JetPunk Word Search Puzzle Statistics - Updated to September 2022!

Last month saw the introduction of Picture Thursday, and it's been a while since then. So what stats have I collected so far about Picture Thursday? And what about the other weekdays? You'll find the answer to those questions in this blog, which contains stats for the JetPunk word search updated to September 18, 2022. Without further ado, let's get started!

1. Overview

✓ From March 1 (#29) to September 18 (#230), there were 3,614 total words in all grids. The number of words in the average grid now stands at 17.9.

✓ The largest puzzles so far were puzzles #41 (Sun, Mar 13), #120 (Tue, May 31), #132 (Sun, Jun 12), #176 (Tue, Jul 26), and #195 (Sun, Aug 14), all with 30 words. Meanwhile, puzzle #89 (Sat, Apr 30) managed to remain as the smallest word search puzzle, with just 10 words.

✓ Overall, Sundays' puzzles had the most words (21.4 in average grid, a decrease from last month), whereas Mondays' puzzles had the fewest words (13.6 in average grid).

✓ For Saturdays (since April 9), India remains the most frequent country to appear, being the only country with 11 appearances! Meanwhile, Iran and Oman each appeared 10 times; Italy appeared 9 times; Cuba, Iraq, Laos and Mali each appeared 7 times.

2. Puzzle Size Distribution

So far (as of September 18), we have had:

✓ 25 "mini" puzzles (≤12 words);

✓ 70 "small" puzzles (13~16 words);

✓ 52 "medium" puzzles (17~20 words);

✓ 39 "large" puzzles (21~25 words); and

✓ 16 "extra large" puzzles (≥26 words).

The following is a more detailed distribution of puzzle sizes.

3. Average Words per Grid by Weekday

The following table summarizes the average number of words per grid for each weekday, as well as how they compare with last month:

4. Measures of Spread

Now let's take a look at the variance (a measure of how spread out the data are) of the number of words in each weekday's puzzles, as well as how they compare with last month:

As you can see from these data, the new Picture Thursday has seen extremely consistent puzzle sizes compared with other weekdays so far!

0. Caveats

Before we dive into the stats for the letters, let me point out a few things:

- These data are for letters in the words, not the grids.

- Only words from April 9 onwards are included since that's when I started collecting data.

- For Sundays, the actual words are used instead of the clues.

1. Overview

✓ From April 9 (#68) to September 18 (#230), there were 2,898 total words in all puzzles (excluding the numbers in puzzle #81) made up of 17,692 individual letters. The average word length now stands at approximately 6.10 letters (largest month-by-month decrease so far), and there are now about 109.2 letters per puzzle (also decreased from last month).

✓ Overall, Tuesdays' puzzles had the most letters in them (131 in average puzzle). Mondays' puzzles, as always, had the fewest letters in them (74 in average puzzle).

✓ The puzzle with the most letters is still puzzle #195 (Sun, Aug 14) with 249 letters. Meanwhile, puzzle #189 (Mon, Aug 8) remains the smallest puzzle in terms of the number of letters, with just 52 (again, that's excluding puzzle #81, which was all numbers).

✓ The letters A and E have managed to dominate the word searches for the fifth month in a row. Since April 9, they have appeared 2,249 and 1,802 times respectively. Just these two letters alone have accounted for nearly a quarter (or 22.9%, to be precise) of all letters in the puzzles' words!

✓ This month, the letters O and S topped 1,000 occurrences. So far, seven of the 26 letters (A, E, I, N, O, R, S) and four of the five vowels (A, E, I, O) have reached this milestone. Among the other letters, L is closest to 1,000 - currently at 977 occurrences, only 23 away; followed by T, with 950 occurrences.

2. Average Letters per Puzzle by Weekday

The following table summarizes the average number of letters per puzzle for each weekday, as well as how they compare with last month:

3. Table of Letter Occurrences and Percentages

The following is a detailed table summarizing the number of occurrences of each letter, how they changed from last month, as well as the percentage that each letter accounts for:

Interesting stats for Picture Thursday so far, but we still need to wait some time before drawing a conclusion about its general pattern and trend. The other weekdays also changed a lot recently! I am looking forward to bringing you more stats about this awesome minigame in the future.

Note: Due to time constraints, the next edition of this blog (7th edition) will be published in November instead of October.