# New York Times crosswords **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [February 27, 2010, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608 "2010-02-27T03:23:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a9a28c/32.png) [@Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oslo_Ostragoth)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2010, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/21 "2010-03-05T02:18:04Z")
> [@Quint](#): > > Here is a link to one of the most amazing crossword puzzles ever made: > > [http://barelybad.com/xwdthemes\_110596.htm](http://barelybad.com/xwdthemes_110596.htm) Cool. Anybody got links to more AcrossLite puzzles? ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2010, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/22 "2010-03-05T12:00:26Z")
> [@K364](#): > > Thanks Pulykamell for clearing that up. I’m going to have a look at Thurs from now on. > > I don’t know if Shortz was solely responsible for making xwords more fun but what a difference from 20 years ago… doing xwords back then was basically researching a dictionary. I agree with you- but believe me, a LOT of people were fans of the older puzzles, and Will got a lot of negative letters when he started to change things. It wasn’t MY idea of fun, but there were thousands of senior citizens out there who LIKED to spend hours with a Eugene Maleska puzzle, a dictionary and a pot of coffee. ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/23 "2010-03-06T01:28:43Z")
> [@GameHat](#): > > For about four years I did the NYT crossword every day. > > I usually could not finish Sunday’s puzzle. > > The biggest “tip” I have - crossword creators seem to latch on to a few favorite pet words and then use them - over, and over, and over. They’ll try to make the clue interesting each time but the words are useful to them so they pop up a lot. Take note of these repeated words and look for them in puzzles. > > For instance, it seemed like every puzzle I ever did had either the word “Agar” or the word “Oleo”. I suspect both were attractive to the puzzle creator because they are short and have multiple vowels. But neither come up in normal speech much; in fact I hardly ever hear them used outside a crossword puzzle. It is also helpful elementary French, German, Spanish, and Italian, and a few select legal and medical terms in latin. Always consider every possible construction of the clue, because they quite often use homonyms. For example you read the 7-letter clue “Nice hello” and you’re wracking your brain trying to think of a 7-letter friendly salutation, but the answer is “Bon Jour” – the way they say hello in Nice, France. Don’t get locked to reading a word as a noun when it could equally be a verb, adjective, etc., and vice versa. The tense and singularity/plurality of the clue reflects the same in the answer. So a clue that is plural yields an answer that is plural, etc. A gerund (-ing) yields a gerund, etc. Once you get used to this, it will kill 90% of crosswords for you, because most are very sloppy in this regard and it is SO ANNOYING. Understand the dread “comb. form” = combining form. This is the way the concept is formed when it acts as a modifier in a larger word, and is often of greek of latin origin. Some combining forms as examples water – aqua or hydro earth – chthon or geo air – aero hidden – crypto people – demo or anthro iron - ferro sea - thalasso (and deep sea – bentho; underwater – pelago) horse – hippo ---
**Author:** ![choie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/choie/32/7829_2.png) [@choie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/choie)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/24 "2010-03-06T22:13:37Z")
> [@Spoons](#): > > I’ll also thank Will Shortz for making puzzles more fun. Eugene Maleska’s puzzles were more like work. > [@astorian](#): > > I agree with you- but believe me, a LOT of people were fans of the older puzzles, and Will got a lot of negative letters when he started to change things. > > It wasn’t MY idea of fun, but there were thousands of senior citizens out there who LIKED to spend hours with a Eugene Maleska puzzle, a dictionary and a pot of coffee. Well, I’m only 43, and I have to admit something that surprised the hell out of me. Last year I bought the big book of 500 NYT Sunday crosswords, which credits both Maleska and Shortz. The puzzles appear to be in chronological order. And despite my expectations, I discovered I prefer Maleska’s half of the book. I’ve been going through the book and a funny thing happened at around puzzle #200 or so. I found myself getting annoyed with the clues. Too many seemed to rely on double meanings or incredibly