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

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?