This is the crossword puzzle thread

Full disclosure: I burned out on doing puzzles around the time the ACPT moved from Brooklyn back to Connecticut. Until then I was doing pretty much every single puzzle mentioned on that blog, including the metas, which I was never great at. I sometimes worry if this is just a matter of sour grapes, but also think I really just don’t care enough about spending the extra time to chase down the metas, it’s like a glorified acrostic maybe.

I sympathize, JRatB.

A while back I burned out on themed, gimmick, and rebus puzzles generally, after decades of faithful adherence.

I loved the tough themeless Post Puzzlers, but those petered out. Some of the Fireballs captured that magic, but even then there was a lot of diagramless or otherwise un-fun stuff that did not constitute voluntary leisure activity for me.

I've become interested in the current NYTs due to a boring office job, but I am fully aware that it's a phase.

Ahem.

There are such things as cryptic crossswords in the US, in American English - they were started by Stephen Sondheim.- but they are not too common. Main sources now are the WSJ and Harper’s, once a month. The New Yorker used to have one but it was super easy in a small grid. NYT does them on Sunday once in a while as a extra.

Interesting.

Thanks, YMP.

Cryptics I took a break from as well, but still actively enjoy. This weekend’s WSJ puzzle was fun.

I'm thinking of going to the ACPT next year... any tips (more accommodation-wise than anything else)?

Don’t you just want to stay in the hotel where the contest is? Maybe you can get a roommate to share

It's a Marriott though (but the strike's over so I guess it'd be ok?).

ooh i’d go to this

Maura: FACT (fancy a crossword tournament)?

The Nation is a good source of free US cryptic crosswords: https://www.thenation.com/admin-taxonomy/crossword-puzzle/

Just got an email from Pete Muller about the year end round up of the Vitameatamegameta puzzle. Haven’t participated in that stuff in years. Wonder if I am missing anything

I'm signed up for ACPT!

todays nytimes crossword puzzle was too hard for a wednesday.

I agree that trickery like the theme clues is more Thursdayish.

That said, I was able to work it out just by focusing on the down answers and stubbornly ignoring the theme until the last possible minute. It took me 9:10 (vs. my Wednesday average of 7:57).

27 down / 47 across gave me the most trouble.

the peter muller meta from September, "Borderline Crazy", has a ballsy meta that I found clever. the mega-meta is also easy this year if you want to try to find it yourself. in general i enjoyed reading the meta solutions but I didn't enjoy try to solve them myself.

I just don’t have the energy these days to chase down metas, sorry.

peter muller has launched his monthly music meta for 2019:
https://pmxwords.com/

also avcxword sent out the first inkubator crossword last week—i have yet to do it but it's waiting in my queue!

https://imgur.com/gallery/HEqVZ39

good luck!

Whew, the time limit is a new dimension for my solving, and by new I mean diabolical. With the exception of puzzle 5, I managed to at least finish all the puzzles (6 by the skin of my teeth, ie with 15 seconds left).

No worries. I left giant holes in Puzzle 5 the first time I did it. Are you staying for the championship?

I have to miss the championship to catch my flight home. 😭

That’s too bad, it’s always a lot of fun.

Did you participate in stuff last night? I always commuted so never did the evening events

Weird to look at the rankings after having been out of it for several years. Seems like the Connecticut contingent is doing well.

Yeah, there was a Trivia HQ audience participation thing (which I was typically middling at) after the the Mike Shenk celebration.

Oh and the Dr Fill presentation was a lot of fun, Matt Ginsberg is a funny dude.

Yeah, noticed Dr. Fill is doing particularly well this year.

Pending any further scoring changes, I came in 119 for rookies, and 531 overall! That’s some stiff competition.

Yeah, it's tough. Saw that a rookie won the C final.

I can at least say I did better than Hinman this year!

Because he didn't compete?

Exactly.

Interesting to look through the list to see who did or didn't compete.

Only 1 wrong square in puzzle 7! That’s actually the one I finished with only 15 seconds on the clock. Damn surprising, though I’m struggling to remember what the clues were.

Hah, it’s MARINES and SARDIS. So they gave me too many points.

Might want to put a spoiler alert there on the off chance someone is doing the home version

Did all this weekend's puzzles for the first time in a while and didn't feel weird.

Today's NYer is pretty sweet.

Also I finished my first Puns & Anagrams variety today (I started one at ACTA but didn't complete it)!

Came this close to last minute signing on to attending Lollapuzzoola 2019, but ultimately just couldn’t do it.

Today's themeless is hard but satisfying! I went from "There's no way I'm filling out more than half of this grid" to finishing it, it's been a while since I've worked on a puzzle I enjoyed this much.

Will take a look, thanks

That was good, thanks. I used to see Stella every once in a while at a ‘Wichcraft across from my old office.

Actually it’s a little weird since I stopped going to crossword tournaments several years back but sometimes see some of the constructors around town, most recently the one who lives a block away from me. I will greet them and they will sort of give me a polite smile and say something to the effect of who are you again?”

I love a good hard themeless. Today's took me 12 minutes, a bit over my Saturday average but not too bad.

Did not know the "fancy term for a long prison sentence" but eventually got it from the downs. Nice symmetrical cluing ad 16 / 58.

I liked today. I learned a new phrase for a life sentence.

* SPOILER *

Twelve minutes is great, you nerd. I took 27 minutes, which is a little longer than my regular Saturday. I am slow and erratic with my solving, and I've only been seriously cross wording since the summer. Today, I had to fill in two of the long clues on crosses only. On top of that, I had 'SO BAD' in for 'SO SAD' and couldn't figure out the wrong letter for a good three minutes. Generally, I don't know where Olympics take place, so any three-letter abbreviation seems like a plausible host city, which meant I couldn't catch the error on the horizontal clue. CUB? SHA? NAL? DCK? Sure, why not. )

I had that same mistake

Shut up the both of you, I took 42 minutes!

SPOILERS
I initially had ATL for the Olympics locale but at some point remembered that they were in SYDney. Wasn't sure if I needed the city or the country so I left that blank for a while (and from the cross, I spent a long time trying to somehow fit NeXT computer into the Jobs clue). SE was the third quadrant I solved, and I needed the crosses from CBS (which I had as NBC for a while), FAVOR, and NOLTE to start seeing BRONTE, after which it came together pretty quickly. I needed to get DDE before the NW