This is the crossword puzzle thread

capital of mexico is fine imo

Always bloody RIAL, though.

(I cheat all the US sports ones, come at me)

yeah that’s a nice one :) the william and mary example is a step beyond. it feels a little cheap to me. like it’s slapping you down for even trying to puzzle out the relevance of those particular names. it feels slightly outside the rules. a bit of a dad-joke frankly but like i said before, even though i kind of hate it i admire the chutzpah. it’s rare that i’m surprised by a tactic in the nytimes puzzles.

xpost

xp Actually what's worse is that these days I don't have to, I've started to learn them.

I don't know if everyone gets the same random puzzles from the archive recommended in the app or the website, but one of the ones this week was from a week in 2015 when they just asked contributors "What would you like to do that's never been done before?", including one featuring an unclued entry with no checkers. The week starts here: https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/2015/10/12

what’s a checker?

On nyt you can ask it to auto-check your answers. Wrong letters have a red slash through them.

Personally I do not do this. Sometimes, on an archived puzzle, if I haven't solved correctly, I will do "check puzzle" and it will tell me which squares are wrong. It doesn't tell you what the right answer is, just tells you where you're wrong.

Oh no - this is I think lingo I picked up from the other Times - a checker is a letter in answer that you've got from a crossways answer. I meant that there's no answers intersecting with that clue - it's at the bottom of https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/2015/10/14

(I should check, but I assume that we've discussed upthread that the NYT style where every letter is in two clues is weird and claustrophobic from a UK perspective?)

Every letter is in two clues? Just the ones that intersect surely?

Sure, but they all intersect! I should probably have said square instead of letter. You can see the UK style here - nearly half the squares are in only one clue.

https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/quick/15633

This might be a general US crossword thing, the NYT is pretty much my only exposure.

Ahh yes you're right. I'd never realised that until just now!

See, to me, UK-style crosswords seem weird. Requiring all the letters to work in two different words is harder from a construction perspective, and is a different intellectual challenge for the solver. It's like the difference in Scrabble between playing for word length vs. playing for tile density (that is, multiple overlapping words at a time).

When I see a US crossword that doesn't cross completely, I assume it is for beginners and/or children.

totally

xposts I'm reminded of a classic bit of dialogue from the Hallmark channel's Crossword Mysteries

Xword Ed.: "Nightingale did the Sunday puzzle?"

Detective: "Well, not all, he just filled in the Across clues, in cursive"

Xword Ed.: "Just the Across clues!?"

Me: "SO ALL THE DOWNS TOO THEN BY DEFINITION!"

This show, man. Truly high-end #CrosswordMysteries

— Rex Parker 🐈🐾☕️🐾🐈 (@rexparker) September 9, 2019

This week’s series of Thursday/Friday/Saturday has been difficult for me—I haven’t finished any of them and I’m at a standstill in each. I flip between them to look at clues with fresh eyes but it doesn’t seem to be helping. Tough week!

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!