Crossword Scoring

SUMMARY: Compared to dog agility scoring--

OK, after that huge post the other day about Qing in USDAA, thought I'd put up some notes about crossword tournament scoring. If I remember correctly, it goes like this:

* 10 points for each correct answer (across and down).
* 150 bonus if your entire puzzle is complete and correct.
* 25 points bonus for each minute under the scheduled time that you turn it in.
* 25 points penalty for each incorrect letter or empty square, subtracted from your time bonus.

We did 4 puzzles--two 15-minute ones (I finished in 7 and 6 minutes, respectively) each with about 70 answers, one 30-minute one (I finished in 8 minutes, if I remember correctly) also about 70 answers, one one-hour one (I finished in... cough...59 minutes) with maybe 120 answers? That last one prevented maybe a quarter of the contestants from finishing within the hour, so i felt pretty good about getting through it.

So a perfect score on all 4 puzzles would've been around 3900, plus 25 for each minute under time--and people were turning in their puzzles in HALF my time, even on the ones I felt pretty fast on!

Sixty people competed. But, unless I misheard, the top 3 scores were in the 650-to-750 range. This tells me that people weren't getting anywhere near perfect scores.

I'm dyin' to see the results and scores. Don't know how long it'll take to post them. Of course, I'm spoiled with our club secretary posting the results for our agility trials within a couple of days--and that's a few thousand runs, with almost 500 dogs in dozens of different heights, classes, and programs. So how hard could it be to post single scores for 60 people? :-)

They probably have to double-check the scorers' marks on the individual pages, and load the results into the computer for all 4 puzzles. I would assume that the computer calculates each person's score (after the scorer has counted errors) so they don't have to do it manually.

Anyway--still eagerly waiting--