As posted on the Times Crossword Club site here today…
Congratulations to Mark Goodliffe, who has won the Times Crossword Championship for a record 14th time, solving a fiendish final puzzle in 8:55.
The other prize places were taken by 2018 champion Roger Crabtree in second with a time of 13:00, just ahead of 2023 champion Matthew Marcus on 13:28.
1997 champion David Howell came fourth, with last year’s winner of the Richard Rogan Prize for best-placed newcomer, Chloe Hutton, in fifth place.
This year’s Richard Rogan Prize was awarded to Craig Fothergill.
Full results:
You can watch the final and prizegiving on this link.
There will be a full report in Monday’s Times, along with the final puzzle. The report should be available on the website on Sunday evening, and The final puzzle was published on the puzzles site and Crossword Club on Monday.
The three puzzles from the Qualifier and the three from the Semi-final will be published in print and online on Wednesdays for the next six weeks.
J Elliot’s comment on the article:
New crossword layout? Hits badly. (4)
Seems to align with the many complaints here about the new format.
And Goodliffe beat the AI solver!
https://www.thetimes.com/puzzles/quizzes-teasers/article/ai-solver-times-cryptic-crossword-champion-dgn62jmv5
Just found this as I was looking for a way to get the Championship Final puzzle, which is not coming up on the club site but an error message instead.
It works in the newspaper edition, I printed it off successfully.
Has anyone published an analysis of the final puzzle yet? Just wondering because I found the parsing extremely opaque at times!
I think Matthew is planning to blog the final puzzle … watch this space
Opaque?
Flippin’ difficult more like!
It only took me twenty minutes more than Magoo!
You can see my own blog post about the day here.
I love your blog post about this day, every year John. I’m glad you made it to the event in time!
Congratulations to all who dared to take part!
I am done with exams.
Mark Goodliffe’s solving video is now available on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkQPJd3NwLY
His solving MO is really quite interesting. Probably not unlike many others: but the speed of thought is incredible. Well worth a watch for anyone’s who done the puzzle and has a spare 45 minutes.