I, for one (in apparently a tiny, tiny minority), cannot STAND multiple-word answers! I wrack and bang and crash and generally assault my head looking for a one-word solution and often enough find one that fits the clue and I’m usually then forced to re-evaluate my previous answers and on and on etc only to find that I needed a phrase rather than a word! Aaargh! They’re not called cross-phrases, dammit.
And then there’s the NYT xword “feature” that not only requires you to know The Bard’s complete works, characters, and plots, but also the full and exact vocabulary he used – which was very often excessively obscure even in the 16’th century! Calling them “English” crosswords is misleading in the extreme.
I don’t have an inherent problem with them, but they should be marked as such in the clue (e.g., “____ saw Elba (2 words): Answer ERE I”. GAMES magazine does this, but they’re the only ones I’ve seen who do. What’s worst is when it’s not a real phrase, just a mishmash of letters cobbled together to fit (like EREI).
I’ve been zipping through the book of Monday crosswords I bought before starting this thread, and I found it really impressive that even that kind of practice can improve my skills at harder crosswords. That bit about crossword vocabulary-building is spot-on - even from the Times, it seems that words like ETUI, AMAH, and EPEE are still quite common.
I suspect the other major benefit is learning to spot likely letters. Beyond the abundance of S, T, R, and E (I boxed in RESTRESSES from the clue and length alone in a Games puzzle), learning to appreciate what letters can go next to other letters in already filled-in answers is nice. The sensation of learning so quickly is great, but I also like to remind myself that it’s because I have so far left to go. Thanks for the tips!
Some crossword puzzles do this, some don’t, and some do only in their easier puzzles. GAMES magazine’s “Ornery Crossword,” for example, includes helps like “2 words” with its Easy clues but not with its Hard clues.
It is an easy way to adjust the difficulty of a crossword: leaving out “2 words”-type hints makes the puzzle just a little trickier. Whether this is good or bad depends on how tricky you want it. What rules crossword puzzles “should” follow is whatever makes them more fun for the solver, and this can vary from solver to solver. Personally, I like 'em tricky—that is, difficult, but where the difficulty comes from tricky or misleading definitions, gimmicks, etc., not from obscure or foreign entries. (But then, I’ve been doing 'em for a long time and have gotten to where I can usually get the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday ones, without help and in under half an hour each.)