this is the thread where we complain about the new york times crossword puzzle

lori petty was in yesterday's i think

Of course, I never got around to it.

BASTARDS!

the new york times crossword is NOT "cryptic" in the way that UK ones are, it's a synonym puzzle, and it's very strictly constructed, essentially each clue could replace its answer in a sentence and still be grammatically correct

one could draw inferences about cultural differences represented by these respective x-word hegemonies and possibly parlay it into a tiresome article for the nyt magazine, or an actually interesting one for the guardian

the nation used to run a cryptic crossword on its back page, i suspect it still does.

we could also talk about what kind of person the nytimes crossword imagines its solvers to be, and complain about that, which would delight me

I've never gotten even half of a Saturday puzzle.

Is it also true that the puzzles increase in difficulty as the month progresses?

The Atlantic Monthly (right? not Harper's?) runs cryptics by Ravathon and Cox, who are hands-down the best cruciverbalists in this country.

I've never heard anyone talk about them getting harder as a month progresses, though. What do you do when the end of a month is on a Tuesday? Seems like madness.

I can do Saturdays about 33% of the time but it takes a few hours and usually a breather in between solving attempts. I am bringing some for my x-country train trip tomorrow.

Did they want the correct letter Ø in the answer?

You know, last I checked the NY Sun had a really good puzzle. Lots of well-known constructors. I've bought some of the collections.

OK, here's something.

WAAAAAAH!

Tracer: I'll complain that the Sundays are surprisingly boring and tedious considering their fame.

Saturday's NYT puzzle is really the hardest for me, because the answers are longer words. I can do it maybe 50% of the time. Monday-Thursday I can almost always solve, Friday about 70%. Sunday takes longer, but I can usually do it easier than Saturday's.

My complaints for this week are: "dais" twice in a row, with practically the same clue, what's next, "microphone's environs"?

I catch this thread a year after the fact, and wowee: I totally remember this one! I really enjoyed it! One of those dramatic Thursdays where figuring out the theme opens up a whole new world. It's like the moment in action movies where the hero's getting his ass kicked by an unstoppable creature and then suddenly the geek calls in and says "it's fire, he's only vulnerable to fire," and then the hero turns around all refreshed and lays his smack down.

plus did the circled spaces actually spell anything? i feel like there was something i was missing

the circles were "crossings", as in down-clue crossing the across-clue (or vice versa, I forget).

"columbus" was the first of those that i got, and i was all like "aha! columbus circle!" but no. i liked that. but then the circles proved to mean 0. i even took the circled letters and tried to anagramatize them, but they make nothing.

i obv thought "tee" at first, but then that makes the clue that goes through it "Big Eest" .. "Big East", surely?

WTF, Shortz?

Am I the only one who's a bit skeptical about this?

SLAWS may be the funniest word.

The Nintendo DS NTY Xword game is pretty sweet bcz you can have a friend (w/no cartridge even!) share a game & you solve the crossword together, each collaborating on yr own DS's screen. So much better than trying to arm in over each others' arms and omelettes and coffee while mutually solving.

Some of my favorite times have been tackling the xword with friends at a diner.

that "slaws" clue STILL has the power to bother me. more than three years later

i finally had coleslaw on a burger, yesterday - it was great - but no matter how many bowls of different peoples' coleslaw was out there, it would all just be "slaw"

the plural of "slaw", in other words, is "slaw"

Not if you had multiple kinds of slaw.

Hurting otm

No, different kinds of slaw results in "slaw", you can trust me on this

slawz

slols

slaws are made 2 be broken

fwiw tracer i have been trying to figure out what they mustve actually meant myself for like 5 minutes now

If you were at a slaw tasting, you would be asked "Which of the slaws do you like best?" not "Which of the SLAW do you like best?"

"which slaw do you like the best"

he is correct imo

BTW, did you know that "coleslaw" literally means "curly slave" in German?

if i was at a slaw tasting i'd look out over the long rows of tables, all laden with heaped platters of vinegary cabbage, and say softly to myself in awe, "that's a lot of slaw"

xpost: no, that is fantastic

no, I made that up

'Ah done reckon I'm hanckerin' for a slaw somrgasbord yee haw rootin' tootin' frick frackin' slinga-ling-dongin' hogwarshed guldurned rabbit!"

*shoots air; ground*

Hurting 2 why you braek hart

"If ain't ate all them type'a slaw, I'ma bury myself alive in a goldigger's grave, by great saint scott peter's ghost I tell ya all my ratta-tattin-fracka-lackin'-grabba-grubbin' cowlicked brown-eyed days!"

"Rabbit!"

alan braxe should be in more crosswords

It does kind of sound like it should mean that. But it derives from a word for cabbage, apparently.

diamanda galas

haha the wire needs to start a crossword puzzle on the back page!!

