This is the crossword puzzle thread

Puzzle five is starting

Paolo Pasco woke up this morning with a slight lead over Dan Feyer.

Friend I met through jaymc told me he is officiating this year and I see him now in the stream. He is very tall and so hard to miss.

Think he was helping set up the boards for the B final, which is about to start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eodUcmhSvc

It's a triptych!

Different guy.

Maybe not.

It's just about on!

Amazing finish!

Dan beat Paolo by one second.

Making Paolo the favorite for next year, imo

anyone still doing the AVX crossword? Funny one this week, very #onethread

I haven’t been, but don’t tell the editor, who lives across the street from me.

i enjoyed thursdays puzzle by sam buttrey who was famously on jeopardy tournament of champions last year and resembles steve martin

Jeebus melmo today's NYT is super fun.

I won't spoil it but I will say that in thirtymumble years of solving, this was a completely new gimmick to me. I am so glad I live in a world where I can still be pleasantly surprised.

I loved Tuesday's light theme too, I was working my way downward and really had a "Will they? They will!" reaction.

And Wednesday was nice with the poets!

Today's is very clever, quite enjoyable.

Today's is nicely constructed, esp. for a Tuesday

Tough themer today -- interesting gimmick but I barely eked out the east.

I've been happy to now be able to get the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday puzzles. Thursday/Friday ones are still really hard for me.

I realized that today's had a ZZZ...etc replacement for letters gimmick, but at my current level would never have figured it out on my own

figured out what the meaning of it was

Agreed that this one was tough - I think I got the Snowbird/Steamboat one and said "aha!". Couldn't get the Jeopardy one because I didn't expect it to span across words. Ultimately finished it but it was a slog.

Generally I'd say there are some pretty high-quality puzzles lately. Surprisingly good theme on Wednesday (the crossing of Greek and Roman deities) and Sunday had really good cluing, like noted name in clogs = LIQUIDPLUMR

However the standout of the last several days has to be the deeply tricky Thursday July 13, with "paradise" being rendered as DIE DIE, "paradox" as DOC DOC, and "paradigm" as DIME DIME. That was an extremely satisfying solve.

yeah had to use the checker a few times - I figured out what the zzz’s were but there was some weird clueing on some of the other fill too.

I really liked the theme on Tuesday though - the answers and revealer all came together really nicely.

xpost Tuesday, meaning the Wednesday one mentioned in YMP’s post :)

Yeah Roz that was a very well-executed puzzle and I was a bit surprised to see it appear so early in the week!

i also really liked the thursday the 13th puzzle

gimmick today was fine but yeah some of the cluing -- 33A, 38D pop to mind -- was pretty sketchy

also absolutely no one needs a clue about a 25yo everlast song c'mon

re: Everlast especially when the answer itself is so meh.

Yeah that struck me as an odd way to clue, but whatev

tough one today (saturday).. got super stuck in the top left corner. i was alternating between folk/home/cold remedies on 11a, edgar and degas on 23d, employ and deploy on 15a, gales and gusts on 18a, also totally fell for the diversion in 19a where i was thinking of economic inflation and had CPI then PPI. good puzzle

This is an incredible feat of construction: http://blog.bewilderinglypuzzles.com/2023/07/puzzle-212-two-for-price-of-one.html

this was fun https://www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-games-dept/crossword/2023/07/14

Yes, fun. I don't think I'd ever encountered 4 down.

(And yeah the gimmick of two different words can work equally well takes a pretty skilled constructor to pull off.)

This is an incredible feat of construction: http://blog.bewilderinglypuzzles.com/2023/07/puzzle-212-two-for-price-of-one.html

Hard AF (needed hints to get NE and SW of the right puzzle), but yeah, impressive construction.

Re Saturday’s: I should just skip all of Sam Ezersky’s puzzles, we’re just on a completely different wavelength. I can appreciate difficult puzzles but I never feel satisfied or impressed by any of his

Freud puzzle was funny!

xp yeah the vagueness of his clueing is appropriately difficult for a Saturday but the solves are just kinda “sure…I guess”

today's is just groaners all the way down

56A was pretty good but yeah, otherwise meh.

ya 56a was hilarious

ok that two for the price of one puzzle was brutal - solved it as far as i could go by myself, then used a couple hints to get to the finish line. really challenging but pretty ingenious!

I’ve made the bitcoin joke a few times over the years re silicon valley types

yeah I needed hints just to know which puzzle I was in - don't think I could have done it on pen and paper. cool to see how far it's possible to take the heisenberg puzzle concept

Ugh today's is hard and bad.

I thought it was kinda charming but 16A was a new one for me

There's a fine line between "same old same old" gimmicks and "wtf, how dare you do this weird thing" gimmicks.

I am decades into this journey and I am along for the ride. If sometimes it rankles, well, ok.

Tomorrow morning it will be a different thing and I will do the best I can with that thing.

i thought it was fine, but that the revealer should have been a dave brubeck reference

I was mostly complaining about the NW corner (16A also rang no bells for me); I didn't understand the gimmick and didn't feel like trying to figure it out on my own.

13A just as annoying imho