The Times hosts an annual crossword-solving competition and it remains, until such time as the Guardian has its own version, the gold standard. This year's competitors included a dog. Rather, an AI represented as a jolly coffee-drinking dog named Ross (a name hidden in "crossword"), and who is embedded on the Crossword Genius smartphone app. The human competitors at the event – which took place at Times' parent company News UK's London headquarters, in the shadow of the Shard – were, as usual, bafflingly fast: pondering the next clue while scribbling the letters of the previous. An AI can conceivably "think" about multiple puzzles at once: so did it outwit us mortals?