This is the crossword puzzle thread

But not the one mookie mentioned

are you all figuring these puzzles out without doing some internet searches? I would like to, but I don't give a shit about sports stars, sports stats, sports in general including team initials, the Simpsons, US TV networks, government agencies, comics, brand names, etc and I will never learn them, so unless it's a Monday or Tuesday puzzle I won't be able to solve them without help.

I wish there were more clues about stuff I like but there aren't

I just get them on random recollections of headlines, and otherwise from the crosses. But yeah I never search for answers, it feels like a slippery slope. On the plus side I now know about five baseball stars' names. But I curse the designer who clues something like "batter stat." and it turns out to be FJL or some other useless chunk of initials.
I allow myself "check puzzle" if I've run the list of unsolved clues twice without cracking anything, but that's only once or twice a week except for this one, where I had to use it about 4 or 5 times - like climbing a difficult pitch using a safety rope.

You could try some British crosswords, not necessarily cryptics, but some of their general knowledge puzzles, which are often called “quick” crosswords. The grids are only half-checked, so you don’t end up with any of the crosswordese glue you need in US puzzles.

I do occasionally rely on the internet for some harder puzzles where I can't brute force certain clues (still happens 5-10 times a year), but that's because I'm way too attached to keeping my streak alive and so never use the check puzzle function. Otherwise the years of solving have honed my instincts to typical crosswordese that are now nearly reflexive fills.

Ah - I've only been doing it routinely for about 8 months - realised it was a good way to break the 3am mental-race if I am under stress, so I bought the app subscription and got into it more than I expected.

Is there actually a stigma associated with the check function? Since I started solving daily again this year after an eight year layoff I have used it when needed and tried not to be uptight about it.

Of course I also have been trying to do a better job of checking visually before hitting that button, and a lot of times that works but I don’t want to agonize over it.

Yeah same. I think of it as a counterfoil to the inevitable typos caused by using a screen keyboard without autocorrect available. But sometimes I will use it a few times mid puzzle to consolidate and that feels a little cheat-y.

Think the A final may be on now or just finished and their might be a brand new champ.

There even

No, he finished third.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA8htPG0oHE

Really tough Friday today -- could've been a Saturday puzzle -- though I think it's reasonably solvable and fair.

I liked it, and I think I liked this constructor's previous puzzle as well.

Yes, she co-wrote a Saturday puzzle on January 29th with Andrew Ries and then another Saturday back on October 16th with Erik Agard.

today's nyt crossword was clever, with 4 answers relying on understanding that, in the clues, "m" often replaces "rn" for those of us visually impaired

I just did before reading that. Yeah, very well done.

Quite; my vision sucks so much that I solved most of the puzzle correctly, before realizing that I was missing the joke.

I cleaned my glasses before solving but did have to blink a few times, so same.

Okay, Friday’s puzzle is ace.

And this week’s as well.

Tomorrow’s good too.

Sunday on the other hand…

By our favorite guy from the other thread.

fckn terrible

Friend described it as underwhelming.

kind of stunned by the ‘popular st. patrick’s day cocktail’

Yeah, me too!

really bad

this, on the other hand, is nuts:

last time tweeting about a crossword solving time i promise pic.twitter.com/ucJaPWu78B

— pa(ol/sc)o (@gpaolopasco) April 24, 2022

Yet another reason for me to have given up speed solving.

I don't even know how you can type that fast while reading/processing the clues?

my time today was 5:45 on my phone (might have been faster on desktop idk) and i thought that was good enough

I don’t how people can physically do it either, some kind of freakish wiring.

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/nyregion/how-to-be-the-fastest-puzzler-in-town.html

Or exact same thing here: https://www.crosswordtournament.com/articles/shortz0302.htm

But best version is in this interview with Peter Gordon: https://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/ring/

i consider myself a fairly fast solver (avg monday solving time is about 3-3:30 minutes, almost never over 4), and 53 seconds is unthinkable to me!

also is anyone else a stickler for doing the puzzle on the day of instead of the night before?

I'm new to the NYT crossword and am not sure what was so bad about today's puzzle

are you all so good that this was a trifle?

Wasn’t that it was too easy, although it wasn’t really that hard, just that the theme seemed kind of tired.

Obviously no stickler here. When I used to read the blogs many of them just wrote about them soon after they dropped so I started solving then as well.

I remember years ago when people were talking about two minute puzzles, which a lot of top solvers could already do but they didn’t want to submit in the contest like that without checking, so not really surprised now at one minute.

http://dandoesnotblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/acpt-2013-it-takes-me-four-ever-to.html?m=1

http://dandoesnotblog.blogspot.com/2015/04/acpt-2015-eke.html?m=1

He also points out that Puzzle 1 is a Tuesday, not a Monday.

https://www.brendanemmettquigley.com/2018/03/crossword-1040-themeless-monday-2018-acpt-recap.html

So a Monday less than one minute solve at home is still pretty crazy and impressive but also not quite unthinkable for someone whose fast twitch muscles are in overdrive.

Wasn’t that it was too easy, although it wasn’t really that hard, just that the theme seemed kind of tired.

― H.R. MacGufnstuf (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, April 24, 2022

I'm pretty sure it was hard for most people attempting it

The themes are all over the place. I guess unless you've done a shitload of these you wouldn't think this was more tired than any other

Sunday is not supposed to be particularly hard, just tedious.

xposts it's always on the day of for me, living in Asia :)

re sunday's puzzle: aside from the theme which was very meh, there were some incredibly bad clues/fill that not sure anyone would be able to get without crosses e.g. who calls a "Program after undergrad" a POSTBAC? is NULLVALUE really a commonly known term for N/A? and as alluded to upthread, CARBOMB for "Popular St. Patrick’s day cocktail" is just awful and tasteless.

i had PREWWW instead of PREWEB early on, and honestly wish that had been the answer, as it would at least have been slightly more creative

ah damn it - not sure what went wrong, that last sentence was also supposed to be behind spoiler tags