"Rocker Galas"

Eno, Bowie and Cale all seem like good crossword names

the wire crossword puzzle hints and answers

This goes COMPLETELY against the spirit of this thread, but ...

... am I the only person here who both did the NYT crossword and watched the Simpsons yesterday??? That seriously tripped me out!

wha happen???

I'm really glad I didn't see any news of this before it happened, because I was actually sitting on the couch doing the Sunday crossword while watching the Simpsons:

Lisa gets into crossword puzzles and enters a competition. Homer makes a bundle betting on her but then bets against her in the final competition, which she loses to Gil. Lisa finds out Homer bet against her and is outraged.

But then in the end Homer apologizes through the NYT crossword puzzle, the one I'm sitting there working on, which turns out to have not only a diagonal message (something like "DADDY SORRY FOR DUMB BET") but also the first letters of all the clues spell out a long message from Homer to Lisa!

Will Shortz was on the Simpsons

and Burns and Smithers "appeared" on the puzzle segment on Sunday Weekend Edition on NPR

ha! :)

I'm not in the habit of doing the Sunday NYT, since I only sporadically buy the paper, but there was buzz about this week's on the Cruciverb listserv because of the Simpsons tie-in, so I subscribed online last night. I watched the show first, though, so I had some freebie fills.

I had zero idea it was going to happen. It was a little bit scary, actually. Like "did I eat mushrooms and forget about it" scary.

(Although I had been thinking earlier in the episode that there were a whole lot of puzzles appearing, and obviously the artists weren't going to construct puzzles for background art, so surely they had some kind of partnership going with someone to use their puzzles...)

There were a couple of times in the episode where there were quick shots of puzzles that appeared to violate crossword rules -- e.g., two-letter words, letters that only went in one direction, etc. Whenever a whole puzzle was on display for more than a couple of seconds, it was usually fine, but I was surprised that the others existed at all, considering Merl Reagle was credited as a consultant.

Merl Reagle explains how the episode came about (not sure why it's a PDF):
http://www.sundaycrosswords.com/TheSimpsonsBehindtheScenes.pdf

That is mindblowing!

20-across otm lolololololol

How come the NY Times Crossword doesn't have an iPhone app yet :/

(...he said, pretending he's smart enough to do the NY Times crossword)

Jaymc, do a brother a favor and send me the .puz file, unless it's floating about the internets.

there are plenty of crossword apps that allow you to download times puzzles, you just need a subscription

i have a pretty lame crossword app right now

its all numbers and there's no clues.

thats called "sudoku"

E-mailed you, Casuistry.

When Yma Sumac died I felt that the NYT should have run just a blank square in place of the puzzle as a lifetime tribute.

As for "slaws," it's a long-standing NYT policy to reserve the right to pluralize anything & everything. Even personal names might get pluralized, like "OBAMAS." Foreign words sometimes get pluralized in a way that doesn't correspond to how they get pluralized in their own language, as in "RAVIOLIS," for example.

And yes, Brian ENO gets clued all the damn time in the NYT puzzle. So does ELO.

ENOS

thanks for that info josefa, i never knew that

When Yma Sumac died I felt that the NYT should have run just a blank square in place of the puzzle as a lifetime tribute.

Ha, my first thought when she died (after "Yma Sumac was still alive?") was "I bet the crossword community will be all over this news" -- and they were.

Even personal names might get pluralized, like "OBAMAS."

This makes sense, because it can be clued as "Barack and Michelle." If you pluralize personal names, it's preferable that there are at least two recognizable people that share that name. But if that's not the case, you can still sometimes get away with a clue like "Pres. Barack and others" or "Barack's family."

And yes, Brian ENO gets clued all the damn time in the NYT puzzle.

Sometimes his brother Roger gets clued instead (or alongside: "Ambient composers Brian and Roger"). I'm waiting for a reference to Spoon drummer Jim Eno, however.

the slaws of yesterday

why is no one loling at my joke

20-across otm lolololololol

― the dan glickman from the hilarious motion picture association of america (max), Tuesday, November 18, 2008 7:47 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

just looking for a satisfied chuckle as a subtle way of indicating u did the nyt xword today

Jaymc, do a brother a favor and send me the .puz file, unless it's floating about the internets.

me too?

just looking for a satisfied chuckle as a subtle way of indicating u did the nyt xword today

Oh, I thought you were referring to Sunday, and I was like, I don't get it.

Haha, I get it now.

Where can I see this solved Simpsons puzzle?

I believe my 'simp' status precludes me from soling it.

(I tried to solve Friday's before therapy and my therapist and I had like an seven-minute talk about crosswords. Yes I have useful therapy.)

Abbott, here is the solved puzzle. (No clues, though, just the completed grid.)

Discussion of same:
http://crosswordfiend.blogspot.com/2008/11/sunday-1116.html

More discussion:
http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2008/11/sunday-nov-16-2008-merl-reagle-meshed.html

thx duder :D!

so what's the second hidden message in the sunday puzzle?

