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

At some point it would be nice to frey a really challenging Sunday puzzle. Sunday Extreme.

a challenge today

Yes. I did the lower half. Taking a little break.

HATE IT

Easy breezy for me, got into a groove somehow where all the down answers leapt out

Yeah I think the down clues were closer to Tuesday difficulty to adjust for the gimmick, but it led to beating my Thursday average by like a half hour

yeah it was super-easy. still hate it

Only 3/4 the number of clues as usual - I feel ripped off

I enjoyed it. I also did it at an insomniac 12:27am moment, so that might've had something to do with it. I like puzzles that make me slow down and, you know, puzzle a little more.

except the gimmick means you race through it faster, surely

I actually misunderstood the gimmick! Because of some early errant answer, I thought that the two-word answers were supposed to be broken apart in novel ways that formed other words. For example, I thought the two word answer SKI SLOPE was meant to be input as SKIS LOPE. When I figured out out the real (less interesting answer, I had a good little aha moment.

In other words I did the crossword wrong and felt smart when I got it right, even though my version was clearly more fun.

I liked saturday

Same, it was a tough but fair challenge with nice fill.

i don't wanna spoil it but the first and last across clues struck me as big "FUCK IT I BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS FOR TWENTY YEARS AND AHMA FINALLY MAKE IT HAPPEN" energy

Yeah, that was super elegant!

1A was extremely handy for me

I had to look up a few letters in 1A. Absolutely no way of getting that. Client was good today.

on the other hand, sunday is a dud: too many proper names, crosswordese and bad cluing

The WaPo sundays are free and I think they are consistently more interesting than the Times' sundays

bottom left corner troubled me today.

I'm all for difficult solves, but I do not like today's, especially the cluing.

I feel like I barely pulled off Genius in the Spelling Bee today and I’m officially sick of thinking about words that contain “ent.”

what the hell

I get the standard NYT access through my work, but I don't subscribe to the crossword. So I play Spelling Bee until it stops me, I stuuuuuggled to hit even that limit today.

lol what

my wife took the paper with her to france today

today’s was funny. I handed the phone to my wife when I was done and she started to try and finish it, until I stopped her by saying “look at the timer.”

my app wouldn't accept that! had to cheat and search for how it would be accepted

weird that 35-across wasn’t part of the gimmick in today’s sunday puzzle. i realise it wouldn’t have been symmetrical the way these answers usually are but who cares?

today’s alright but felt a little like a slog.

https://pudding.cool/2020/11/crossword/

where can i see the rise and fall of judge lance ITO as a crossword clue

fucken kiss-ass 1down today

4.13 Monday in thseems like a genuine cap for me. I am fairly certain I couldn’t go too much faster unless I already knew the answers

you guys are all maniacs

i don't really approve of thursday gimmicks but this was nicely done imo

i got hung up on a specific corner that I blanked on but otherwise agreed

seminal punk band WITHOUT ‘the’ ffs

depends on comma placement surely?
seminal punk band, with 'the'
seminal punk band without 'the'

said seminal punk band has absolutely no relation to 'the'

colloquially i hear them referred to as "the xxxx" and "xxxx"

what a terrible theme

Do you mean the Sunday puzzle? I could go either way on the theme but I only avoid getting Naticked through sheer luck.

I checked Rex Parker's blog to see if he complained about that one bit and then I saw a bunch of comments about WOE. What does that stand for?

gtfo with this other saarinen

Hard AF today.

Hm. I did ok, except I had a hard time with BEERKOOZIE. If pressed I probably would spell it COZY, but then I generally drink beer quickly enough that they don't have time to need them.

21D didn't come easily, even though I was able to dredge up 20A from my antediluvian print-era design career.

NW and SE were the toughest corners for me, and I had to lean on a Spelling Bee word that I'd recently learned to crack 1D. Didn't help that I had BAY- for 1A for the longest time.

mildly disappointed by this yesterday, in an otherwise fun puzzle:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/biceps-plural-singular

I mean, it's a fair point, but also a trifle churlish.

Personally I want to see some stretches and some catachresis and some ambiguity; otherwise you're just plugging in synonyms.

Plenty of that in Saturday’s puzzle otherwise!

In Wed’s puzzle, why is the fourth circle an “s”… I get that “D” would be the right answer but why is “s” “filling out the circle”?