3 ms·
It's interesting that word length emerges as such a clear proxy for difficulty. I often find it easier to think of a longer word or phrase (assuming no wordpla
by jordanpg 9y ago
It's interesting that word length emerges as such a clear proxy for difficulty. I often find it easier to think of a longer word or phrase (assuming no wordplay) than something short and obscure -- the parameter space is much smaller.
Also interesting to see the step increase between Thursday and Friday. This finding is consistent with my anecdotal experiences, but I doubt it's deliberate on the part of the editors. I think there is probably a technical explanation for this. For example, maybe there are fewer words available of medium to long length between the set of shorter words and multi-word answers, so no smooth transition between Thursday and Friday is possible.
- finnh 9y agoSunday's word length slots in nicely between Thursday & Friday, which matches what I've read the NYT editors desire (for Sunday to be "roughly as difficult as thu/fri") ... and gainsays your hypothesis =) Rather than the set of possible answers being U-shaped, maybe it's a size thing: it is hard to fit in N medium-sized words unless you have the extra space of the Sunday puzzle. The top & bottom of Fri/Sat puzzles are often split into just two words (one long, one short), this might inform our developing hypothesis.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- vinchuco 9y ago> word length as a proxy for difficulty Frequency of words by string length: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/229065838_fig1_Figure-1-Graph-of-the-frequency-of-distinct-words-by-word-length-Latin-not-shown-due-to https://www.researchgate.net/figure/229065838_fig1_Figure-1-...