This is the crossword puzzle thread

ugh

er, did the Sunday NYT puzzle goatse us?

That has been suggested but I think it's about as intentional as the alleged swastika from a few weeks ago. There are limits on the permutations of a grid that is literally black and white. Inside those constraints - constraints imposed by design - there will occasionally be stuff like that. We've got more than a century in which dozens of crosswords get created per day. There are bound to be such correspondences.

Famously, a 1944 British crossword included several top-secret codewords related to the Normandy invasion - after exhaustive investigation, everyone concluded it had been a bizarre coincidence.

but, the centre four answers, the daylight at top left and bottom right, the pattern of the dark squares … I could write it off as pareidolia apart from the shaded squares at the centre. That’s not chance.

this is belated, but I thought the Friday NYT was really good - entertaining clues and fill

xp what would the corners have to do with it? Everything else is on purpose - the clue being signified is "making ends meet"

Corners missing makes the puzzle a different shape to square, anyway it’s pretty juvenile of me to insist on it and I will let it die

"Making ends meet" would surely be the opposite of the proposed effect, no?

Good long interview with Will Shortz, in which he talks crosswords and table tennis ... and comes out. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/will-shortzs-life-in-crosswords

That really is lovely

Nice!

Are you still constructing, jaymc?

Y'all know me, the stan for KAC. (For the record, I really enjoyed today's.)

Thursday and Friday were both unusually challenging, the former because i was slow to pick up the theme, and the latter because the NW felt so slippery and vague. I agree with Rex that giving JKR some shine was also pretty disagreeable.

Today’s was great - steady work, everything had to be earned but nothing felt contrived or wilful. I also liked the Thursday for once!
I’m glad Rowling’s public shame has grown to the point where she can’t brush it off and also I don’t have to look at those twee asinine clues.

Weird puzzle today.

Yeah it was unsettling. The first couple times I saw that it was breaking one of the longstanding rules of cluing*, I was like, "um, okay, maybe that's the theme" but they usually reserve such tricksiness to Thursdays. But I guess April 1 is a special case.

As I work backward through the archive (currently working through 2007), I see that historically, rebuses and other gimmicks (like backward answers) sometimes happened on Friday or Saturday. Shrug. I was able to finish and that's all that I care about.

* Generally there is an unwritten rule that no part of the clue can contain any part of the answer. Today's puzzle broke that rule repeatedly. Weird but I'll cautiously allow it in the spirit of raucous experimentation.

i kinda liked it, although it became obvious today. hiding in plain sight isn’t necessarily a bad thing

Hah, I overlooked today's date till YMP's post.

Yeah it's not subtle, as it is also the middle revealer theme answer

Tournament is on today.

Saturday PM session livestream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCU1ZOfWVPw

Hmm

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