learning curve too difficult, or if they try puzzles and find them boring, or if they simply never encounter them. There’s enough interest in Sudoku to suggest that people still like puzzles, and enough interest in Harry Potter to suggest that people still like words, so perhaps it is marketing that is the key.

      It would be interesting to see the results if a similar survey was conducted for other cryptics. Puzzles such as those in the Guardian and Independent have a few differences (named setters, more licence to stray from Ximenean clueing, themes, etc) that might make them more appealing to the newcomer (plus they’re free online.) But, like sotira, I wouldn’t necessarily want to see any of those features in the Times, as then it would stop being the Times.

      1. Having looked through my archives, the winner of that 1998 London A regional final was one Mr P Biddlecombe (who needs no introduction), closely followed by Mr J A Sever (ditto). In 5th place was another finalist from 2012. M. Goodliffe was slacking in 27th.
         1. Results don’t always tell the whole story. Back then, 4 puzzles were done one at a time, and the full results so far went up in the tea break before the last one. The usual suspects scanning the results noticed that “M Goodliffe” was all correct and disappearing into the distance (possibly 8 or 10 minutes ahead). He made one mistake in the last puzzle and I didn’t get to meet him until 1999, but the writing was on the wall. In 1999 he made no mistake at the equivalent stage, or when winning his first final.
   4. Maybe the answer is to tap into the current celebrity culture:

      – get one or two celebs (Steven Fry and Cheryl Cole, say) to take part in the Championships;

      – Get one of the TV stations to commission a crossword-based show along the lines of Celebrity Masterchef, Strictly, Dancing on Ice etc;

      – shoe-horn crossword-solving into one of the existing celeb-fests e.g. a crossword-solving dog on Britain’s Got Talent, have a bushtucker trial where you have to solve a crossword in a bath of scorpions on I’m a Celebrity, get Lord Sugar to set the Apprentices a task to compile a crossowrd and sell it to a broadsheet, ask Nigella and Jamie to knock off the Times crozzer while they wait for the salsifis to boil…

9. Maybe the times should have an under 25 crossword competition alongside the open competition. Both could solve the same crosswords.
   I also feel that the times shot itself in the foot by dropping the competition for several years. I think this website is a fantastic boon for solvers, particularly those like me who are rediscovering the crossword after many years. Surely it would be in times’s interest to help publicise this site. Pendrov
   1. The U-25 suggestion is a very good one, I think. Re-reading what others have said, I have similar experiences to others: the first time I attended a regional qualifying heat, I would have been young enough to be eligible, and suspect a “junior” competition would have made it less intimidating. (Looking on the positive side, I should have told myself that health permitting, I might have another 50 attempts at cracking it, and not to worry about it even if I never got any faster, but we all get wiser with age). And I agree it is slightly worrying for the future that 20 years on, I still feel relatively young on Finals Day, if hopefully less intimidated by the occasion.

      There again, it’s dangerous to go to extremes. I despair when venerable institutions such as Radio 4, or Test cricket – to take two other things I love besides the crossword – suddenly decide they need to change their essential character in order to appeal to a young audience; at this point I begin to mutter darkly about letting 12-year olds run things [(c) Ed Reardon], which suggests I’m settling nicely into my middle-aged persona (and the statistics suggest should see me good for a while yet).

      In short, I’m just rambling now.

      P.S. Nice work, Sotira.

      1. Do you remember if there were many other people of your age at that heat? It may be that you were highly unusual, and the overall age mix has not changed much. Last year was my first go at the championship, and I was 39. I wasn’t remotely surprised to find that most people there were older than me.
         Perhaps there is something to be read into the fact that the two people with vivid memories of being extremely young at the championships were both finalists this year.
         I used to spend a lot of time thinking about bingo for professional reasons (don’t ask), and it was commonly said that the customer base was old and therefore bound to die out. The customer base was indeed old, but the average age was very stable (indeed slightly declining) over long periods. So perhaps doing crosswords is just a bit like bingo.

         Edited at 2013-01-09 09:59 pm (UTC)

10. It may well be that fewer youngsters are solving crosswords, but you shouldn’t jump to such a conclusion from this small sample of bloggers for puzzles in one particular newspaper. Bloggers are a very small part of the crossword-solving community, but they are inclined to take themselves rather seriously. They sometimes also try to have more influence than they really ought to have. It is high time that someone sampled a much bigger population of solvers and non-solvers to find out what is going on. As a setter I enjoy the blogs for their mixture of good helpful analysis and nonsense (and, at times, frightful bias) but I’d be very worried if the chummy Bloggers and Setters tried to think that they alone were what crosswords is all about. Sotira has an intersting analysis of visitors to this site, and should be thanked, but that really is all it amounts to. Don Manley
11. Thanks, Sotira.