But then in the end Homer apologizes through the NYT crossword puzzle, the one I'm sitting there working on, which turns out to have not only a diagonal message (something like "DADDY SORRY FOR DUMB BET") but also the first letters of all the clues spell out a long message from Homer to Lisa!

oh right

i got your joke max

67 Across fucked me up today

whatd you put, fdr?

Yeah, "OBAMAS" was not a good example of what I mean. If I could try to explain it better, the NYT loves to indulge in creating what one might call metaplurals. This amounts to sticking an s on the end of any word and thus making a plural of the word itself rather than the thing the word represents. For example, take the following questions:

a. How many words are in my post?
b. How many coulds are in my post?

In question (a) "words" is a normal plural. In question (b) "coulds" is a metaplural; it refers to nothing except the word "could" & is a plural that would almost never be used in common discourse. The NYT puzzle constructors use (in fact, often invent) these metaplurals all the time, which admittedly gets annoying.

whatd you put, fdr?

yah--i wasn't thinking too clearly this a.m.

Josefa, what are you even talking about? I'm not going to say they never do that, but I don't think they're all that frequent, at least not under Shortz's editorship.

with such a tightly regimented puzzle any frequency at all adds a new variable to consider

new puzzle!

"kenken"

semi-hilarious article from will shortz explaining the new puzzle where he seems barely able to hide his disdain for sudoku--or looked at from another direction where he seems to be desperately trying to justify why the ny times never introduced sudoku

"unlike sudoku, kenken requires arithmetic, you see, which makes it far superior, and more appropriate for the new york times reader"

lol. i havent done it but it looks like that puzzle where you have to get each row and column as well as the diagonals to add a given sum i.e. like boring math work

hasnt will shortz made serious $$$ out of sudoku? or am i thinking of someone else

Never got into sudoku, but did the new example puzzles today and enjoyed them.

yeah he has made dough off sudoku--really im just writing shortz fanfic in my head

i think the new puzzle is more interesting than sudoku but i guess its just geared a little more toward the way i think & process logic puzzles. still doesnt touch a good crossword.

Nope. That reminds me, new Atlantic puzzle finally came out.

i still like sudoku but yah crossword is best

Looks like WS put out some Kenken books last year.

I just did the first KenKen puzzle, 4x4. Pretty fun!

The word puzzle goes in the Arts section; I think any numerical puzzles should really go in Science Times or Business Day

By the way, if anyone did the Thursday puzzle a few weeks back where certain squares were filled with the letters HEAD, what did you mark into those squares while working? Because I enjoyed drawing tiny little heads in there.

http://www.kenken.com/images/main_tagline.jpg

GEDDIT?

Its creator is kind of sexy:

http://www.kenken.com/images/main_sub_left7.jpg

ok in the spirit of the thread here is a complaint about kenken: it prevents me from folding my paper into a perfect rectangle a quarter of the original page size.

My complaint is that I never until today heard the phrase "play hob with."

Yeah, some of the phrases are pretty outmoded. The other day the clue "wolves" yielded the answer "mashers." Has anyone been called a masher since 1930-something?

One that really pissed me off recently: clue = vacations, answer = RANDRS. Plural acronym!!! Rest and relaxations???

holy shit -

http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/

Both "masher" and "RandR" I learned in my youth from extensive watching of Bugs Bunny cartoons.

One that really pissed me off recently: clue = vacations, answer = RANDRS. Plural acronym!!! Rest and relaxations???

this is really common ny times style!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabbit_Twouble

I've seen RANDR before, but don't recall RANDRS. As noted above, NYT often invents plurals. I'll leave it to any former military (or Bugs Bunny) as to whether they've ever used "we went on three r-and-r's last year" in a sentence.

holy shit -

http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/

What are you holy-shitting about? That it exists? If you like Rex's blog, check out Diary of a Crossword Fiend, whose author does not only the NY Times every day, but also a half-dozen other papers and even more puzzles syndicated online or in nontraditional venues.

i check rex's blog every sunday--if he says the sunday puzzle is easy or medium, i'll do it. otherwise, i won't bother

Ha, a couple times I've felt awesome about having solved a Wednesday fairly quickly and then found that Rex rated it uncommonly easy.

i still can't really get through a thursday puzzle :/

the answer for "bush not seen much today" is pretty o_O

That's one of those clues that cleverly exploits the convention that all clues start with capital letters (thus misdirecting the solver into thinking it's a member of the Bush dynasty), but I agree that "bush" is sort of a weird word to use in that context.

Today didn't know what a "dabbler" was until I looked it up.

I'm really liking Ken Ken. The six square one is requiring me to xerox it to figure out the possible permutations.

or rather today's friday one is. I was gold until today.

