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Whilst most bears spend their days sleeping or napping and unaware, an epic duel has begun right under their noses between NIBS and MININIBS in the last few weeks.

Battling each other for often less than one minute per day... the two go head-to-head on the daily NY Times mini-crossword puzzle.

Most often MININIBS is the victor, but every once in a while Nibs pulls off an upset.

The problem is that MiniNibs' skills grow with every round and his speed and accuracy get more refined. Nibs does not seem to be keeping pace.

A spreadsheet cropped up to track their epic battle. Alas the battle began weeks before the spreadsheet, so MiniNibs' extensive victories are not all catalogued here (maybe some intrepid bear will mine the gmail and backfill the glory at some point) but the current standings can be seen at this link:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

Huzzah! Best of luck to you Nibs and MiniNibs! May your skills grow ever faster and may the best small bear win!

Congratulations to my opponent Nibs who had a Mini of the ages last night. Nibs not only broke the daunting 20 second barrier, he blasted past the 15 second barrier as well! It's a record that is likely to stand for some time.

Afterwards Nibs' coach said:

It was a bold move to guess "Aries" right off the bat but it paid off! Nibs can't believe it! He is quite certain he'll never do this well again!

Here is a trophy to commemorate an historic day in Mini battle!

Hooray!

Today we celebrate exactly ONE COMPLETE YEAR of tracking the Mini competition via spreadsheet!

As we have learned, Lee often loses interest in daily challenges (words-with-fuzz, draw-something, etc) so we are very proud that she has helped me continue to compete daily (although sometimes retroactive when she is traveling) in the mini duel!

MiniNibs still continues to be the stronger player but I am holding up pretty well in 2018 so far!

We also have fond memories of hanging out at the chicken farm with so many bears last year and doing minis... so proud that we kept the minis going!

Huzzah to a year of minis!

I can't believe I bested Nibs' amazing 14 second record that has lasted all the way from May!

I think I was inspired by going against Nibs on skype and that brought my mini game to a whole new level.

Now the race is on for 12 seconds!

It has come to my attention that the puzzle I solved in 13 seconds had 2 less letters than Nibs' record puzzle.

By my calculations, I average 1.62 letters per second (lps) while Nibs averaged 1.64 lps.

Therefore Nibs is still the fastest mini solver in the land!

Lee came to visit and we got to do a ton of crosswords together in person - thanks to Lee who has a nytimes subscription.

It was a blast! We were dominating the Monday puzzles.

Yay!

Do we all remember when the world was hushed with a 14 second score?

And then a 13 second score?

And then in 2018 came the unfathomable 10 second score!

But this week, the record is shattered once again as MiniNibs dominated with a 9 second mini thanks to SPACE FORCE.

Who knew that 9 seconds would ever be possible by bears in our lifetime.

Have we reached the pinnacle? It's possible.

Regardless, a round of FUZZY APPLAUSE for the CHAMPION OF THE MINIS, MININIBS!!!!!!!!!!

Hey MiniNibs,

Can you write a script to count how many wins you and I each had on the minis per year?

I want to see if I'm getting better!

No rush.

Thanks,
Nibs

Hey Big Nibs, I finally crunched those mini numbers - sorry it took so long (it was hard to get computer time once DJ discovered the Great British Bake Off on Nibflix).

Here are the overall stats as of August 10th, 2019:

You have gotten better each year!
... or maybe I have gotten worse?

This chart shows our cumulative win counts over time:


Here is our average win % in windows of 50 games- You can see the period in 2019 where you went on a real winning streak!



This chart shows the win-differential, I started off strong but have been plateauing this year:


Here is a histogram of our completion times:


This is the same data but using a log2 scale:


Here is a scatterplot of your times vs my times, anything to the upper-left means you had a higher time than me:


Breaking it down by days of the week, this shows how Saturday minis are the hardest, while Tuesdays are the most competitive:


But strangely I have gotten most of my wins from Tuesdays... go figure!


This chart shows you have gotten faster at solving the mini over the years:


Anyways, thanks for all the fun mini competitions over the years, Nibs!

Yesterday Lee helped us with the nytimes spelling bee puzzle (buzz buzz) and she helped us get to Genius level by finding CUDDLY and CYCLIC.

Thanks Lee!

I know this thread is about the mini, but it turns out Sneeches & friends have also been doing the Maxi crosswords (I heard Sneeches especially likes puzzles with circles and clues about butts!)

Well, yesterday there was an amazing display of crossword prowess when Lee & the bears solved the Saturday puzzle in 16 minutes and 55 seconds - setting a new record in the process! Lee made huge plays with her knowledge of Korean side-dishes (Kimchi) and the ingredients of Caesar dressing (Dijon). Congrats on the record solve!

It turns out Sneeches has a preternatural ability to solve Sunday Sneechwords (he often can solve them immediately just by the titles alone!)

Yesterday an amazing moment happened where the clue was:

Wolf (down)

and Sneeches immediately shouted "SNARF!"

At first no one believed this was right, but then it became apparent that it was! Sneeches was very happy and even did a Hula dance to celebrate!

Great job Sneeches!

Us bears like to play the NY Times Schlopping Bee each day where we don't rest until we get to the genius level, but so far we had never made it to Queen Bee (where you get every word).

But yesterday we got there!

Last week Sneeches embarked on a monumental task of solving an entire week of sneechwords where each sneechword held part of a meta-clue that you then had to solve for the final answer.

It was quite an arduous challenge - but Sneeches showed undaunted courage and astonishing skill all along the way. Sneeches figured out the final clue involved the alphanumerical positions of X's in each puzzle, which then translated to "tempus fugit" which means time flies.

Wow, great job Sneeches!

Bears celebrate with a hearty round of fuzzahs!

Yesterday Sneeches transcended into the flow state and demolished a Sunday puzzle in 30 minutes! The puzzle was all about the big dipper and the little dipper and Sneeches figured out certain positions were an X in one direction and an I in the other direction, and when you combine X and I you get a star!

Sneeches is amazing at Sneechwords!