Crosswords

[mullingar]

Is it possible to rate crosswords in terms of difficulty? Are there any that are regarded as more difficult than the Listener?.I can't imagine it but I know there are some big brains out there...

[gen2]

There are other similar crosswords around with a barred grid and corrupted clues and manipulated answers. (eg the Telegraph's EV)
Difficulty varies from week to week and different people can find the same crossword difficult or impossible depending on whether they twig the theme early on or not.

[mullingar]

Of course I realise there's a degree of subjectivity and weekly variation, do you think that this makes it impossible to rank them in terms of ificulty? If you try them both gen2 which generally takes longer?

[turnerjmw]

In terms of newspapers I do the Listener, Inquisitor (Saturday Independent) and EV (Sunday Telegraph) every week. In general, the Listener is toughest (this week particularly brutal), then Inquisitor, and EV the easiest, though it does vary a fair amount. Very roughly, on average, the Listener takes me twice as long as EV, and a bit less than twice as long as the Inquisitor. Maybe one in 20 EVs is on a par with the Listener in difficulty terms, but that usually indicates an easy Listener, rather than a hard EV.

The Spectator is of similar standard to an EV, and specialises in puzzles with some unclued answers that need to be filled in, all linked by a theme.

The Magpie magazine publishes six puzzles monthly, graded A to E with one a numerical. I would say a Listener would usually be a B or C, so you can imagine the D and very rare E grade puzzles are about the most difficult puzzles in circulation.

Of course it's all subjective, but that's my two pennorth . . .