This is the crossword puzzle thread

No, not an April Fools.

Looking at the list of competitors. Interesting that Erik Agard is not there.

Finally cracked the SW in today's puzzle by realizing one of the answers was sillier than expected

Still don’t totally grok the way 40D works. I sort of see it but still.

Me neither

Searching for it seems like there are about a half dozen sites that merely echo the answers and the clues every day with no commentary.

gtfo with 56A

Never heard of that either

No Jon Delfin at the contest either.

re 56A Sometimes it seems as if constructors are poring through lifestyle magazines trying to find cutesy terms that will be recognizable only to an extremely limited in-group and will be used by no one whatsover in a year's time. It's all a big cuddle puddle.

Stuck in SW, very possibly a DNF as I sit on 999 puzzles solved.

wait so you are on the cusp of a 1,000 day streak?

Also:

Best of luck, all ye who dare to enter the Marriott of Stamford!

Seriously, I miss you all already, but please have a blast and remember: "No sleep till Puzzle 5" ❤#acpt #acpt2022 @StamfordMarriot pic.twitter.com/VdfGEBmmyA

— Deb Amlen (@DebAmlen) April 1, 2022

999 is the total number of puzzles I've solved once I started playing in the app, and my current streak is only at 316.

I found NYT Sat very hard, I had to use the "check puzzle" several times and I know that means I am dead to everyone ITT

No worries.

I caved and just looked up 23D, and 51A. IMO awful clues and awful answers, but at least my streak is intact.

Those two I could figure out.

But not the one mookie mentioned

are you all figuring these puzzles out without doing some internet searches? I would like to, but I don't give a shit about sports stars, sports stats, sports in general including team initials, the Simpsons, US TV networks, government agencies, comics, brand names, etc and I will never learn them, so unless it's a Monday or Tuesday puzzle I won't be able to solve them without help.

I wish there were more clues about stuff I like but there aren't

I just get them on random recollections of headlines, and otherwise from the crosses. But yeah I never search for answers, it feels like a slippery slope. On the plus side I now know about five baseball stars' names. But I curse the designer who clues something like "batter stat." and it turns out to be FJL or some other useless chunk of initials.
I allow myself "check puzzle" if I've run the list of unsolved clues twice without cracking anything, but that's only once or twice a week except for this one, where I had to use it about 4 or 5 times - like climbing a difficult pitch using a safety rope.

You could try some British crosswords, not necessarily cryptics, but some of their general knowledge puzzles, which are often called “quick” crosswords. The grids are only half-checked, so you don’t end up with any of the crosswordese glue you need in US puzzles.

I do occasionally rely on the internet for some harder puzzles where I can't brute force certain clues (still happens 5-10 times a year), but that's because I'm way too attached to keeping my streak alive and so never use the check puzzle function. Otherwise the years of solving have honed my instincts to typical crosswordese that are now nearly reflexive fills.

Ah - I've only been doing it routinely for about 8 months - realised it was a good way to break the 3am mental-race if I am under stress, so I bought the app subscription and got into it more than I expected.

Is there actually a stigma associated with the check function? Since I started solving daily again this year after an eight year layoff I have used it when needed and tried not to be uptight about it.

Of course I also have been trying to do a better job of checking visually before hitting that button, and a lot of times that works but I don’t want to agonize over it.

Yeah same. I think of it as a counterfoil to the inevitable typos caused by using a screen keyboard without autocorrect available. But sometimes I will use it a few times mid puzzle to consolidate and that feels a little cheat-y.

Think the A final may be on now or just finished and their might be a brand new champ.

There even

No, he finished third.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA8htPG0oHE

Really tough Friday today -- could've been a Saturday puzzle -- though I think it's reasonably solvable and fair.

I liked it, and I think I liked this constructor's previous puzzle as well.

Yes, she co-wrote a Saturday puzzle on January 29th with Andrew Ries and then another Saturday back on October 16th with Erik Agard.

today's nyt crossword was clever, with 4 answers relying on understanding that, in the clues, "m" often replaces "rn" for those of us visually impaired

I just did before reading that. Yeah, very well done.

Quite; my vision sucks so much that I solved most of the puzzle correctly, before realizing that I was missing the joke.

I cleaned my glasses before solving but did have to blink a few times, so same.

Okay, Friday’s puzzle is ace.

And this week’s as well.

Tomorrow’s good too.

Sunday on the other hand…

By our favorite guy from the other thread.

fckn terrible

Friend described it as underwhelming.

kind of stunned by the ‘popular st. patrick’s day cocktail’

Yeah, me too!

really bad

this, on the other hand, is nuts:

last time tweeting about a crossword solving time i promise pic.twitter.com/ucJaPWu78B

— pa(ol/sc)o (@gpaolopasco) April 24, 2022

Yet another reason for me to have given up speed solving.

I don't even know how you can type that fast while reading/processing the clues?

my time today was 5:45 on my phone (might have been faster on desktop idk) and i thought that was good enough