I turned on Google Analytics a couple of days ago and I now have some data about you, dear readers. For example, 80% of you use Windows. I thought the Mac total (18%) might be higher. Those of you on Apples prefer Safari more than 2 to 1 over Firefox. The next most popular OS is the iPhone. Does that even work on my blog?
You come from around the world, but mostly U.S. and Canada. The state with the most visitors is New York followed by California. The city with the most traffic is New York followed by, as it happens, Brooklyn. The "heat map" of NY shows more specifically where the hits originate. Bigger circles mean more visitors. Click it for a larger view.
I bragged in a previous post that I could bring traffic to my site by using a tough clue as a blog post title, so how did that work out? Over the next day, 136 people got directed here by typing "Stellar swan" into a search engine. Tiny numbers for the established crossword blogs but big news for me. Still, nearly as many visitors came here by typing "Rex Parker triangulation" which continues to crack me up. If you want Rex (mini-bio) his blog is here. Sorry to divert you. On my stats site www.xwordinfo.com the most common search phrases are "Nancy Drew's guy", "Bourg's department", and "Fangorn forest dweller" which says something about which clues people struggle with. The answers are NED, AIN, and ENT, if you've forgotten.
Of course this isn't a true cross section of crossword solvers, only people who read my blog. Smart solvers go to one of the sites listed in the left column which provide, how can I put this, useful information. Really smart solvers don't need help at all.
The month ends with Paula Gamache's Jan 31 puzzle (answers) and she falls victim to a software bug. Apparently some people have problems with the notepad feature of Across Lite so info that used to be hidden away in the notepad now gets included as part of the title instead. Too bad. Sometimes you want to figure out the trick on your own.
That made the title longer than my program at www.xwordinfo.com was expecting so uploading my solution failed and I had a bug to fix too. It made it a frustrating day since, because of a dumb error, I couldn't finish the puzzle without looking up answers. Damn.
Of special note, this puzzle marks the NYT debut of both OPIUM DEN, safely ensconced in the literary reference "Setting in Sherlock Holmes's 'The Man with the Twisted Lip'" and BRAIN DEAD, gingerly clued as "Not just stupid." And finally, I should have saved my offensive post for today since Paula introduces the first NYT fart joke in my memory with WITS END. Brava! I mean, I'm thinking of canceling my subscription in protest!
The print puzzle has that note right out there in plain sight, so online solvers are not getting anything different by having it in the title.
Posted by: Ellen | January 31, 2008 at 11:41 AM
Ellen's right. I'm not sure if that makes me happy or sad. I'm glad I didn't get the lesser experience just because I solved it on line, but I got robbed of an aha moment that would have been fun to discover on my own. Maybe I over-estimate myself. I couldn't figure out the O-bow on my own so maybe I'd have failed to figure out the broken words too. I would have appreciated the chance to try, though. Thursday should be deep enough in the week for that. I do still wonder still if we've seen the last of the Across Lite notepad entries.
Posted by: JimH | January 31, 2008 at 11:50 AM