Ha. I usually do them on line. Today at lunch I took the restaurant newspaper and did the regular crossword and the 4x4 and had to get back so I didn't too much of the 6x6. But I screwed up the 4x4 and had to redo it and felt like an idiot because of the all the inky scribbles.

I originally messed up the little three square El where it was supposed to add up to 7. I had a block on one of the ways to do it.

But it is definitely an enjoyable puzzle. Exercises a fun part of the brain, doesn't feel like just cranking through an algorithm.

Wait, I totally did the one with the "Bush not much seen today," but I can't seem to remember what the answer turned out to be!

it was AFRO i think

Yup.

Oh right! Yeah, that was annoying, mostly because ... by the logic of clues, "bush" should be a clear substitute for "hairstyle," and I don't think I've ever heard it used that way. I mean, a descriptive noun just doesn't fit clue-logic there.

Right. Have rarely if ever heard it used that way. Much more familiar with the terms "wig" or "rug," particularly this last as used in the phrases "rug rethink" and "the old concern of Rug & Gut & Gum" in Martin Amis's Money.

Are you guys familiar with the fact that in Webster's Tenth Collegiate Dictionary under "Afro" there was a picture of a man with an afro, but in the Eleventh it became just a picture of disembodied hair?

To avoid confusion with "Afro-" as in the Afro-Websterian person beneath the hair?

maybe the clue was referring to afro-styled pubic hair

Are you guys familiar with the fact that in Webster's Tenth Collegiate Dictionary under "Afro" there was a picture of a man with an afro, but in the Eleventh it became just a picture of disembodied hair?

In my copy of the 11th, there's still a face attached, but it's a woman rather than a man.

Mine too.

I mean, obviously

OK, my bad. I have the Tenth in front of me but not the Eleventh. I just spoke to mr finewine, who first pointed this out to me, and he reminded me that there was another change between the Ninth and the Tenth, that between nine and ten the guy's afro was trimmed down and his skin color was blanched.

I just e-mailed my brother to see if he could send me a copy of the interview he conducted a few years ago with Jeffrey Middleton, the Webster's illustrator.

Your family sounds awesome.

if i recall correctly, the guy with the afro in 9th or 10th edition also had an incredibly wide "negroid" nose.

this was the picture for the 8th ed.:

http://tirado.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/on-the-corner.jpg

i spent a lot of time looking at that clue thinking "Jeb? GHWB?"

Another Afro-Websterian not often seen today is the "backhand"-ing Arthur Ashe figure who disappeared after the Ninth.

I'm really liking Ken Ken. The six square one is requiring me to xerox it to figure out the possible permutations.

― My new tackling, kidney punching, helmet slapping celebration (forksclovetofu), Friday, February 13, 2009 2:33 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

or rather today's friday one is. I was gold until today.

― My new tackling, kidney punching, helmet slapping celebration (forksclovetofu), Friday, February 13, 2009 2:36 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

Tonight when I got home made mad rush to find print copy of the NYT only to find out Mrs. Redd had recycled it, made rush to basement to find out the super had recycled it and furthermore the truck had come two hours before. Luckily it turned out today's paper had in fact been spared and was still in apartment. Took up gauntlet thrown down by above quote and spent a long time trying to find logical way into today's 6x6. Here's how I finally got started:

KENKEN SPOILER ALERT*****
Ended up concentrating on right edge. Notice that top had a 20x and bottom had a 4x, neither which was divisible by 3, so the 3 had to be in the 2÷ in the middle. Then I... now that I look at it, I think my next piece of logic was more of guess, but I looked at the bottom 4x l-shape and went with 2-1-2 instead of 1-4-1. Also there was some "forcing" between the bottom right l-shape and the top l-shape, which I used but turned out I had the 5 in the top el in the wrong place until the very end.

OK, now I remember.

***ANOTHER KENKEN SPOILER***
The left edge 15+ had to be 4-5-6 in some order, which meant the 1- at the top of the left side had to have a 2 in it. Which meant the 20x at the top of the right side couldn't be 2-5-2 so it had to be 5-4-1 (in some order) which meant the bottom right couldn't be 1-4-1 so it had to be 2-1-2.

So much wanted "Hits with bug spray" to be "Offs"

hey maybe start a new thread for kenken

fucked up the 6x6 today somehow, in pen...

Huh. Just a couple weeks ago I constructed a puzzle with the exact same theme as Wednesday's. Guess I'll pitch it elsewhere.

new thread Les Aventures de Kenken

Just watched the documentary Wordplay. Very entertaining.

And Tyler Hinman just won for the 5th straight year this past weekend.

When are you going to enter, jaymc?

Oh yeah, today's theme is pretty fun.

But today's is crazy hard.

It's been a while for me & the NYT puzzles. Typically, I'll binge on them for a while & then get bored. A year or two will pass & then I will resume the cycle. Tonight, insomnia has led me re-embrace this vice. Or maybe not. I'm going come in swinging w/ an attempt at the Sat. puzzle & go from there..

