Analyzing...
Analysis
There are 15 rows and 15 columns, with 0 rebus squares, and 2 cheater squares (marked with "+" in the colorized grid below.)
The grid uses only 19 of 26 letters, missing BJQVWXZ.
It has normal rotational symmetry.
Average word length: 5.05, Scrabble score: 299, Scrabble average: 1.60.
Puzzle has 6 fill-in-the-blank clues and 4 cross-reference clues.
This puzzle has 4 unique answer words.
It has 0 words that debuted in this puzzle and
were later reused:
These words are unique to the Modern Era but have appeared in pre-Shortz puzzles:
These 41 answer words are not legal Scrabble™ entries, which sometimes means they are interesting:
Day of week comparisons
Rebus puzzles are ignored when calculating averages.
The green highlighted squares show which daily puzzle average is closest to this puzzle for each statistical category.
Distribution of answer words by length
Letter distribution
Scrabble Score: 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
8 |
10 |
Thumbnails
Various thumbnail views are shown:
- Standard view shows the grid pattern most clearly
- Open Squares (those which don't touch any block, even diagonally) are blue
- Vowel distribution
- Scrabble score uses the same color key as above
- Freshness view shows unique answers in red (see colorized grid below)
With answers
Puzzles that may be similar to this one
Crosswords that share the most words with this one (excluding Sundays):
Unusual or long words that appear elsewhere:
Identical grids
Other puzzles with the same block pattern as this one:
Topologically similar grids
Other crosswords with exactly 38 blocks, 74 words, 82 open squares, and an average word length of 5.05:
Colorized grid for Thu Aug 31, 2006
The next two sections attempt to show how fresh the grid entries are.
In this view, unusual answers are colored depending on how often they have appeared in other puzzles.
Unique answers are in red, red overwrites orange which overwrites yellow, etc.
Cheater squares are indicated with a + sign.
Unique |
1 other |
2 others |
3 others |
4 others |
Freshness Factor
Freshness score: 37.4 – 58.0 overall percentile, 65.3 Thursday percentile
Freshness Factor is a calculation that compares the number of times words in this puzzle have appeared
in other Modern Era puzzles.
Click here for an explanation.
The chart below shows how many times each word has been used across all NYT puzzles, old and modern including Variety.