I don’t mind those even when it is horrible is that I can’t notice the theme for half the puzzle and can’t figure out what the hell I’m doing wrong.
I vaguely remember one where remember “M” in certain clues stood for “man” but if there were two next to each other, it stood for “men.”
e.g.,
A
HUME
DEMD
D
S
I think I needed help for that one. I’m also relatively sure it was a Thursday.
Exactly. For example, a Sunday puzzle on June 14th many years ago had _staff across, and _stone down. You would draw a picture of a flag, in honor of Flag Day. When you think that you’re getting pretty good at crosswords, and you have answers that require fewer than the available spaces, as Voyager said, that’s when you start thinking outside the box. So to speak.
Except that’s not a pun. It’s just ambiguous.
I know we’re walking a fine line here, but I’m willing to be that clue DIDN’T have a question mark.
“Solo in space?” might be answered with something like “cramped”. 
THAT’S a pun.
Just wanted to add that you should realize there is a learning curve. You definitely get better at them the more you do them for a couple of reasons: there is a lengthy vocabulary of words like adit and nene - or obscure proper names and titles - that you rarely use in real life, but are quite common in crosswords; and you get used to the types of clues - puns and such.
So I recommend that you just get in the habit of doing them regularly, and keep them so you can check your results the next day. Maybe even fill in the words you didn’t get, to get a sense of how the words “fit together.”
Or, using the answers just try to fill in a couple of key spots, and see how much further you can go on your own.
People differ on whether or not to use resources such as dictionaries, atlases and such. I choose not to. But I also do not care to do puzzles that are of a difficulty that I cannot get all or a substantial portion of them done. The hardest NYT ones are too hard for me.
Actually, the NYTimes crossword is thankfully short on crosswordese. I don’t think I’ve ever seen words like “adit,” “nene,” “esne,” and “Yser.” (Actually, I’ve seen “Yser” once in the New York Times.") But they do have their favorite four-letter answers like “ugli” (a type of citrus fruit) and “Olav/Olaf” (As in “St. Olav/Olaf,” patron saint of Norway.)
The New York Times has the most fun crossword that I’ve come across. The Chicago Sun-Times carries it, along with their own crossword which is buried in the classifieds, and if you do them side by side, you can easily see what I mean by it being more “fun.” The clues are just very well written and it’s a very satisfying crossword to do. The only other crossword I enjoy as much is the patternless in the Sun-Times. Cryptic crosswords drive me insane, and I hate them, hate them, hate them.
The ones that piss me off is when more than one letter goes in a box. Until the theme comes clear you beat yourself up feeling stupid. Themes once broken open up bunches of squares at the same time. But until you get it ypu have a lot of blank spots.
Yeah, those are annoying because, unless you know that NYTimes puzzles will be occasionally be devious, they break the conventions. I remember one in which card suits were put in boxes as part of the clue, as in “(HEART)break” “Brave(HEART)”, “(DIAMOND)ring,” “Neil(DIAMOND),” etc…
So, anyone else do this morning’s NYT?
I’ve recently gotten into doing crosswords for fun, and let me tell you, I suck ass at it. I do whatever crappy one is in my local daily paper, my guess is that it’s probably like a NYT Monday puzzle, or easierm, yet I can’t even get 25% done without having to cheat and use a dictionary, wikipedia, google, what have you.
What gets me more thna anything are when a clue is given, then it will say (abbr.) at the end. Several times I knew the answer, but I have no idea what the “standard” crossword abbreviation for color is. (Clr, perhaps? But I seem to recall that clue needing four spaces.)
I also hate clues that reference other clues, cause I never get either of them. There are two like that in today’s. The thing is, they reference a series of clues that are all part of some quip said by someone, and the last two is the name of the quipper. So the only way to really get the quip is to get most of the down clues that occupy it and fill in the blanks. There is no way to get it right off the bat, and I find that a little unfair.
Quips are definitely harder than a repeating theme. Also, clues that reference other clues are tricky.
But, anyway, your start is probably similar to a lot of our starts. For some reason, I started doing them back in high school. By the time I was in college I could finish the NYT through Wednesday but Fridays and Satrurdays were still a complete mystery to me.
By the time I was 30, I was only doing Friday and Saturday. I’m pretty decent at Xwords, but all it represents is that I’ve been doing them for 20 years.
That auxiliary puzzle in the Times on Sunday was a tricky bastard. I’m still not sure I finished the lower left square correctly.
I like the ones on the website - there’s always one you can do for free, or you can subscribe and get them all. I like them because I can “see” the words better when they’re typed rather than written into a paper puzzle.
Don’t look at me, I almost never solve crosswords (except for cryptics).
Merl Reagle (the bearded guy in the film) is quite insidious at this. I don’t do crosswords much, but when I used to get the SF Chronicle on Sundays, the supplement always had one of his, and they often had themes that involved multiple letters in a single box (a theme might be “Water”, so the letters HHO would occupy a single frame in the themed answers). I found them great fun and miss doing his, though I never am able to finish crosswords in general (I always find an intersection that deadlocks me).
The only time I do crosswords now is on airplanes, in the in-flight magazines. The movie was lot of fun, though, including the best Talking Heads cover I’ve ever heard.
Yes. I was annoyed because I couldn’t figure out how to submit it using the online Javascript tool.
I tried underscores, dashes, and asterisks in the empty spaces and it wouldn’t take any of them! Grr!
And I guess the reason for that was
They were supposed to stay empty. 
When I did it this morning I thought this was a great illustration of what I was saying - when there was an empty square, something was happening. The clue to this was in the middle of the downs, of course, no where you’d find it quickly.
You should probably stay away from the type of crossword in Games where all the squares can have either 1, 2 or 3 letters in them - it’s up to you to figure out how many.
Yeah, I got that, Voyager; I’m just saying that in the online app it wouldn’t accept that, and none of the things I tried that I mentioned in the spoiler box worked either. When I clicked Submit, it said that I had incorrect squares and to try again.
Except that I think the reason it pisses people off is that, in solving regular crosswords, they expect to have only one letter per box; it can take hours and a lot of frustration before a less-experienced solver hits upon the idea to put multiple letters in a box.
In the Games puzzles you mention, they’re told right up front; multiple letters per box is an expected part of the puzzle, instead of a devious stumbling-block.
I’ve never enjoyed those puzzles much, for some reason.
The “Play against the clock” took S’s (for “Space” I guess. Again, I like that kind once I figure it out.
After I’ve been doing them for a while, I can almost do Friday puzzles, but if I stop and don’t do them, I have to start again with being able to do Monday, mostly do Tuesday, search widely for help on Wednesday and Thursday, and then abusing electronic solving on Friday - Sunday. For me that means trying as much as possible (maybe a word or two) then filling in all unknown spaces with “E” and checking the results - then repeating with as many letters as possible until I figure out the rest.
It’s pathetic, but it works.
Saw Wordplay tonight; I think I saw myself way in the background in a couple of shots at the final competition scene! (I was sitting way, way in the back, just to the audience’s right of the center aisle.)