The difficulty of the Guardian Crossword, 1930 to 2026

Has the Guardian crossword become generally harder or easier over the 90+ years of its history? Chris Wheadon looks for answers in this study and finds a trend that can be attributed partly to changes in setters’ changing styles and partly to our changing expectations of what type of clues are acceptable in a crossword. Trying to compare early definitional clues to post-Ximenean cryptic clues is problematic, to say the least – are plain definitional clues inherently easier (because they’re simpler) or harder (because they provide only one route to the solution and frequently lead to multiple equally valid alternatives)? You can read my observations about this in the study.

And if you’d like to try the Guardian’s very first crossword, from 1929, it’s here.