This is the crossword puzzle thread

On Saturday 1A, 10D, and 47A were surprises to me (the first is pop culture, the second a tricky science thing, and the third a piece of I guess commercial culture?).

Fortunately, for me, they mostly didn't cross with equally obscure things. Or things that are obscure in the same way.

My weaknesses are sports and movies. That's why the puzzles I can't finish unassisted are ones where my weaknesses cross. Like "1973 Superbowl MVP" and "1952 Best Supporting Actress nominee" upthread - if those two clues were to cross I would be lost, and have to just run through every letter that was phonologically possible to get it right.

i didn't know 1A or 10D either, and 22A was entirely new to me

kinda wonder if they considered making an obscure chapo reference with 40A

Re. N.Y. times crossword of 6/10/20 no. 0506: Prepared by Ali Gascoigne

Many answers appear to arbitrarily have missing “r”s. Seems kind of silly. I saw no clues suggesting this. I’m rather new to crosswords. Seems like this was not at all accidental, but It certainly dramatically upped the difficulty. Didn’t like it.

Thanks for any input.

Do you mean the one by Amanda Rafkin and Ross Trudeau? I don't see that clue in the one I did today.

that's the crossword from may 6, not today. the trick is that in eight squares the answer is UR (which you can input on the app using the rebus button)

and it is kinda bullshit because it's a wednesday puzzle, which typically do not have rebuses. usually that would be a thursday

For example today's, which you need to check out the 'info' for if you're working on the app (the iOS one at least). It's also slightly poorly clued for 20 across - given the gimmick, '59- and 62-Across' would be better, I think.

I agree with mookieproof that rebuses are unusual on Wednesdays. Perhaps if there's a gimmick but the overall difficulty is Wednesday-esque they'll let it slide.

For that May 6 one, yes, those squares need UR in them. I should add that the "revealer" is at 52 across: "Words on a mall map... or a punny hint for eight squares in this puzzle."

I dunno, I thought it was cute: You are here -> UR here. By that point I'd figured out the gimmick (by methodically solving the down answers) but didn't know why until I got to 52A.

That's sometimes what happens to me with gimmicks and themes: I know I'm right, but I don't know why. Sometimes I don't even care why.

the sheer fuck you-ness of “william and mary, e.g.” being “NAMES” is infuriating and also amazing

I think of that as simply good cluing, because it capitalizes on ambiguity.

Ditto any clue where the meaning changes if a word is capitalized or not, but it comes at the front of the clue so it has to be capped. Or when the tense is unclear from the clue, and you have to figure that out.

If it were just "insert synonym here" or "insert the answer to this trivia question here," it wouldn't be a puzzle.

I think I draw the line where a word in the clue both needs to be pronounced differently and is an awkward construction - 'flowers' for 'rivers' being a particular example.

I mean, I'm only human, so the sun will shine on any answer which I actually get from the clue rather than the checkers.

Hmm. Personally I'd rather scratch my head over "flowers" for "rivers" and be pleasantly surprised when I figure it out, as opposed to the you-know-it-or-you-don't stuff like "1964 Best Actress nominee" or "1987 NL Series MVP" or "Belgian provincial capital."

For me, the ambiguity of e.g. Polish (nationality) vs. polish (wood-finishing product) is what makes puzzling worthwhile and fun - the initial mystification, the gradually working out of crosses, the slow buildup of educated guesses, and the final "ah-ha!" moment of seeing why a river could be called a flow-er.

or maybe the answer is WORD

FWIW, “Flower” for “river” shows up all the time in Cryptics. See also “number” for “feeling more numb”,

i don't mind clues being a bit tricky but no one in real life has ever used 'flower' for 'river'

In cryptics misdirection is more the point, so I’d say it’s fair game.

Okay but what about something like "Capital of Mexico" yielding PESO?

Ymmv but I think these double entendres and potentially strained interpretations and sidewise puns are exactly what puzzles are supposed to be doing.

If all you want is a strict one question > only possible answer paradigm, go play Trivial Pursuit.

ymp i don’t want that, it’s cool :)

capital of mexico is fine imo

Always bloody RIAL, though.

(I cheat all the US sports ones, come at me)

yeah that’s a nice one :) the william and mary example is a step beyond. it feels a little cheap to me. like it’s slapping you down for even trying to puzzle out the relevance of those particular names. it feels slightly outside the rules. a bit of a dad-joke frankly but like i said before, even though i kind of hate it i admire the chutzpah. it’s rare that i’m surprised by a tactic in the nytimes puzzles.

xpost

xp Actually what's worse is that these days I don't have to, I've started to learn them.

I don't know if everyone gets the same random puzzles from the archive recommended in the app or the website, but one of the ones this week was from a week in 2015 when they just asked contributors "What would you like to do that's never been done before?", including one featuring an unclued entry with no checkers. The week starts here: https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/2015/10/12

what’s a checker?

On nyt you can ask it to auto-check your answers. Wrong letters have a red slash through them.

Personally I do not do this. Sometimes, on an archived puzzle, if I haven't solved correctly, I will do "check puzzle" and it will tell me which squares are wrong. It doesn't tell you what the right answer is, just tells you where you're wrong.

