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

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