Brief personal history - in my younger years (20s), I used to attempt the Sunday NYT crossword. I would spend hours over the course of the week, coming back to it and getting a 70% solution that was still somehow 30% wrong. (the People crossword though, I nailed that every week).
Fast forward to Covid, and I decided to pay for the NYT crossword app and really figure this thing out. It took a few months of immersion (trying, failing, and reading Rex Parker daily) before I could consistently do it without cheating. Aside from daily practice, I attribute this to 3 things.
I learned that crosswords are their own kind of puzzle, they’re not general trivia. There are general rules to crossword construction, there’s implicit clues that casual worders aren’t going to pick up on, authors have their own style that you can “key into” during a solve, and hugely, there’s a whole collection of “crosswordese,” filler words that are necessary just to make the craft possible. Related to crosswordese, there’s a general subset of vowel- and commons-heavy words that are more likely to appear, especially towards the bottom/right of sections (words don’t usually end in Q).
I got older. More experienced and full of trivia, yes, but mostly I became more similar to the people writing the crosswords. I’ve yet to see SKIBIDI in a NYT xword.
Related to #2, the crossword authors and I both existed in a time of US monoculture, where everyone saw the same commercials, everyone was at least nominally aware of the same pop culture (music, shows, current events, ads, movies, politics, etc).
My daughter sometimes tries to do the crossword, usually Monday or Tuesday, and often gets stuck because even with current pop culture trends, she’s out of the loop on whatever the “olds” are into. It’s the same problem I have because, say, I ditched network TV for streaming over a decade ago, but 10x because her streaming, music, social media, and news habits are very different.
What’s the future of the NYT crossword in an age where everyone exists in their own bubble? Or are we long past that point and I haven’t noticed because I’m in the same bubble as everyone who works for the NYT?
Really? I imagine it might have been in there. I know I’ve seen “yeet”, “sus”, and maybe “rizz”. Today even had “brainrot” (well “rot”, clued a “Brain ____(mindless internet content)”), and that was a Monday!
The “future”, such as it is, appears to be making the crosswords easier. I used to get stuck pretty often on Friday and Saturday (sometimes even having to look up a random name), but that hasn’t happened in months.
ETA: From what I can find, you’re right - Skibidi hasn’t been used yet. It’s only a matter of time!
Seriously, I’ve tried NYT archive crosswords from 20 years ago, and they seem an awful lot harder than the current ones. Maybe it is that I’m keyed into the zeitgeist of today’s crosswords in a way I’m not with the older ones, even though I fully experienced the world of 2005. I suspect they’re making the puzzles easier.
I’ve been doing the NYT crossword puzzle for perhaps that long and it definitely gets easier. I don’t think that’s because the puzzles are easier but that I have more experience.
As for that, I had to look up this word and it seems too new and obscure (a 2018 Russian song or a 2023 YouTube program) to be included.
I’ve been working my way backward through the archives, and they were unquestionably harder even eleven years ago. I can often finish a Friday puzzle nowadays, but I gave up on them as of mid-2014 and earlier.
I used to do the NYT crossword sometimes, but I wasn’t terribly rigorous about it. I do remember some clues coming up repeatedly, like “mine entrance”, but I was never diligent enough to look at the answer the next day to find out what it was. I eventually figured it put, along with a few others. I wonder how I’d do the current puzzles
I dropped regular crosswords for cryptics several years ago. My favorite constructors, Cox and Rathvon, recently retired and put their whole archive online, so I’ve been working my way through them. There is definitely a ‘voice’; I have trouble doing puzzles by other constructors.
That goes all the way back to when the ESSENES invented the crossword puzzle.
I see comments on ease/vs difficulty over time, and while I stopped doing Sundays essentially for that reason (they just got too easy), I also go back and work a lot of old Fridays and Saturdays and have come across my share of ridiculously easy ones. I assume one reason that older puzzles seemed harder is that we knew less then.
Yeah, you’re pretty much set if you can remember Els, Snead and Seve (Ballesteros.)
The puzzles have steadily gotten easier since around the millennium. If you have a subscription, just trying out a bunch from the 90s makes that clear. I have to stop and think doing the older Saturday and Sunday puzzles; now it’s just quickly filling in the blanks.
