This is the crossword puzzle thread

I found Saturday really easy, and posted my personal best time. Friday, though, was definitely hard, and I didn't finish before the streak deadline.

I thought Thursday's gimmick was cute, and nicely telegraphed at 31D.

I agree that Friday was tough. I didn't get a foothold until the southwest quadrant (I think 34D was my first confident answer).

Today? It seemed to be of appropriate overall difficulty, but the structure lends itself to "you know it or you don't" type answers, rather than things you can work out with perseverance. Like, the long answer in the middle.

If you have even modest familiarity with Miles Davis album titles, you can confidently fill in a huge section of puzzle without even needing the downs for confirmation. If you don't, then you will have a tough time getting traction.

somehow i failed to even look at the miles clue until i was well into the puzzle : /

Funny, this week also kicked my butt. On Thursday I broke my streak because I had 'Ines' for Inez' and couldn't spot the error and had to use the correcting tool in the app.

Friday was just hard. It also wasn't fun. I got naticked twice.

I've liked today's so far (I don't do it in one setting). I didn't know the Miles Davis album, but with just a few crosses I was able to intuit it.

saturday nyt was my best time yet too

I had 8:45, vs. a 10:47 Saturday average- not best but pretty good.

lol you guys are maniacs

i timed myself once and i hated it. i felt hustled and bullied along. i like just kind of dawdling over it.

I am nowhere near that fast, best time is 13.12 for saturday

I wish I didn't care but I kind of do. It's an inner conflict.

See, to me, UK-style crosswords seem weird.

Sure sure sure - I meant from a UK perspective, I'd expect the same the other way.

Requiring all the letters to work in two different words is harder from a construction perspective

Absolutely, yes - it's very impressive.

is a different intellectual challenge for the solver.

I agree here literally, but I'm not getting the sense why it wouldn't just be an easier challenge? What's the thing that makes it harder (to solve) that you only get when every letter is twice covered?

My Thursday time was my best ever (while still terrible, Thursdays just kick me ass for some reason) - isn't it rare to see an answer like the central one?

Not as rare as you might think. Thursdays in particular are kind of famous for these tricksy ones that bend the rules.

I nearly got Naticked on a WEDNESDAY puzzle of all days.

Natick is still a funny term to me since I’ve lived in Boston for a long time and have always known about Natick. Used to pass the train stops for it all the time.

The pandemic has given me a lot of time for puzzles. Out of seemingly nowhere, I got hooked on variety crosswords and cryptics back in January and I don’t know if I can go back to a normal crossword again. There seems to be more online versions of these types around too.

Which cryptics are you doing?

I do mainly North American ones. I read fifteensquared and appreciate the UK ones for their difficulty/creativity, but I actively dislike their heavy reluctance to modernize their vocabulary/references/slang. I haven't done the ones in Australian papers as they all seem to be behind paywalls.

My favorite free daily one is Lovatts from Australia though. I do the weekly puzzles by Cox/Rathvon, Kosman/Piciotto, and the archival ones by The New Yorker. Monthly I do the ones by Aries puzzles, NYT, and WSJ. A bunch of other places occasionally run a cryptic like the Incubator, AVCX, and Outside The Box.

There are lots more links to personal sites if you go to The Puzzler group on FB. Also the Fill Me In podcast does a live stream where they solve cryptics.

Thought Cox/Rathvon did a Monthly Cryptic these days for the WSJ and the weekly was a regular Sunday-sized puzzle.

The Sunday crossword was recently revived on Patreon, but they’ve been doing a weekly non-variety cryptic for The National Post in Canada since 1998 I think. There’s a blog that has a post about each one since 2010, including the blank grid.

are there any good profiles of Cox & Rathvon out there? They've been doing this for decades.

My friend - and neighbor! (no, not the one you are thinking of) met them once, think they live out in Hershey, PA, and told me Emily was really shy, that's all I know.

I've only seen little blurbs here and there, like these: https://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/acrostic/ or https://www.the-scientist.com/contributors/contributors--64959

Hard to believe they've been doing it since the late '70s. (See http://chall.us/hex/hex_puzzles.html for the complete list)

I've been meaning to ask if you've tried the cryptics in the Enigma and now I just got a message from a B finalist crossword guy about my
expired NPL membership.

And I'm back in. Am I the only one?