OK, one down (w/ two errors). I had to walk away from it & come back, tho. Does anyone else subscribe to the premium service w/ the Across Lite app? I signed up for it several years ago & then ended up switching banks, but somehow my membership was never canceled. glitch in the system = free online nyt xwords 4 LYFE (hopefully).

i've been binging on a book of nyt puzzles lately -- but it's way too tempting to check the answer key when i get stumped.

not a complaint but a good friend of mine regularly babysat the constructor of friday's puzzle. (he's 15 and going to harvard next year.)

Christ, the lower right corner of today's is driving me batty. I have all but three spaces & am totally stumped & frustrated. Guess it's time to walk away for a moment.

Is that Friday's or Saturday's? This morning it was the left and lower left that were giving me trouble for the longest time.

Friday's. If I have time tomorrow, though, I'll do Saturday's. Saturday Times puzzles are the best - far prefer them to Sundays tbh.

They are rillllly hard

imo this past weekend's puzzles were a rare instance of Friday being more challenging than Saturday.

"blown out?" = error

???????!

that, i am not buying

baseball term, I think?

nope

sure it is - the fielder was supposed to make the play but he blew it, and instead of an out it's an error. a "blown out"

ARRRRRRRGH

(hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)

i fuckin

fuck

today's suggestion that daytime tv is called a "Soaper" for short was kinda...

"pulling a prank outside a house" = TPING

really dog?

i started doing these again, after abt > 10 years

have they gotten a lot dumber? they seem dumber

That's pretty standard crossword-ese tbh.

I stick to the American Values Club though, they minimize cliches as much as possible. Best crossword going.

i think they're a little dumber since when i started yes

Saturdays are still p brutal

Usually the more common form of that one is TPED.

Still on extended hiatus from solving now for the past few years since I stopped going to tournaments, not sure when I will feel compelled to jump back in. Also, don't mean to humblebrag namedrop derail thread but speaking of The AV puzzle, I ran into Ben Tausig on the street several weekends ago and learned he now lives down the block from me. Come to think of it, a certain drummer who recently won a Grammy and several other awards for Best Original Score lives right across the street from me, so Jordan, feel free to jump on the 7 train next time you are in NYC and I will show you the local sights.

One more vote for feels like these are dumber than just a couple of years ago, even.

Dumber in what way? i'd say there are definitely more artificial, not-in-the-language entries like "TPING" than ever before. But the level of obscurity remains pretty consistent, therefore puzzles are not necessarily easier. Of course obscurity used to mean Latin scientific names and foreign rivers whereas now it means subsidiary characters in sci fi TV shows or some such.

Btw I have a namedrop too: I went to elementary school with Patrick Berry. I can attest to the fact that the dude was creating xword puzzles at age 9.

I would have impressed if you had named any of the Patrick's but The Crossword Jesus himself, I am doubly so.

I only realized it about 25 years after the fact when I finished a NYT puzzle and was like, damn that was a good one, and then looked at the credit… and then I was like, no way, is that the same dude from my school? So I made some inquiries and found out it was.

Dumber in the sense that during Sunday afternoons a while back, we might still have some work to do; on some tough Saturday clues, or even the occasional Friday holdout, or an actually difficult Sunday with a gimmick we haven't figured out (our attention spans are horrifically bad)

Now, by early Sunday afternoon, all of the week's crosswords have been completely and utterly defeated, not 8 blanks left from Saturday, nothing.

yeah that, and they seem to be going way faster, for the end of the week puzzles too. last go round i was generally doing it every day and those would take me forever, and often go unfinished. my impression now is that there are a lot more inane repeat clues that reward regular solvers, even more so than ye old oleos of yore or whatever. and an influx of post-smartphone internet cultural ephemera that has supplanted some more of the facty trivia-style clues/answers i remember being stumped by.

i'm also doing them diffrently, tho, which may matter for the subjective experience. i used to work in pen and be way more cautious about committing so i wouldn't have to cross anything out, but on the nyt web site when computer-solving i just delete stuff left and right when i see i used something that wouldn't work.

i mean it is also possible that my amazing brane has just gotten that much better in the intervening decade. actually, let's go with that.