One of the things that made the older puzzles more difficult for me were all the references to the arts and sciences: opera singers, playwrights, Nobel prize winners, authors, composers, mathematicians, painters etc. etc. (Although we’ll always have Zore Neale Hurston.)
There has obviously been an effort to make the puzzles less old and white, and be a bit more inclusive. It feels a bit half-hearted, though. Constructors toss in the name of a current rap artist, a big of slang, and Bob’s your uncle.
The real “vibe shift” happened in 1993, when current editor Will Shortz took over from the staunch traditionalist Eugene Maleska. (Under the latter’s reign, you couldn’t even clue OREO as the cookie brand - it had to be “Mountain: prefix.”)
I’m on the fence on this one, and as a relatively new crossworder, my experience doesn’t (and shouldn’t) carry much weight. Here’s my waffling:
Crosswords are easier arguments -
Of course they are! This is a business, and making your product more “mass market” is just good for sales
Crossword authors are aware of the death of the monoculture, and so have a more limited pool of trivia to pull from in order to keep the same level of accessibility
Crosswords are not easier arguments -
When I go back even 5 years ago, which I do sometimes (I’ve picked up where I started in Covid and have been going backwards, in fits and spurts), I get a lot of these, “Oh yeah, I guess that was all over the news back then” moments.
Going back a little further and I’m sure stuff that was household knowledge for a casual NYT Sunday edition reader is now long forgotten, or at least not in accessible memory.
In addition to the above, which covers the you-of-the-now going back and revisiting old crosswords, the you-of-the-then just didn’t know as much so crosswords seemed harder. Even after I “got it” and could reliably do the crossword every day without help, I still saw a progression in my solve speeds. For a long time a Saturday would take me 30-45 minutes, now it takes me about 20-30. Does that mean Saturday’s have gotten easier? Or that I’ve gotten better? Hard to say, since if I try to go back to older Saturdays I get hit with the first bullet point above – I just feel kinda “lost” in the old references.
eta: I can’t comment on the pre-Shortz era, naturally.
I don’t think the crosswords have gotten any easier, but I’ve only been doing them since the early 2010’s.
I guess there is less “high culture” stuff lately. I hadn’t noticed until now. “Figaro” used to be an answer at least once a week. I don’t know much of the fine arts, but the answers are usually unique words that are easy to remember.
Getting older surely helps. It’s easy to forget how much more ignorant we used to be.
I have a book of old “extra hard” nyt crosswords, and i do find them to be much harder than recent puzzles. I do think it is partly because i was so dang ignorant when that puzzle was made. I didn’t know the name of any presidential Cabinet members when I was 16 years old.
When did they start allowing the words “God” and “damn”? I fell like they used to be no-no’s. Maybe i just never noticed.I see them all the time now. “Hell” and “ass” have been common for as long as I can remember.
Obscure for the demographic that does NYT Crossword puzzles does not equate obscure for everyone. It is extremely unobscure for some other demographics, which goes to reinforce that there is no longer a monoculture.
Most of the recent Google News hits are people whining that the word shouldn’t have been added to a dictionary (which it was) but if you go past those there will be plenty more articles, such as the Skibidi movie in the works:
I don’t think there was ever a “monoculture”. Even fifty or sixty years ago, those who would recognize an opera reference might not be the same people who recognize a Tolkein reference.
It was more mono-y in the era when there was one television, sitting in the living room. Back then if the kids were watching The Smurfs then their parents were aware of Smurf like it or not. Now, with multiple screens not only per home but per individual, it is entirely possible for a parent to be unaware of something that is extremely popular.
It’s always been true that there’s more of a monoculture among the elites than among the proles.
Pre-WWW, the NYT’s crosswords were aimed at the intellectual / artsy side of NYC’s elite. Because they were the only people who could / would get copies of the newspapers. Plus a teeny minority frequenting well-heeled newsstands in other major cities.
The puzzles may not have gotten any absolutely easier since then, but they’ve surely been democratized to a much larger audience. Which, if you’re not part of the NYC literary elite, will make it seem easier to you.
I was doing a crossword from 1990 just a few nights ago, and one of the clues referred to “Kelly’s possum”. It took me a while to figure it out; would probably be even harder for kids today.