I tried that book of NPL cryptics and had little success. Maybe I'll try again another day. I sort of associate NPL with people who do puzzle hunts and are constantly in search of puzzles that they find difficult. I know that's not 100% the case, but for me its more fun to watch them solve those impossible puzzles then it is to actually do them.

NPL cryptics do very wildly in quality. Many of them are insanely difficult.

Yes, I've seen Kevin Wald's cryptics! EEK.

Coax troubled cry (3)

Seems simple, but still can’t get that one, sorry.

Came to post that I just heard a WBGO DJ talking about the crosswordese word ONER.

HI DERE.
Redd's Roster of Crosswordese: Do not read if you hate DRNO

Letters that cross two name clues can go fuck themselves

yah, especially when it's olympians and monarchy

blind crossings

https://crosswordfiend.com/2011/09/20/mgwcc-172/

anybody else participate in lollapuzzoola? it's just wrapping up (all online this time). my only goal for these is "don't come in last" and mission accomplished! i'm something like 341st out of about 1200.

I'm doing it! it's pretty fun, I'd never be able to participate in person

oh yay! yeah, i was bummed i missed the boston-based one boswords (also all virtual) but this has been fun!

No, but I paid for the puzzles, it'll be perfect for a camping trip in a few weeks. :)

I struggle at best of times with cryptics, but can usually parse the answers in hindsight. However can’t make head nor tail of the single letter clues in yesterday’s Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/28218 What am I missing?

Ooft, way beyond my capabilities. I don't know if maybe someone here can give a pointer rather than jumping to the answers, but fifteensquared.net has explanations, if you do want to go that route.

I can confirm that they're impossible to get by themselves - if you have all the crossers then 23 down might be the easiest to start with?

Also 21 Across could be viewed as (3-5)? I mean not really but as you'll see it's important that each answer is in at least two parts.

They almost look like the question is the answer and the solution is the clue. As you say can’t see how you could get them without having the other answers to fill in the gaps.

Dan, it’s funny that you posted that you can’t make “head” or “tail” of those clues :)

The G clue is one I’ve seen a couple times (although usually as part of a charade), but I probably would have been tripped up on it if it was the first time I saw it.

at some point in the not too distant future, i'll need to learn how to do cryptics

That's been on my to do list, too, but the feeling of getting in on the ground floor is really too humbling for me to keep at it.

What first got me into cryptics was 1) this introductory post/video by the New Yorker:
https://www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-games-dept/cryptic-crossword/reintroducing-the-new-yorkers-cryptic-crossword

And 2) doing this Crypto Quiz over at Lovatts, which concisely lists all the clue types and presents cryptic clues with multiple choices answers:
https://lovattspuzzles.com/online-puzzles-competitions/crypto-quiz/

The daily Lovatts cryptics are also very accessible (although they lean more towards British/Australian English).

I finally learned how to do them in the past few months (using my free time wisely) but I still need to do a lot of cheating/checking to complete a puzzle. The explanation linked here really made it clear how cryptics work:

https://www.ariespuzzles.com/2018/10/introducing-aries-cryptic.html

and doing those puzzles and then reading the explanation in the answer key also helped a lot.

I could actually do that Lovatts puzzle without cheating, they are nice and simple!

Nice theme today.

So a few puzzlers have been playing NYT's Spelling Bee.

Here are some of the observations I've assembled:

1. You'll get at most 3 vowels (not counting Y, though I'm not sure if I've seen a set of letter with 3 vowels and also Y).
2. The only letters or combination of letters that I've yet to see appear are S (obviously) and ER. (Until recently, I hadn't seen ING or ED.)
3. If you're going for the Queen Bee, I've found that the genius level threshold is 70-75% of the total possible point value.
4. Humans are fallible, and almost certainly decide what is and is not accepted as words. COPE wasn't accepted yesterday, and one of METONYMY/METONYM wasn't accepted while the other was. I'm also pretty sure that ANNAL wasn't accepted at one point.
5. So much for words that aren't obscure: PENTANE and HEPTANE have both been accepted answers, as has PHILHELLENE.
5a. DILDO, ANAL, and PORN are all accepted.
6. A set of letters can have multiple pangrams.

that cope thing was driving me nuts yesterday

I settle for Genius, and accept the feeling of shame that comes with discovering the obvious words I missed when I hit “Yesterday”