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

Same, it was a tough but fair challenge with nice fill.

i don't wanna spoil it but the first and last across clues struck me as big "FUCK IT I BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS FOR TWENTY YEARS AND AHMA FINALLY MAKE IT HAPPEN" energy

Yeah, that was super elegant!

1A was extremely handy for me

I had to look up a few letters in 1A. Absolutely no way of getting that. Client was good today.

on the other hand, sunday is a dud: too many proper names, crosswordese and bad cluing

The WaPo sundays are free and I think they are consistently more interesting than the Times' sundays

bottom left corner troubled me today.

I'm all for difficult solves, but I do not like today's, especially the cluing.

I feel like I barely pulled off Genius in the Spelling Bee today and I’m officially sick of thinking about words that contain “ent.”

what the hell

I get the standard NYT access through my work, but I don't subscribe to the crossword. So I play Spelling Bee until it stops me, I stuuuuuggled to hit even that limit today.

lol what

my wife took the paper with her to france today

today’s was funny. I handed the phone to my wife when I was done and she started to try and finish it, until I stopped her by saying “look at the timer.”

my app wouldn't accept that! had to cheat and search for how it would be accepted

weird that 35-across wasn’t part of the gimmick in today’s sunday puzzle. i realise it wouldn’t have been symmetrical the way these answers usually are but who cares?

today’s alright but felt a little like a slog.

https://pudding.cool/2020/11/crossword/

where can i see the rise and fall of judge lance ITO as a crossword clue

fucken kiss-ass 1down today

4.13 Monday in thseems like a genuine cap for me. I am fairly certain I couldn’t go too much faster unless I already knew the answers

you guys are all maniacs

i don't really approve of thursday gimmicks but this was nicely done imo

i got hung up on a specific corner that I blanked on but otherwise agreed

seminal punk band WITHOUT ‘the’ ffs

depends on comma placement surely?
seminal punk band, with 'the'
seminal punk band without 'the'

said seminal punk band has absolutely no relation to 'the'

colloquially i hear them referred to as "the xxxx" and "xxxx"

what a terrible theme

Do you mean the Sunday puzzle? I could go either way on the theme but I only avoid getting Naticked through sheer luck.

I checked Rex Parker's blog to see if he complained about that one bit and then I saw a bunch of comments about WOE. What does that stand for?

gtfo with this other saarinen

Hard AF today.

Hm. I did ok, except I had a hard time with BEERKOOZIE. If pressed I probably would spell it COZY, but then I generally drink beer quickly enough that they don't have time to need them.

21D didn't come easily, even though I was able to dredge up 20A from my antediluvian print-era design career.

NW and SE were the toughest corners for me, and I had to lean on a Spelling Bee word that I'd recently learned to crack 1D. Didn't help that I had BAY- for 1A for the longest time.

mildly disappointed by this yesterday, in an otherwise fun puzzle:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/biceps-plural-singular

I mean, it's a fair point, but also a trifle churlish.

Personally I want to see some stretches and some catachresis and some ambiguity; otherwise you're just plugging in synonyms.

Plenty of that in Saturday’s puzzle otherwise!

In Wed’s puzzle, why is the fourth circle an “s”… I get that “D” would be the right answer but why is “s” “filling out the circle”?

supposedly the fourth circle is meant to be, all together as a rebus, SHADE

as in shading in a circle on a test i guess? it’s terrible

sorry, should have spoiler tagged that i guess

How is S on a D = "SHADE"

It is counterintuitive, and I will not strive to defend it.

But the answer has to do with what you do with a standardized test, which is to SHADE in the circle.

Some folks have suggested that this is inappropriately difficult for a Wednesday. Others, that it was just too idiosyncratic to be allowable.

Personally I got there (not without difficulty), but I can totally sympathize with those who found it too tricksy.

imo it was a bad idea poorly implemented

which is almost par for the course on a thursday, but not wednesday

I understand writing SHADE as in “shading the letter D” like a Scan-Tron or whatever but why is just writing “S” a correct answer on the app?

the app will accept a lot of vaguely related things simply to keep people from complaining

often enough it's still too strict. imagine getting your years-long streak broken on this bullshit

woof, today's! feel like the clue on 29D is trying way too hard to be clever (and failing). spent so long in that corner in general because i've never seen 'frozen' and had multiple wrong fills for 59A as well (also couldn't get 62A for the life of me).

latter-day disney and harry potter are definite weaknesses for me

by know i at least know elsa and . . . sven?

Not a hard puzzle today but one answer is tricksy - not as tricksy as Wednesday's infamous SHADETREE.

All the theme answers (but one) share a theme, but they do so while also making sense. The last one breaks the pattern. Spoiler: The other ones have revealers elsewhere - "TRIPLEA" about an answer that already has three As in it. Or "FIVEO" about an answer with five Os. But 118A only works after you apply the revealer "ZEROG" to it. I knew I was right on all the downs, so I had to look very carefully at "OINOINONE" until I saw "going, going, gone."

I will say that it's definitely one where it helped me to solve it methodically in order - top to bottom - rather than hopping around.

yeah i didn't like how the last one stuck out

It's possible that 2022-vintage Shortz is feeling stung by the criticisms that the puzzles used to be harder. I dunno.

For me it's a voluntary leisure activity. So far I am okay with the occasional dud or something that didn't quite work. Because: Overall, NYT has consistently brought me a thing that I don't mind doing with my brain. Like, every day for decades.