The New York Times crossword puzzle is a daily ritual for many Americans. Players will always feel a certain way about the difficulties of the puzzles offered, but now thanks to Puzzazz, a Seattle tech start-up, users of their application can find out how just how difficult the daily puzzle is. The company was founded by Roy Leban, a Graduate of the Seattle Founder Institute.
The Puzzazz application allows users who subscribe to the New York Times digital crossword application to solve the puzzle on their app for no additional charges. What does Puzzazz have to offer users that already have a digital subscription plan? Puzzazz has pioneered a method of calculating the difficulty index of the daily puzzle. They use anonymous data from every single daily puzzle going back as far as July 1st, 2015 to get this data.
The key data factor that was used to determine difficulty level of a certain puzzle was how much time it took for players to complete the puzzle. The findings indicate that, generally speaking, Monday's puzzles are the easiest and Friday and Saturday's are the hardest.
Will Shortz editor of the crossword at New York times since 1993, he is only the fourth person to ever hold the job, had this to say about Puzzazz and their findings, "I'm impressed. I think it’s good work. I'm proud of myself for editing and presenting crosswords that generally do increase in difficulty through the week. It's not a science. It's an art. If you do the puzzle on a daily basis through the week, the Wednesday may not always be harder than Tuesday, Thursday may not always be harder than Wednesday. But if you do the puzzle long enough, the trend shows that it does get harder as the week goes on."
The really interesting thing that Puzzazz can now offer users and crossword players is a chance to see how they stack up, not only against the difficulty of the puzzle, but how they compare to other players all over the world. The Puzzazz leader boards show the difficulty of the puzzle solved and the amount of time it took to solve the puzzle. The faster you solve and complete a difficult puzzle the higher you rank on the leader boards.
Leader boards and difficulty indexes are not the only reasons why puzzle lovers all over the world agree that this the best app for puzzles. Puzzazz also uses a unique technology called TouchWrite, an award-winning handwriting recognition feature, that merges the past and the present for puzzle lovers everywhere. Besides being the only app that has a 100 percent accurate print of the NYT daily puzzle. The app also offers users a number of free puzzles of all kinds to play with, and also a lot of puzzles that they can buy as well.
The market on applications is wide-open. There is no ceiling for how well these companies can do when they are successful. Puzzazz has found a unique way to tap into a very popular market, the puzzle players, and offer them a way to integrate their paper and pen games with their smart phones and tablets. Puzzazz is already one of the most popular puzzle applications on the iTunes app store. Plus, freemium applications, or apps that are free to download but offer users something to purchase, tend to find more financial success because they get through the door and downloaded onto devices for no charge and then sell themselves and their services to their users.
Puzzazz is a great application for any puzzle lover, and there are a lot of people who enjoy puzzle games such as crosswords all over the country.
