Submissions are scored on speed and accuracy. You will lose points for each erroneous word, regardless of the number of mistakes in the word. However, if a letter intersecting two words is wrong, it will count as two mistakes.
For each puzzle, players are ranked by score first (the higher the better), then by time (the lower the better). So Joe with a score of 97% and a time of 00:03:00 will rank higher than Mary who has a score of 96% and a time of 00:02:30. However, if two players have the same score, then the one with the shortest time will be ranked first.
The composite score is used to determine the monthly ranking. It is calculated using a formula taking into account three things:
For those of you interested, here is the formula we are using:
CS = (AS + 100 * 10^(- AT/25000) + 100 * 10^(-(7*DM-NP)/3000))/3
where: