I've finally abandoned usernames since most solvers have chosen player names that are likely to be unique (often their original usernames anyway), and the remainder are presumably prepared to take a chance with their first names.

Here then are the results for June, with May's positions shown in brackets:

1 [6] hjseidman (157 points, averaging 6.54 points per day)
2 [2] Jason (139)
3 [13] Magoo (137)
4 [3] MarkW (111)
5 [1] rvong (92)
6 [22] Shaun (65)
7 [8] jon88 (57)
8 [11] aphisinoz (52)
9 [15] John Young (46)
10 [16] tonysever (45)
11 [4] PeterBiddlecombe (44)
12 [9] lickert (41)
13 [5] neil23 (40)
14 [21] gormlessgracie (36)
15 [7] Jackie (34)
16 [14] Timcsmith (32)
17 [25=] bannman (24)
18= [27] adamsanitt (20)
18= [-] madhibbie (20)
20 [17=] Heyesey (19)
21 [-] Pieman (18)
22 [17=] mistigris (15)
23 [10] shanson (13)
24 [29=] Shane (12)
25 [12] Vicky (10)
26= [17=] HenryBW (9)
26= [23] oughamh (9)
28 [-] Simon (7)
29 [34] neilr (6)
30 [-] andyw123 (4)
31 [-] Puzzleplease (3)
32 [-] pilawski (2)
33 [-] Ilan (1)

Congratulations to hjseidman for leading the field this month by a substantial margin. In calculating her daily points average, I've discounted the flawed first puzzle of the month which no one solved correctly. Magoo improved significantly on last month's performance, though Jason managed to overtake him on the final day of the month to take second place. Shaun (who is often absent from RTC for several days at a time, which accounts for his fluctuating scores), aphisinoz, John Young and I all regained places in the top 10.

Many thanks to Heyesey for confirming that his 53 seconds for the May 8 puzzle was achieved by fair means, and that he in fact usually completes all but two or three of the clues in considerably under a minute. He demonstrated his impressive typing speed by recording 44 seconds as Heyesey2 on June 16, and one of the reasons for the difference between my scores above and the scores that the Times's RTC computer would have produced is that I redistributed Heyesey2's 10 points to the next 10 fastest solvers on that day. (The other reason is that Jason claimed null's 6 points.)

While I had slight doubts about Heyesey, I have much more serious doubts about madhibbie, who ostensibly achieved two first places during the course of the month, but otherwise recorded very slow times. If you're reading this, madhibbie, perhaps you could let us know whether your first places were achieved by fair means. If madhibbie's scores are discounted, then the only differences to the monthly table's order would be that Pieman would join Heyesey at 19= (to where the latter would have risen by the removal of madhibbie), HenryBW would join Vicky at 24=, Puzzleplease would join andyw123 at 29=, and myles would enter the table to join Ilan at 32=.

Once again the slate is wiped clean, and there's everything to play for in July.

tony-sever.livejournal.com/

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