The Sunday Magazine Times puzzle has gotten mainstreamed enough that I can now usually finish it – certainly it’s more dumbed down than years ago. But what really bugs me is the use of brand names. I didn’t think that was appropriate.
rara avis
Aral
Elie
My favourite was always “Bird up, birds down”. {4 letters down}
That’s it, yes!
That’s horrific.
I mean, that’s bad.
(Plus, I can’t recall the last time a dentist used any anasthetic on me.)
Really? Either you have a high pain threshold or awesome teeth.
Well, he is the smiling bandit after all!
Apparently, it is okay for the NYT, but you shouldn’t use more than one per puzzle.
But it didn’t used to be! Back in my day… /crotchety old woman 
No love expressed yet for the Hawiian state bird?
I enjoy crosswords, but readily admit the NYT is generally too hard for me. And I’m pretty much a 1-letter-per-square guy.
It can be difficult to find puzzles of the proper difficulty - that I can finish, but are not too easy. The ones in the Chicago Tribune’s Saturday books section are about the best I have found so far. The ones in the Sunday magazine are also generally good, tho generally a tad easier.
But the Trib just went through a horrendous makeover, and we are seriously thinking of switching to the NYT, so I may have to learn to be a convert.
Dinsdale: Did you know that the NYT daily crosswords are arranged in order of difficulty? Each day they get harder. Monday’s is the easiest, and Saturday’s is really really really hard. The Sunday puzzles vary in difficulty (they’re usually around a Thursday level, IMHO) but they’re larger and often include more complicated theme clues.
So if you want to get better at NYT puzzles, I’d suggest you follow the same program that I did. I wanted to be a person who could do a NYT Sunday puzzle, and I’ve achieved that. Yay me!
You can buy books or get the puzzles some other ways. But you do need to know which “days” you’re getting.
I started with Mondays. And did a lot of them. They were easy, but I learned a lot about the ways the cluing worked and also gained a foundation in crosswordese. I didn’t hesitate to look at the answers or on Google if I needed to. I moved on to Tuesdays, then Wednesdays, and so on. I kept trying at the Sundays all along, 'cause they’re really the fun ones.
In case you’re curious, here’s my current status:
Mondays–so easy they’re kind of boring. Sometimes I do them as time trials.
Tuesdays–see Monday
Wednesdays–easy, but still fun.
Thursdays–easy enough that I can reliably complete them, but with a little challenge.
Fridays–challenging.
Saturdays–forget it.
Sundays–almost always can get them 99% complete, but occasionally one just stumps me for some reason.
Today I’m trying a WSJ one. And thanks for the suggestions above!
I followed the same progression, and I’m proud to say that I can now solve most Saturday puzzles too, though it often takes quite a bit of time.
So keep trying!
Ed
The Sunday puzzle is the right size. I play around with it . Do a few and put it away,then do some later. I rarely put a lot of time in it at one sitting. Usually I have it out for 3 or 4 days. Funny how you get stumped and then one letter unleashes a whole corner.
As mentioned above, try a Monday or Tuesday puzzle to see where you’re at. I’m fairly sure you can do a Monday.
My own completion rates:
Monday: 99%
Tuesday: 90%
Wednesday: 50%
Thursday: 20%
Friday: 5%
Saturday: 1%
Sunday: Don’t do Sundays
Thanks, guys.
I’ve heard this before.
If we switch to the NYT, I’ll give them another try.
I think my problem in the past has been that I don’t see the NYT on any predictable basis so I can’t control the difficulty of the puzzle I get. And my other familiarity was through a collection received as a gift. It was frustrating that some were doable, but others impossible.
We only get the Sunday NYT puzzle not the weekly. We also get the Boston Globe puzzle on weekends . I hate that puzzle. I rarely finish it because it pisses me off.
The Detroit puzzles are way too easy.
I believe you can get the NYT weekend puzzle on line.
Oh, I totally know what you mean. I have a big gigantic humongous book of daily NYT crosswords with no indication of their difficulty. It’s so frustrating, because when I start a puzzle, I have no idea if it’s going to be “so easy it’s boring” or “impossible.” In some cases, I can kind of tell by looking that one is most likely to be a Friday or Saturday, but that’s not a reliable method of guessing. What I’d like to do is skip the easiest ones and save the hardest ones for a later date!
Easy and hard misses the point. It is personal interests and experiences too. Put rappers or modern music names in there and I am in trouble. Symphony conductors and architects seem to have funny first names. Sports clues will lose a different group. So easy and hard have subjective components too.
That’s true, but as we were discussing above, someone who does a lot of crossword puzzles just learns a lot of this stuff as he or she goes along.
Son of Eliel? EERO. (Architect Eero Saarinen’s father Eliel was also a famous architect.)
Mel the Giant? OTT. (Mel Ott, the baseball player.)
A refreshing rapper? ICET (Ice-T)
I don’t know jack shit about the bible, but I’ve learned to make some good guesses when the clue is biblical. I’m even worse with the classical music terms, but I’m getting better.
But anything classic rock-related, I’ll nail. It was a classic rock clue that cracked today’s WSJ puzzle for me.
In case you’re curious…
70 across–Founder and keyboardist of the Earth Band. I was like “WTF” 'cause I knew it was Manfred Mann, but the answer was only 7 letters. Meanwhile, I was a little confused as to why I was having so much trouble with the other parts of the puzzle I had done. It just wasn’t coming together. That can be an indication of a trick in the puzzle. Then it hit me. Manfred Mann! So if “X” represents “man,” (I drew little stick figures), the answer was XFREDXN. The puzzle came together after that. 
I guess what I’m getting at is that the more puzzles you do, the less your own personal experiences and areas of knowledge (or lack thereof) will hinder you.
I didn’t know they got harder. We only get a Friday paper (for the tv schedule), so that’s the only puzzle I do. It’s somewhat reassuring to know I’m doing the third hardest one, and that I’m (probably) not a complete moron. 
Our paper is also including Patience Ryan’s Decodaquote - I didn’t know I could figure out a whole quote from one letter. I’m enjoying those puzzles, too.
Thanks to a Times crossword this week, I now know the source of RTFirefly’s username.
It has nothing to do with Josh Whedon.
PUMA