I’ve often heard people scoff at the Monday NYT puzzle as too easy and not even worthy of the ink to compete it. I know they usually get progressively difficult as the week goes on, but I’ve never thought of the Monday one as a joke. Sometimes I can finish it, sometimes I’m a couple of words short. I do particularly enjoy it after the massive Sunday puzzles.
As a bonus question, how would you rate the difficulty level of the Sunday puzzle? I’d place it usually around Wednesday level, the challenge is that it’s so big and it’s easy to get stuck if they’re asking for full names of pop culture stars or 1940’s Oscar winning actresses or something like that.
I’m not an NYT subscriber, but I do plenty of crosswords from various sources, and yeah, I find Monday-level crosswords to be too easy to be worth doing.
Yes it is easy. I fill it in in Across order. I could look at the Down clues when the
Across one is ambiguous, but I seldom have to. I usually finish it in 3 - 4 minutes.
The Monday ken ken is equally as easy. I can finish the 4 x 4 one as fast as I can write usually, and the larger one is not much harder.
I’m not a big crossword doer but the Monday New York Times ones are really easy. I generally start to have trouble with them on Thursday. I think the Sunday ones are supposed to be equivalent to Thursday puzzles, and I tend to have trouble with the Sunday ones too. I think the Saturday ones are supposed to be the toughest.
Mondays are always easy, but some weeks the Tuesday one is easier than the Monday. I use the NYT crossword app on the iPad. My average solve times run around 5 minutes Monday and Tuesday (usually limited by dumb typos I make) to 25-30 minutes for Saturdays.
I agree that Sundays are like great big Wednesday/Thursday puzzles. On weekday puzzles I always do all the across clues once then all the down clues once, then go back to fill in gaps (Fridays and Saturdays are mostly gap with a few clues filled in). Sunday I get impatient and will do sections of across and down clues at a time.
My approach is to do the Monday puzzle in Scrabble fashion, meaning I only answer a clue crossing an existing solved one. That makes it slightly more difficult. But, yes, it’s easy. (I solve the puzzles from Sunday through Friday, skipping only the Saturday puzzle.)
Monday through Wednesday are all pretty easy for me. Thursday starts to get interesting. Friday and Saturday are hard, but I can usually solve them if I have an hour or two of free time. Sunday is like Thursday, but bigger.
Monday is too easy to be interesting for me, and Tuesday is borderline (occasionally they’re interesting but usually not). Thursday/Sunday are my sweet spot. They are fun and sometimes stump me for a while, but I can almost always get them given enough time and work. Friday and Saturday are often too hard for me to completely finish by my personal rules (no looking up of anything, but you’re allowed to pester people who are in the room with you for whatever’s in their heads).
But when I started doing crosswords, Mondays were interesting, and Tuesdays were a challenge. Wednesdays were pretty impossible. So, it’s good that Mondays are out there so that beginners can get a toehold.
Interesting.
I do it my way because when I was in the Merriam-Webster competition at NYU in 1986, I saw one of the champion solvers do her puzzles that way.
I’m going for speed, and I assume that this is fastest.
If I want hard I open my London Times or Daily Telegraph crossword books.
M->Th are a breeze. Friday and Saturday sometimes take some effort but often aren’t.
Sunday NYT used to be real nasty. Get an old collection of them and you’ll see. For a while now (since Will Shortz?) they’ve been much easier. Somewhere around Wed-Thurs equivalent for the most part. But much larger so there may be a few slightly harder places. I can fill in at least 2/3 of one as fast as I can read a clue and write most of the time.
I complete the Monday puzzles 100% of the time. They are easy but I see them as a weekly warm-up so I do them. I start to falter around Thursday, and I rarely finish a Saturday puzzle. (I attempt the puzzle almost every day.)
I find the difficulty of Sunday puzzles to be inconsistent, usually around Wednesday difficulty, but sometimes harder. I usually finish them. Sometimes when they bend over backwards to set up the theme answers, and theme answers are longer, they are pretty easy once you unlock the theme. However, for more obscure themes with shorter fill, I find them difficult. I could not finish this past Sunday’s puzzle.
Not to hijack my own thread, but what do you think of the app? I normally use crossword time as a way to relax in the morning or late at night without my phone, but I’m curious. I did try a crossword app a few years ago and it was awful. Don’t think it was NYT.
I do like the LA Times puzzles as well. For some weird reason they made it past the filter at my last job so they gave me plenty of entertainment on that boring night shift.
I have the app on an older iPad and a new Android tablet, and they are rather different. The puzzle play is similar but there is no button on the Android version to toggle from down fill to across, so I have to reach up and touch the square to do that. The Android version doesn’t show my statistics (average time for each day of the week, etc.). My android tablet has a physical keyboard but the app will not take input from the keyboard, only from its own screen keyboard (which is not the Android screen keyboard).
Other than that, there aren’t really any bells & whistles to a crossword app. No major complaints. Except that if you get an online subscription to the New York Times, it does not include the crossword puzzle. I have two separate subscriptions.
Monday is very easy. I don’t have to look at the grid for context (word length or existing letters). Most of the answers are obvious. I’m done as fast as I can write. But I’m a really good solver. If Monday is fun for you enjoy it. I agree with Will Shortz - it’s supposed to be fun. If you find it fun it’s doing it’s job. If you have to look up an answer, who cares? Are you having fun? Did you learn something? It’s all good.
The only puzzles I can find which are hard enough for me are Saturdays. The NYT takes me 12-15 minutes on Saturday. My favorite is the Newsday Saturday Stumper. That takes me 25-30 minutes. Sometimes I read every clue and don’t know a single answer right away. I love when that happens because I know it will be a challenge.