RIP ankara btw
I feel like that answer just got straight-up banned at some point a couple of years ago. oleo may have suffered the same fate recently?

i saw an olio a while back

ha, nice James.

will shortz thinks rae sremmurd is one guy!!

oh

nevermind

I AM DULY CHASTENED

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C7NaWvbVwAEw_i3.jpg:large

Nazi what

Are they confusing pan (horizontal) with zoom in?

yes

"emgrans"?

fuck off

somebody explain to me the reason why "UNACMETTED" happened to me yesterday - I fucking hate reasonable answer collisions

is DANK MEMES really what we’rve come to

Yes

And why is Saturday easy now

Oh wait j. and I complained about this a year ago

Does anyone do the mini each day on the app?

https://www.nytimes.com/puzzles/leaderboards/invite/fde227aa-82b8-400c-807b-6512a6cba5e6

‘no soap’

Clue: They’re usually closed at night
Answer: eyes
😊

why won’t Wednesday load on my phone arrrrrrrgh

never heard of today's 35A before

Britishism, I believe.

nobelist wiesel
nobelist wiesel
nobelist wiesel
nobelist wiesel
nobelist wiesel

yeah that was bad. making up for it with a better clue about him in today’s sunday puzzle.

today’s puzzle very fun and ambitious but - and i know i’m always wrong when i think this, but hear me out - is there an error? the answer for 92 down actually goes with the clue for 93 down. and there is no clue for 92 down. leaving the answer for 93 an orphan with no clue. annoyingly i can’t quite solve that corner. but perhaps this is one further wrinkle in this puzzle that i haven’t figured out?

i mean... i beat it but I still don't understand the connecting clues. shit makes no sense today.

there was an error in the print edition

It has been brought to our attention there is a numbering error in this weekend's @NYTmag crossword. The row with a repeat "92" should read "93, 94, 95".

This error is not related to the puzzle's mystery hunt and the digital puzzle is unaffected. https://t.co/sHrwdtyDVu

— New York Times Games (@NYTimesGames) May 23, 2020

this puzzle was laaaame

yeah i'm not sure why any of those people were 'aptly' named??

the butler was gerard, the page was ellen, the porter was cole

but yeah, was very lame

but how is that “apt”?

i thought it was fun regardless. that said i’m starting to really appreciate the wednesday puzzle. no tricks, no puns. just straight up.

ok, just revisited that corner. calling the numbering mistake 'minor' is an undersell. it's really quite something. 3 clues with the wrong number. clue 95D is answered in 94D, clue 94D is answered in 93D and clue 93D is answered in 92D. what's more, there are two 92 acrosses in the grid, but only one 92A clue.

there’s logic to it, but “apt” is a weird word choice

the digital one didn't have any of the explanation about the butler, porter, etc! I didn't know what the fuck i was looking at until i opened the magazine.

crossing oleo with olio is an absolute cry for help

the digital one didn't have any of the explanation about the butler, porter, etc! I didn't know what the fuck i was looking at until i opened the magazine.

Ah, did not know that. Thanks.

I had the same thought re:olio/oleo

The constructor wrote:

My original version was more difficult: ELLEN, MINNIE, TIKI, etc. were clued normally — with no indication that they figured into the story. The solver needed to discover the names hidden in the rooms, unlocking the rest of the mystery. (I kept other first names out of the grid — a surprisingly challenging restriction!) But after extensive testing, Will and his team decided to indicate the suspects more overtly.

That would have made the meta much more interesting.

At some point it would be nice to frey a really challenging Sunday puzzle. Sunday Extreme.

a challenge today

Yes. I did the lower half. Taking a little break.

HATE IT

Easy breezy for me, got into a groove somehow where all the down answers leapt out

Yeah I think the down clues were closer to Tuesday difficulty to adjust for the gimmick, but it led to beating my Thursday average by like a half hour

yeah it was super-easy. still hate it

Only 3/4 the number of clues as usual - I feel ripped off

I enjoyed it. I also did it at an insomniac 12:27am moment, so that might've had something to do with it. I like puzzles that make me slow down and, you know, puzzle a little more.

except the gimmick means you race through it faster, surely

I actually misunderstood the gimmick! Because of some early errant answer, I thought that the two-word answers were supposed to be broken apart in novel ways that formed other words. For example, I thought the two word answer SKI SLOPE was meant to be input as SKIS LOPE. When I figured out out the real (less interesting answer, I had a good little aha moment.

In other words I did the crossword wrong and felt smart when I got it right, even though my version was clearly more fun.

I liked saturday

Same, it was a tough but fair challenge with nice fill.

i don't wanna spoil it but the first and last across clues struck me as big "FUCK IT I BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS FOR TWENTY YEARS AND AHMA FINALLY MAKE IT HAPPEN" energy

Yeah, that was super elegant!

1A was extremely handy for me

I had to look up a few letters in 1A. Absolutely no way of getting that. Client was good today.

on the other hand, sunday is a dud: too many proper names, crosswordese and bad cluing

The WaPo sundays are free and I think they are consistently more interesting than the Times' sundays

bottom left corner troubled me today.

I'm all for difficult solves, but I do not like today's, especially the cluing.

