Every grid is timed, and the temptation is to move quicker. That almost always makes people slower, because a single wrong crossing costs more than a whole careful pass.
What the clock measures
The timer starts when the puzzle is readable — not when the screen changes — and stops when you accuse correctly. Your best time per puzzle is kept, and where enough people have played the same grid you are told where your time stands.
The arithmetic of a mistake
Suppose you cross out a name on impression rather than proof and it turns out to be the culprit. You reach the end, find nothing standing, restore the grid, and redo the last step. That is a minute, sometimes two.
Now suppose you had spent five extra seconds checking. Over a twenty-name grid with five clues, being careful on every single judgement costs perhaps thirty seconds. The careful version wins on average and wins by a lot in the worst case.
This is why the two help tools cost 45 seconds each rather than being free or forbidden. It is roughly what a mistake costs, so using help when you are genuinely blocked is a fair trade — and using it instead of reading is not.
Fewer passes, not faster ones
Real speed comes from reducing how many times you look at each card:
- Open with the clue that removes the most names, so later passes are over a smaller field.
- Once the field is small, switch to reading name-by-name against all clues at once.
- Cross out the moment one clue disqualifies a name — do not finish checking the others.
- Do the counting clues last, when there are few names left to count.
That is four habits, and together they typically halve the number of card-reads in a grid. Nothing there involves moving your eyes faster.
Practising deliberately
Pick the clue type you are slowest at and play the free-play track that leans on it: extreme for counting, easy for reading at a glance, marathon for stamina. Play the same rung several times — the grid is reshuffled each run, so it stays a genuine test.
Then use the daily dossier as your measurement, once a day, and leave it at that. Chasing a personal best on a grid you have already solved teaches nothing.
Related reading
- How to handle the clues you have to count — Vowel counts, doubled letters, name lengths and comparisons between the two halves of a name. Why they are the hardest clues to apply and how to make them reliable.
- The order you apply clues in changes everything — Clues are numbered for reference, not for sequence. How to spot the clue that halves the field, and why applying the same clues in a different order can nearly double your work.
- Daily dossiers or free play? — Three shared puzzles a day against a sixteen-rung ladder in four tracks. What each mode is good for, how streaks work, and why a replayed rung is a new puzzle.