Oh no - this is I think lingo I picked up from the other Times - a checker is a letter in answer that you've got from a crossways answer. I meant that there's no answers intersecting with that clue - it's at the bottom of https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/2015/10/14

(I should check, but I assume that we've discussed upthread that the NYT style where every letter is in two clues is weird and claustrophobic from a UK perspective?)

Every letter is in two clues? Just the ones that intersect surely?

Sure, but they all intersect! I should probably have said square instead of letter. You can see the UK style here - nearly half the squares are in only one clue.

https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/quick/15633

This might be a general US crossword thing, the NYT is pretty much my only exposure.

Ahh yes you're right. I'd never realised that until just now!

See, to me, UK-style crosswords seem weird. Requiring all the letters to work in two different words is harder from a construction perspective, and is a different intellectual challenge for the solver. It's like the difference in Scrabble between playing for word length vs. playing for tile density (that is, multiple overlapping words at a time).

When I see a US crossword that doesn't cross completely, I assume it is for beginners and/or children.

totally

xposts I'm reminded of a classic bit of dialogue from the Hallmark channel's Crossword Mysteries

Xword Ed.: "Nightingale did the Sunday puzzle?"

Detective: "Well, not all, he just filled in the Across clues, in cursive"

Xword Ed.: "Just the Across clues!?"

Me: "SO ALL THE DOWNS TOO THEN BY DEFINITION!"

This show, man. Truly high-end #CrosswordMysteries

— Rex Parker 🐈🐾☕️🐾🐈 (@rexparker) September 9, 2019

This week’s series of Thursday/Friday/Saturday has been difficult for me—I haven’t finished any of them and I’m at a standstill in each. I flip between them to look at clues with fresh eyes but it doesn’t seem to be helping. Tough week!

I found Saturday really easy, and posted my personal best time. Friday, though, was definitely hard, and I didn't finish before the streak deadline.

I thought Thursday's gimmick was cute, and nicely telegraphed at 31D.

I agree that Friday was tough. I didn't get a foothold until the southwest quadrant (I think 34D was my first confident answer).

Today? It seemed to be of appropriate overall difficulty, but the structure lends itself to "you know it or you don't" type answers, rather than things you can work out with perseverance. Like, the long answer in the middle.

If you have even modest familiarity with Miles Davis album titles, you can confidently fill in a huge section of puzzle without even needing the downs for confirmation. If you don't, then you will have a tough time getting traction.

somehow i failed to even look at the miles clue until i was well into the puzzle : /

Funny, this week also kicked my butt. On Thursday I broke my streak because I had 'Ines' for Inez' and couldn't spot the error and had to use the correcting tool in the app.

Friday was just hard. It also wasn't fun. I got naticked twice.

I've liked today's so far (I don't do it in one setting). I didn't know the Miles Davis album, but with just a few crosses I was able to intuit it.

saturday nyt was my best time yet too

I had 8:45, vs. a 10:47 Saturday average- not best but pretty good.

lol you guys are maniacs

i timed myself once and i hated it. i felt hustled and bullied along. i like just kind of dawdling over it.

I am nowhere near that fast, best time is 13.12 for saturday

I wish I didn't care but I kind of do. It's an inner conflict.

See, to me, UK-style crosswords seem weird.

Sure sure sure - I meant from a UK perspective, I'd expect the same the other way.

Requiring all the letters to work in two different words is harder from a construction perspective

Absolutely, yes - it's very impressive.

is a different intellectual challenge for the solver.

I agree here literally, but I'm not getting the sense why it wouldn't just be an easier challenge? What's the thing that makes it harder (to solve) that you only get when every letter is twice covered?

My Thursday time was my best ever (while still terrible, Thursdays just kick me ass for some reason) - isn't it rare to see an answer like the central one?

Not as rare as you might think. Thursdays in particular are kind of famous for these tricksy ones that bend the rules.

I nearly got Naticked on a WEDNESDAY puzzle of all days.

Natick is still a funny term to me since I’ve lived in Boston for a long time and have always known about Natick. Used to pass the train stops for it all the time.

The pandemic has given me a lot of time for puzzles. Out of seemingly nowhere, I got hooked on variety crosswords and cryptics back in January and I don’t know if I can go back to a normal crossword again. There seems to be more online versions of these types around too.

Which cryptics are you doing?

I do mainly North American ones. I read fifteensquared and appreciate the UK ones for their difficulty/creativity, but I actively dislike their heavy reluctance to modernize their vocabulary/references/slang. I haven't done the ones in Australian papers as they all seem to be behind paywalls.

My favorite free daily one is Lovatts from Australia though. I do the weekly puzzles by Cox/Rathvon, Kosman/Piciotto, and the archival ones by The New Yorker. Monthly I do the ones by Aries puzzles, NYT, and WSJ. A bunch of other places occasionally run a cryptic like the Incubator, AVCX, and Outside The Box.

There are lots more links to personal sites if you go to The Puzzler group on FB. Also the Fill Me In podcast does a live stream where they solve cryptics.

Thought Cox/Rathvon did a Monthly Cryptic these days for the WSJ and the weekly was a regular Sunday-sized puzzle.