I feel like I barely pulled off Genius in the Spelling Bee today and I’m officially sick of thinking about words that contain “ent.”

what the hell

I get the standard NYT access through my work, but I don't subscribe to the crossword. So I play Spelling Bee until it stops me, I stuuuuuggled to hit even that limit today.

lol what

my wife took the paper with her to france today

today’s was funny. I handed the phone to my wife when I was done and she started to try and finish it, until I stopped her by saying “look at the timer.”

my app wouldn't accept that! had to cheat and search for how it would be accepted

weird that 35-across wasn’t part of the gimmick in today’s sunday puzzle. i realise it wouldn’t have been symmetrical the way these answers usually are but who cares?

today’s alright but felt a little like a slog.

https://pudding.cool/2020/11/crossword/

where can i see the rise and fall of judge lance ITO as a crossword clue

fucken kiss-ass 1down today

4.13 Monday in thseems like a genuine cap for me. I am fairly certain I couldn’t go too much faster unless I already knew the answers

you guys are all maniacs

i don't really approve of thursday gimmicks but this was nicely done imo

i got hung up on a specific corner that I blanked on but otherwise agreed

seminal punk band WITHOUT ‘the’ ffs

depends on comma placement surely?
seminal punk band, with 'the'
seminal punk band without 'the'

said seminal punk band has absolutely no relation to 'the'

colloquially i hear them referred to as "the xxxx" and "xxxx"

what a terrible theme

Do you mean the Sunday puzzle? I could go either way on the theme but I only avoid getting Naticked through sheer luck.

I checked Rex Parker's blog to see if he complained about that one bit and then I saw a bunch of comments about WOE. What does that stand for?

gtfo with this other saarinen

Hard AF today.

Hm. I did ok, except I had a hard time with BEERKOOZIE. If pressed I probably would spell it COZY, but then I generally drink beer quickly enough that they don't have time to need them.

21D didn't come easily, even though I was able to dredge up 20A from my antediluvian print-era design career.

NW and SE were the toughest corners for me, and I had to lean on a Spelling Bee word that I'd recently learned to crack 1D. Didn't help that I had BAY- for 1A for the longest time.

mildly disappointed by this yesterday, in an otherwise fun puzzle:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/biceps-plural-singular

I mean, it's a fair point, but also a trifle churlish.

Personally I want to see some stretches and some catachresis and some ambiguity; otherwise you're just plugging in synonyms.

Plenty of that in Saturday’s puzzle otherwise!

In Wed’s puzzle, why is the fourth circle an “s”… I get that “D” would be the right answer but why is “s” “filling out the circle”?

supposedly the fourth circle is meant to be, all together as a rebus, SHADE

as in shading in a circle on a test i guess? it’s terrible

sorry, should have spoiler tagged that i guess

How is S on a D = "SHADE"

It is counterintuitive, and I will not strive to defend it.

But the answer has to do with what you do with a standardized test, which is to SHADE in the circle.

Some folks have suggested that this is inappropriately difficult for a Wednesday. Others, that it was just too idiosyncratic to be allowable.

Personally I got there (not without difficulty), but I can totally sympathize with those who found it too tricksy.

imo it was a bad idea poorly implemented

which is almost par for the course on a thursday, but not wednesday

I understand writing SHADE as in “shading the letter D” like a Scan-Tron or whatever but why is just writing “S” a correct answer on the app?

the app will accept a lot of vaguely related things simply to keep people from complaining

often enough it's still too strict. imagine getting your years-long streak broken on this bullshit

woof, today's! feel like the clue on 29D is trying way too hard to be clever (and failing). spent so long in that corner in general because i've never seen 'frozen' and had multiple wrong fills for 59A as well (also couldn't get 62A for the life of me).

latter-day disney and harry potter are definite weaknesses for me

by know i at least know elsa and . . . sven?

Not a hard puzzle today but one answer is tricksy - not as tricksy as Wednesday's infamous SHADETREE.

All the theme answers (but one) share a theme, but they do so while also making sense. The last one breaks the pattern. Spoiler: The other ones have revealers elsewhere - "TRIPLEA" about an answer that already has three As in it. Or "FIVEO" about an answer with five Os. But 118A only works after you apply the revealer "ZEROG" to it. I knew I was right on all the downs, so I had to look very carefully at "OINOINONE" until I saw "going, going, gone."

I will say that it's definitely one where it helped me to solve it methodically in order - top to bottom - rather than hopping around.

yeah i didn't like how the last one stuck out

It's possible that 2022-vintage Shortz is feeling stung by the criticisms that the puzzles used to be harder. I dunno.

For me it's a voluntary leisure activity. So far I am okay with the occasional dud or something that didn't quite work. Because: Overall, NYT has consistently brought me a thing that I don't mind doing with my brain. Like, every day for decades.

I do the mini crossword, and a couple of days ago one of the answers was UPBIG. I wondered if it was US slang, but the internet doesn't seem to agree. The clue was "winning by a lot" or something like that.

"Winning up big" and "win up big" throw up a tiny handful of google results and just googling "up big" returns (a) a lot of stuff about the Union Pacific Big Boy train (b) "big up" (c) sentence fragments etc.

