At the recent Times Crossword Championship held at the News Building in London on Saturday, a significant milestone was reached both for human competitors and artificial intelligence. Liam Hughes, a 29-year-old postdoctoral mathematics researcher based in Helsinki, claimed the title as the youngest champion in the contest’s 56-year history, narrowly surpassing the previous youngest winner by two months. Hughes completed the final cryptic crossword in ten minutes without error, securing the £1,000 top prize and ending the 14-time reign of Mark Goodliffe, 61.
The final round featured intense competition among four finalists. Chloe Hutton, also 29, finished the fastest, completing the puzzle in just over eight minutes but made one mistake on a particularly tricky clue. Goodliffe and Peter Steggle, 46, faced similar challenges on that clue, while only Hughes and Matthew Marcus, 52, the 2023 champion from Portland, Oregon, solved the puzzle flawlessly.
Amid the human contest, the spotlight also shone on Darmok, an artificial intelligence program developed by Dr. Siddhartha Chatterjee of the University of Texas at Austin. Darmok completed the final puzzle in under seven minutes without error, outperforming all human participants. The AI’s progress is notable given that it had failed to solve all clues last year, stopping after 18 minutes with one unsolved clue. Chatterjee attributes Darmok’s improved performance to advancements in the four underlying AI models it leverages—from Gemini, Claude, and GPT—rather than changes to the program itself. He anticipates that forthcoming AI models, such as OpenAI’s GPT Astra, could independently solve entire cryptic crosswords as early as next year. However, Darmok is ineligible for formal competition, as only humans can win the championship.
Hughes, who confessed to an unexpected victory after a slow start in the earlier rounds, emphasized the role of luck in avoiding mistakes amid the complexity and ambiguity of cryptic crosswords. Beyond English, Hughes has begun tackling puzzles in Finnish as he learns the local language.
This year’s championship included 113 competitors, with a notable international presence. Erik Agard, 33, from Kansas City, who previously won the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament twice, earned the Richard Rogan Prize for best newcomer. Agard acknowledged some difficulty with British-specific vocabulary, illustrating the linguistic nuances that challenge even experienced solvers.
In an effort to broaden the appeal of cryptic crosswords, the final was livestreamed on YouTube with expert commentary from Colin Thomas, deputy crossword editor of The Times, while cameras captured competitors’ solving processes. Organizers hope such innovations will attract younger audiences to the pastime.
Jason Crampton, crossword editor of The Times, praised both the human finalists and Darmok, expressing optimism that the achievements of younger solvers like Hughes and Hutton will inspire new interest in cryptic puzzles.
Despite its remarkable success, Darmok’s AI remains modest about its cryptic puzzle prowess. Speaking through its developer, the program highlighted that its performance is driven by speed and engineering rather than true comprehension, relying on multiple AI models and extensive rule sets rather than human intuition. This points to the enduring uniqueness of human cognition in solving such intricate puzzles without the aid of vast computational resources.