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

this was the picture for the 8th ed.:

http://tirado.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/on-the-corner.jpg

i spent a lot of time looking at that clue thinking "Jeb? GHWB?"

Another Afro-Websterian not often seen today is the "backhand"-ing Arthur Ashe figure who disappeared after the Ninth.

I'm really liking Ken Ken. The six square one is requiring me to xerox it to figure out the possible permutations.

― My new tackling, kidney punching, helmet slapping celebration (forksclovetofu), Friday, February 13, 2009 2:33 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

or rather today's friday one is. I was gold until today.

― My new tackling, kidney punching, helmet slapping celebration (forksclovetofu), Friday, February 13, 2009 2:36 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

Tonight when I got home made mad rush to find print copy of the NYT only to find out Mrs. Redd had recycled it, made rush to basement to find out the super had recycled it and furthermore the truck had come two hours before. Luckily it turned out today's paper had in fact been spared and was still in apartment. Took up gauntlet thrown down by above quote and spent a long time trying to find logical way into today's 6x6. Here's how I finally got started:

KENKEN SPOILER ALERT*****
Ended up concentrating on right edge. Notice that top had a 20x and bottom had a 4x, neither which was divisible by 3, so the 3 had to be in the 2÷ in the middle. Then I... now that I look at it, I think my next piece of logic was more of guess, but I looked at the bottom 4x l-shape and went with 2-1-2 instead of 1-4-1. Also there was some "forcing" between the bottom right l-shape and the top l-shape, which I used but turned out I had the 5 in the top el in the wrong place until the very end.

OK, now I remember.

***ANOTHER KENKEN SPOILER***
The left edge 15+ had to be 4-5-6 in some order, which meant the 1- at the top of the left side had to have a 2 in it. Which meant the 20x at the top of the right side couldn't be 2-5-2 so it had to be 5-4-1 (in some order) which meant the bottom right couldn't be 1-4-1 so it had to be 2-1-2.

So much wanted "Hits with bug spray" to be "Offs"

hey maybe start a new thread for kenken

fucked up the 6x6 today somehow, in pen...

Huh. Just a couple weeks ago I constructed a puzzle with the exact same theme as Wednesday's. Guess I'll pitch it elsewhere.

new thread Les Aventures de Kenken

Just watched the documentary Wordplay. Very entertaining.

And Tyler Hinman just won for the 5th straight year this past weekend.

When are you going to enter, jaymc?

Oh yeah, today's theme is pretty fun.

But today's is crazy hard.

It's been a while for me & the NYT puzzles. Typically, I'll binge on them for a while & then get bored. A year or two will pass & then I will resume the cycle. Tonight, insomnia has led me re-embrace this vice. Or maybe not. I'm going come in swinging w/ an attempt at the Sat. puzzle & go from there..

OK, one down (w/ two errors). I had to walk away from it & come back, tho. Does anyone else subscribe to the premium service w/ the Across Lite app? I signed up for it several years ago & then ended up switching banks, but somehow my membership was never canceled. glitch in the system = free online nyt xwords 4 LYFE (hopefully).

i've been binging on a book of nyt puzzles lately -- but it's way too tempting to check the answer key when i get stumped.

not a complaint but a good friend of mine regularly babysat the constructor of friday's puzzle. (he's 15 and going to harvard next year.)

Christ, the lower right corner of today's is driving me batty. I have all but three spaces & am totally stumped & frustrated. Guess it's time to walk away for a moment.

Is that Friday's or Saturday's? This morning it was the left and lower left that were giving me trouble for the longest time.

Friday's. If I have time tomorrow, though, I'll do Saturday's. Saturday Times puzzles are the best - far prefer them to Sundays tbh.

They are rillllly hard

imo this past weekend's puzzles were a rare instance of Friday being more challenging than Saturday.

"blown out?" = error

???????!

that, i am not buying

baseball term, I think?

nope

sure it is - the fielder was supposed to make the play but he blew it, and instead of an out it's an error. a "blown out"

ARRRRRRRGH

(hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)

i fuckin

fuck

today's suggestion that daytime tv is called a "Soaper" for short was kinda...

"pulling a prank outside a house" = TPING

really dog?

i started doing these again, after abt > 10 years

have they gotten a lot dumber? they seem dumber

That's pretty standard crossword-ese tbh.

I stick to the American Values Club though, they minimize cliches as much as possible. Best crossword going.

i think they're a little dumber since when i started yes

Saturdays are still p brutal

Usually the more common form of that one is TPED.

Still on extended hiatus from solving now for the past few years since I stopped going to tournaments, not sure when I will feel compelled to jump back in. Also, don't mean to humblebrag namedrop derail thread but speaking of The AV puzzle, I ran into Ben Tausig on the street several weekends ago and learned he now lives down the block from me. Come to think of it, a certain drummer who recently won a Grammy and several other awards for Best Original Score lives right across the street from me, so Jordan, feel free to jump on the 7 train next time you are in NYC and I will show you the local sights.

One more vote for feels like these are dumber than just a couple of years ago, even.

Dumber in what way? i'd say there are definitely more artificial, not-in-the-language entries like "TPING" than ever before. But the level of obscurity remains pretty consistent, therefore puzzles are not necessarily easier. Of course obscurity used to mean Latin scientific names and foreign rivers whereas now it means subsidiary characters in sci fi TV shows or some such.

Btw I have a namedrop too: I went to elementary school with Patrick Berry. I can attest to the fact that the dude was creating xword puzzles at age 9.

I would have impressed if you had named any of the Patrick's but The Crossword Jesus himself, I am doubly so.

I only realized it about 25 years after the fact when I finished a NYT puzzle and was like, damn that was a good one, and then looked at the credit… and then I was like, no way, is that the same dude from my school? So I made some inquiries and found out it was.

Dumber in the sense that during Sunday afternoons a while back, we might still have some work to do; on some tough Saturday clues, or even the occasional Friday holdout, or an actually difficult Sunday with a gimmick we haven't figured out (our attention spans are horrifically bad)

Now, by early Sunday afternoon, all of the week's crosswords have been completely and utterly defeated, not 8 blanks left from Saturday, nothing.

yeah that, and they seem to be going way faster, for the end of the week puzzles too. last go round i was generally doing it every day and those would take me forever, and often go unfinished. my impression now is that there are a lot more inane repeat clues that reward regular solvers, even more so than ye old oleos of yore or whatever. and an influx of post-smartphone internet cultural ephemera that has supplanted some more of the facty trivia-style clues/answers i remember being stumped by.

i'm also doing them diffrently, tho, which may matter for the subjective experience. i used to work in pen and be way more cautious about committing so i wouldn't have to cross anything out, but on the nyt web site when computer-solving i just delete stuff left and right when i see i used something that wouldn't work.

i mean it is also possible that my amazing brane has just gotten that much better in the intervening decade. actually, let's go with that.

RIP ankara btw
I feel like that answer just got straight-up banned at some point a couple of years ago. oleo may have suffered the same fate recently?

i saw an olio a while back

ha, nice James.

will shortz thinks rae sremmurd is one guy!!