I fee as if I'm missing something. The internet hasn't erupted into an uproar so it's obviously not that weird. But it baffles me.

it's something you would say in a colloquial conversation but not something you would necessarily ever say in writing. "are the patriots winning the game?" "yeah, they're up big" or "did you guys finish that monopoly game last night?" "nah, we quit and went to bed. i was up big." you'd only use it in relation to winning but "winning up big" or "win up big" aren't ways in which it would be used. it's an inelegant clue no doubt & i don't think you should feel bad for not "getting" it but i think minds of the sports inclined would know the phrase

up big is an often used phrase to count winnings and to big up the home team

'up big' does not have a life of its own as something repeated frequently. it's merely a case of the puzzle creator coming up with a phrase they would like to use in their puzzle because it fits nicely, imagining how it has plausibly been used from time to time in real life, then basing a clue on that supposition.

well no, it does have an independent life of its own. jordan and dan s have literally just explained it!??

So I wasn't hallucinating. The odd thing is that the mini crossword is generally easy. Upbig seemed to come from nowhere.

I felt for a moment as if I was a German spy trying to blend in with English people, except that I was an English person trying to think like someone from the United States. Thank gosh I never applied to MI6 to become a spy. I would have given myself away almost immediately. "Aiieee! mainer gams est brennen" or whatever.

I'm still puzzled by the mini-game where you have to match pairs of shapes. There doesn't seem to be a catch. You just match pairs of shapes. There isn't even a time limit.

well no, it does have an independent life of its own. jordan and dan s have literally just explained it!??

jordan and dan's explanations both cited a further context that would make explicit an element missing in the clue. Also "big up" is most certainly not the same as "up big" as a standalone phrase and it gets used in a completely different way.

"further context that would make explicit an element missing in the clue" - this is how crosswords work - they all have elements missing in the clues - otherwise it wouldn't be a puzzle, it would be a mechanical box-filling exercise

"big up" was an excuse to make a joke, playing on the words, not an example of a phrase with the same meaning

and now we're all caught up!

‘THE[NOUN]’ is bad but perhaps, occasionally, necessary; you sure as hell can’t use it twice in the same puzzle

‘doesn’t wax’ ≠ WANES ffs

That’s a good clue

most things that wane do wax or have waxed. most things that simply 'don't wax' could are in a perpetual steady state that also never wanes. in terms of logic, it's a horribly formed clue. in terms of most crossword clues' sheer blasphemy-worthy cussedness, it is only a bit worse than average.

If anything you should complain about them platforming a Billboard clickbait list

really?

Pretty cringe, no lying

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/inside-the-new-york-times-big-bet-on-games

You know, I've had a NYT subscription through work for years, but it didn't used to include the crossword. For a year or two, I ponied up for an add-on crossword subscription, but eventually let it lapse. So I haven't really been in the habit of doing it at all. (The only crossword I've regularly done in recent years is the one on the back page of The New Yorker.)

Then, a few weeks ago, I decided to download the NYT Games app because the mobile site kept pushing it to me when I played Wordle every morning. Which is when I discovered that now I *do* have free access to the crossword! And not just on the app. So I've been enjoying getting back into it.

I'm still puzzled by the mini-game where you have to match pairs of shapes. There doesn't seem to be a catch. You just match pairs of shapes. There isn't even a time limit.

You match elements of pairs, right? When you select two shapes with at least one matching element, it removes those elements, but you only get one point however many were removed. So in order to get a perfect score, you need to plan ahead so you are only ever matching pairs with one element in common.

I think the bad things about this app and its games can be summed up by the fact that the subtitle for wordle is “untangle terms”

otm

there are so many extraneous and useless words and i hate them

Good morning. New puzzles are waiting for you.
(at other times of day it displays even worse things about ‘winding down’)
Crack the clues in today’s puzzle.
Fill the grid with answers. Ready?
Untangle terms
Group words
Connect characters
Match motifs
Decode digits
Go fuck yourself

you are being interpellated as an extremely basic aspirational dimwit

wtf

that is bewildering

Sucks

I still don’t think that makes it “modern.” The puzzle column seems to imply its “colloquial” but those words don’t mean the same thing to me

It’s not worse than that twee “story” but it is very lame

Okay today has some major mindfuckery.

I filled everything in fine and was like, "huh?" Then "oh HELL no." Then "whoa."

Yeah v elegant

it's like a sfw version of the freud nyer one

what a great puzzle. probably shouldn't have started in the middle

ffs lads

Synonym found after deleting half the letters of EXHILARATE

Pulitzer-winning author whose name is found in nonconsecutive letters of “page turner”

i mean i’m sorry that james AGEE is inevitable fill several times a month but try harder

for all of the grid embellishments, that puzzle was kind of dull in general.

57A was brutal clue and answer.

not really a complaint, but it’s weird to go six years without ARHAT then get it on back-to-back days

I learned it from the NYT Spelling Bee!