This is the crossword puzzle thread

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

I was working from the SE up toward the NW and I got to that long Mozart clue and put in TOOMANYNOTES and it fit just fine for a second

Assuming you are talking about Sunday puzzle, not Saturday's.

Gah spoiler alert

Sorry, didn't mean to be boastful anyone on the time thing - it's just usually a decent measure of relative difficulty. There are days I wish I relaxed more and savored the experience more. But because the site tracks averages over time I tend to try to go really fast to not have a big outlier. (Note that this is on a laptop - on a phone I am way slower.)

At the risk of repeating myself on this thread I got so burned out when I reached my speed limit and couldn’t solve any faster that I basically stopped enjoying solving and it still hasn’t really come back.

Bf did a mini in 10 seconds and I was appalled
To get him back, I secretly loaded one up in the NYTimes app, learned it, and then re-did it with him looking over my shoulder on the Crossword app; 5 seconds
I let him hyperventilate for a bit before I told him I'd cheated

Sorry, didn't mean to be boastful anyone on the time thing

I didn't take it as boastful, in all seriousness! That's impressive and I have respect anyone who can finish faster than me.

I get it, jr&tb. I think my Monday best times are basically as fast as typing, so there are diminishing returns. But a more challenging puzzle makes it worthwhile overall.

New puzzler, got dumpstered by Wednesday 1/22 but am doing really quite well on Sunday 1/26. Is this just a matter of compatibility with an author's style?

Totally. Sometimes you just "get" someone's cluing style or sense of humor or range of cultural references.

sometimes you just happen to see the answer that opens everything up, and sometimes you won't see it until tomorrow when you're in a slightly different frame of mind

Yeah, like when the theme becomes clear all at once - As with Jan 28 "'The wart stops here' sloganeer" - if you have that, the rest of the theme answers fall into place. But if you don't, you'll struggle with what looks like gibberish in a buncha places.

I'm a big fan of working in five or ten minute chunks on a hard puzzle, for exactly the reason mookie just gave. Conveniently, five or ten minute chunks what my schedule permits. I'm also noticeably better at solving puzzles between, like, 6am and 4pm. Before/after my brain is mooshy. I don't like a lot of the NYTimes regular constructors, but I (honestly) don't know where to go to find other free, dece quality puzzles I can do on my phone. I'm so weary of the ETTA / ASTA /ARIA / ERIE / ETALIA fill style.

When I first started daily puzzling, I got confused by the hatred for certain creators/styles/clues at Rex Parker and xwordinfo, because I couldn't even detect the style from puzzle to puzzle. The more I've done, though, the more I've realized that I like (a) quick (b) medium-difficult (c) trivia-based (d) wordplay-heavy puzzles. Innuendo and puns are fun to solve. I'm not charmed by crosswordese or celebrity/pop culture entries, or famous wines or opera stars from the mid twentieth century, and the recent spate of conversational entries has worn thin. I especially hate 'near' phrases e.g. 'BUBBLECHEW' instead of BUBBLEGUM or CHEWING GUM and semi-real constructions that are nearly puns but not (e.g. FRONTLOADER for 'mover or destination for dirty clothes').

soda, have you tried the Muller Monthly Music Meta?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/crossword-puzzles/monthly-music-meta/

That wasn't bad! Got stuck on 46D as I can never remember the spelling of Monsieur Satie's first name.

6 minute tuesday was a new record for me... was it just real easy?

new yorker puzzles are fairly easy trivia heavy themelesses, don't know if they work on
a phone

https://www.newyorker.com/crossword/puzzles-dept/2020/01/27

like these puzzles too: https://www.ariespuzzles.com/

not sure if available in the US but the Times (uk) quick crytpic regular Teazel has a good crossword app simply called Crossword Cryptic

I’m looking for a new crossword now that I’ve stopped buying the Times. Atm I’ve been resorting to the i and the national.

i subscribed here but won't get a new issue until april (?!?!), will report back
https://gamesmagazine-online.com/

had a Games subscription for a while, good shit.

they are exorbitantly expensive! i think it's $30 for 6 issues via subscription which is almost always like 20% of newsstand but not here

if you're primarily after American-style crosswords there's plenty of indie options that are a better value

would love to hear about on paper options that don't suck

these are free and dece: https://www.brendanemmettquigley.com/

American Values Club, the now long-former Onion AV Club crossword, sorta kicked off indie crossword subscriptions afaik, and I can vouch for the quality and relative freedom from the tired NYT house style https://avxwords.com

AV Clubs are good, yes

The Inkubator is a good AVCXword spinoff

https://inkubatorcrosswords.com/

Also ulysses you'll probably get your first issue soon—they're pretty far out as far as dating issues goes

good! I thought that was nuts to buy in january and have to wait three months!

My conceptual art piece of the day https://imgur.com/hJpHfU0

https://m.imgur.com/gallery/zIsbIrK

Oh forget it.

i dig the concept

Is it some kind of rebus?

Another good themeless today! 27:38 for me.

Deviously clever NYT puzzle today

Yes! I quite liked it.

same. cracked it with the "school daze" clue