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I have just submitted my entry for Saturday's Times Prize puzzle. I completed the hard copy puzzle in around forty minutes and my on-line submission took around five minutes allowing for checking.

I have just checked today's scores and cacs completed the puzzle in 2:13. How is that remotely possible?

I think there’s a lot of people who could type out the answers in under two minutes if they knew them in advance.

Considering I’ve seen some concise crossword times of under a minute, and that’s without knowing the answers, I imagine 2 minutes is very doable.

Aha - so it's a fastest finger first competition rather than a test of cruciverbal skill? Don't see the point frankly.

no me neither - but each to their own!

There's no prizes for first and the regulars know who is real and who isn't

I should add that many of the really quick times posted on the Concise and the Quick Cryptic are actually real times - just by incredibly quick and skilful solvers

I've read that John Henderson (Enigmatist, Io, Nimrod) has a proven 2 min 53 sec from 1996, presumably with pen (pencil?) and paper.

http://customcrypticcrosswords.com/enigmatist/#

More contest winning times must be documented somewhere.

I used to be able to do the weekday New York Times crossword (back in the pre-Will Shortz era; I switched to cryptics) in around 3 min 30 sec on a very good day.

I've never seen a "Times Championship" puzzle before, but if 2:56 is the record, I can envision some exceptional solvers completing a daily Times puzzle in the low 2 minutes.

However, if there are a lot of such ultra-fast times being posted, I suspect solvers typing in pre-solved solutions.

Do the fast posts have time stamps? I suppose one could only be certain of times posted 2-3 minutes after the puzzle was uploaded.

Yes, geeker, the interactive puzzles are all timed.

There’s an excellent website called the Snitch which collates all the times and works out out how tricky a puzzle is as a result. It also has a system to work out who is real or not.

Looking at the easiest puzzles this year, the best times of the very fastest are around the 2.50 mark