    The press release for the 1976 Championship Final gave the ages of the 18 competitors. The numbers in the different age ranges were as follows (I’ve also included Sir David Hunt – age gleaned from wikipedia – who qualified for the Final but was unable to attend):

    26-30: 1
    31-40: 3
    41-50: 8
    51-60: 2
    61-65: 5

    It would be interesting to know the figures for this year’s final.

    Edited at 2013-01-10 12:11 am (UTC)

12. Thank you for this, Sotira.
    I think Don Manley makes an excellent point about this group vis-à-vis the whole population of solvers; a self-selected group is likely enough for that very reason to be non-representative. (Still, why should there be a correlation between age and tendency toward bloggery? More time on one’s hands?) On the other hand, while the requisite verbal skills show up early in life, the vocabulary and general knowledge one needs for these puzzles take some time to accumulate. In any case, I’m less worried at the moment about new blood than about what will happen to the puzzles themselves when Murdoch unloads the Times.
13. Why does the BBC fuss about the fact that the age-group who listen to [Radio 4, say] is old? Everyone who lives will become old eventually and then they might enjoy listening to [Radio 4, say]. It’s the same with crosswords: everyone reaches an age when it may well be that crosswords appeal more.

    But that said, it is necessary (not perhaps in absolute terms, but at any rate for the future of the crossword) that the younger age-groups at least learn the basics of how to solve. Yesterday on Countdown Rachel Riley was expressing awe that someone could complete the FT crossword. Yet if she were shown how to solve, she’d obviously be very good at it (just consider how good she is with the numbers, and also the fact that she occasionally gets a word that beats Dictionary Corner etc). Many of the (sometimes very) young men (why is it always men?) who appear on Countdown are amazingly clever; yet they don’t seem to get interested in crosswords. Why? All I do know is that it’s not for the old farts to tell them what fun they are. The ‘cool factor’ won’t be there.

14. Somehow the “festive” got lost in this which I regret. The thing is that the puzzles, the club forum and this blog are sheer pleasure – who cares how old or young we are. There is a regular solver who I know is in his 80’s who beats me almost every time – I should be so lucky when I get up there and that’s many years yet D.V.

    I only came to these puzzles in the last ten years after finding a stash of my late father’s unfinished ones from the period of his final illness. It pleased me to complete them, not without difficulty, and I was hooked. My children are still on the nursery slopes of the NY Times puzzles but I don’t doubt will follow me when they have more leisure.

    As a footnote, I have been widening my musical horizons by starting to work through the playlist at the end of the survey. Nil desperandum, Sotira

    1. You’re right. The festive did get lost. But then last year most of the grumbles were of the the ‘not enough real data’ variety. I think some deemed it too frivolous (and I’m essentially qveryite frivolous indeed). I can’t win. So this year I am definitely, absolutely, not doing it.
15. And we needn’t fret about the future of crossword setting either. Recent additions Qaos, Tramp and Rorschach show that there are young setters of extraordinary talent out there.
    It isn’t age groups we need worry about. The printed press may be another matter of course…
    1. That was really the point I was trying to make, anax. It’s not so much a concern about age in itself, more one of how to keep crosswords visible as newsprint goes out of style.
16. I think you did win both times, Sotira. Statistics prove that 96% of all readers found it quite fascinating and were grateful to you for doing it. The other 4%, whether solver or setter, don’t matter
    1. My kind of statistician, Jerry (making it up!).

       I loved the quote that popped up in one of the Christmas University Challenge shows, from Aaron Levenstein:

       “Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.”

17. A friend of mine and I often comically note the most modern references we see in the crossword, for example, Star Trek, Star Wars and ET – so close to 30 years old. It is slightly annoying that there are so many references to famous people of a certain era such as Mae West (famous for me as someone who appears in crosswords and is unlikely to be talked about in 100 years) and almost none from the past 50 years or so. It does make it harder (and therefore less appealing) for the average kid.

    I’m not saying that clues should feature Brad Pitt or Britney Spears, but I am intrigued whether throughout history crosswords have always excluded the previous 50 years and focused on popular culture in 100-50 years before era. Any older solvers able to comment?

18. This is a most enjoyable discussion and like others have noted we should be careful not to read too much into the results. It is after all festive fun and I have found the information in the survey interesting. On the age profile I can say that my son (26) and his partner (27) are irregular solvers of The Times crossword. Both work in the theatre and from memory just about every show they are involved in has a handful of solvers, some of whom are members of TFTT blog if not contributors. On the updating the topics point I echo those who advise caution lest the essential flavour of the puzzle is lost. The expected range of knowledge I guess has to try and avoid transience if it is to be accessible – as a relatively new ‘regular’ solver (2years) it is often I don’t know something but nearly always I think that I should have known it. US state capitals was probably my last ‘complaint’ on that score! I also agree that widening the media options would be a positive step. The 20 and 30 somethings in my family and friends circle do not buy newspapers.
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