stretched/convoluted logic, or even flat-out crappy syntax. Also, the themes, or gimmicks, started to bug me as well, with an over-emphasis on silliness like having to draw a bell, star or heart in the squares, or even connecting the freakin’ dots at one point. Call me crazy, but I do crosswords for _words_, not playing pin the tail on the donkey. Ugh, listen to me. I’m really not humorless, honest! I love word games. I adored _Games_ magazine back in the ‘80s, when Shortz was involved in it. But if I’m correct in assuming the switchover from Maleska to Shortz is what makes these later puzzles different from the earlier ones, then I guess I’m that rare Doper who _likes_ Maleska’s style, and didn’t find that it required a dictionary – just a helluva good vocabulary and some wracking of the ol’ brain. I dunno. I’m still enjoying doing the puzzles, and still have about 180 to go before finishing the book. But I must say \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \* to Maleska’s old school style. Clue: Adios from Catallus ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/25 "2010-03-06T22:52:01Z")
> [@choie](#): > > But if I’m correct in assuming the switchover from Maleska to Shortz is what makes these later puzzles different from the earlier ones, then I guess I’m that rare Doper who _likes_ Maleska’s style, and didn’t find that it required a dictionary – just a helluva good vocabulary and some wracking of the ol’ brain. And an intimate knowledge of opera. I think that’s partially what drove me crazy about Maleska’s puzzles–in addition to the obscure words, he assumed everybody know operas, and also knew the opera stars of New York City. But I’m neither an opera fan nor a New Yorker who might see something about currently-playing operas in the news. Still, there must have been something about Maleska’s puzzles that I liked, because I did them; and thanks to the collections I can buy, sometimes I still do. I seem to recall reading somewhere (and I apologize for not remembering where), that Maleska’s approach to puzzles was that of a teacher: puzzles were an opportunity to educate the solver somehow. Shortz takes a different tack; to him, puzzles are supposed to be fun. While I’m not especially keen on the numbers, shapes, and other non-letter forms that he occasionally allows in the puzzles, I’ll still take Shortz’s approach. Of course, YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/26 "2010-03-06T23:26:54Z")
> [@choie](#): > > Well, I’m only 43, and I have to admit something that surprised the hell out of me. Last year I bought the big book of 500 NYT Sunday crosswords, which credits both Maleska and Shortz. The puzzles appear to be in chronological order. And despite my expectations, I discovered I prefer Maleska’s half of the book. > > I’ve been going through the book and a funny thing happened at around puzzle #200 or so. I found myself getting annoyed with the clues. Too many seemed to rely on double meanings or incredibly stretched/convoluted logic, or even flat-out crappy syntax. Also, the themes, or gimmicks, started to bug me as well, with an over-emphasis on silliness like having to draw a bell, star or heart in the squares, or even connecting the freakin’ dots at one point. Call me crazy, but I do crosswords for _words_, not playing pin the tail on the donkey. > > Ugh, listen to me. I’m really not humorless, honest! I love word games. I adored _Games_ magazine back in the ‘80s, when Shortz was involved in it. But if I’m correct in assuming the switchover from Maleska to Shortz is what makes these later puzzles different from the earlier ones, then I guess I’m that rare Doper who _likes_ Maleska’s style, and didn’t find that it required a dictionary – just a helluva good vocabulary and some wracking of the ol’ brain. > > I dunno. I’m still enjoying doing the puzzles, and still have about 180 to go before finishing the book. But I must say \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \* to Maleska’s old school style. > > Clue: Adios from Catallus I don’t share your tastes, but there’s no reason we HAVE to agree. A puzzle is supposed to be fun, and we enjoy what we enjoy. It’s not a moral failing on your part that you like the old ways better. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/27 "2010-03-07T01:05:46Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Yeah, I like the patternless a lot, too. The Sun-Times has (or had, I’m not sure what it is now) three crosswords: the previous week’s New York Times, their own, and a patternless one. The NYT and patternless ones were fun. The in-house one was relatively boring. Not _terrible_, but not really a lot of fun compared to the other two. > > Cryptics simply drive me insane. I’m happy if I can get two or three clues in a puzzle. +1 I have a lot of downtime at work sometimes and the Sun-Times puzzles get me through. I always do the NYT puzzle and then go to the Patternless when I finish or give up on that. Generally I can finish the NYT puzzles Mon-Wed and on Thursday I usually hit a wall. I find the clues in the Patternless ones to be fairly comparable to the NYT clues making it worthwhile. The regular Sun-Times puzzle just isn’t worth my time. I also occasionally do the Sudoku puzzle but generally I’m not a fan of the harder ones. I believe that all puzzles should be done in pen and without any trial and error and I’ve found that there’s no way to do harder Sudokus through pure logic and visualization. ---
**Author:** ![Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a9a28c/32.png) [@Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oslo_Ostragoth)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/28 "2010-03-07T06:56:05Z")
> [@Omniscient](#): > > I also occasionally do the Sudoku puzzle but generally I’m not a fan of the harder ones. I believe that all puzzles should be done in pen and without any trial and error and I’ve found that there’s no way to do harder Sudokus through pure logic and visualization. Hard Sudokus can’t be done with pen. There are too many things, beginning with exclusionary rules, that can only be done with pencil. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/29 "2010-03-07T09:37:11Z")
> [@Oslo\_Ostragoth](#): > > Hard Sudokus can’t be done with pen. There are too many things, beginning with exclusionary rules, that can only be done with pencil. Yes, and thus my fundamental issue with them. They cease to be puzzles at that point and become exercises. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/30 "2010-03-07T13:51:11Z")
> [@choie](#): > > Well, I’m only 43, and I have to admit something that surprised the hell out of me. Last year I bought the big book of 500 NYT Sunday crosswords, which credits both Maleska and Shortz. The puzzles appear to be in chronological order. And despite my expectations, I discovered I prefer Maleska’s half of the book. > > I’ve been going through the book and a funny thing happened at around puzzle #200 or so. I found myself getting annoyed with the clues. Too many seemed to rely on double meanings or incredibly stretched/convoluted logic, or even flat-out crappy syntax. Also, the themes, or gimmicks, started to bug me as well, with an over-emphasis on silliness like having to draw a bell, star or heart in the squares, or even connecting the freakin’ dots at one point. Call me crazy, but I do crosswords for _words_, not playing pin the tail on the donkey. > > Ugh, listen to me. I’m really not humorless, honest! I love word games. I adored _Games_ magazine back in the ‘80s, when Shortz was involved in it. But if I’m correct in assuming the switchover from Maleska to Shortz is what makes these later puzzles different from the earlier ones, then I guess I’m that rare Doper who _likes_ Maleska’s style, and didn’t find that it required a dictionary – just a helluva good vocabulary and some wracking of the ol’ brain. > > I dunno. I’m still enjoying doing the puzzles, and still have about 180 to go before finishing the book. But I must say \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \_ \* to Maleska’s old school style. > > Clue: Adios from Catallus I was also an avid Games reader back in the 80’s, and was initially delighted when Shortz took over at the NYT…but over time it became my impression that the Sunday puzzle had gotten significantly easier, to the point I eventually stopped doing it. I did continue doing Friday/Saturday for a while, and then dropped those as well, so now I don’t do crosswords except for random cryptics here and there. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/31 "2010-03-07T14:35:12Z")
> [@Quint](#): > > Here is a link to one of the most amazing crossword puzzles ever made: > > [http://barelybad.com/xwdthemes\_110596.htm](http://barelybad.com/xwdthemes_110596.htm) That is absolutely ingenious. As more of a fan of cryptic puzzles, I sometime criticise non-cryptics for having clues that yield more than one plausible answer. But that puzzle exploits ambiguous clues in a very clever way. It would be difficult to reproduce that in a cryptic puzzle, although I can think of a couple of cryptic compilers who might be up to the task. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/32 "2010-03-07T14:52:26Z")
> [@Quint](#): > > Here is a link to one of the most amazing crossword puzzles ever made: > > [http://barelybad.com/xwdthemes\_110596.htm](http://barelybad.com/xwdthemes_110596.htm) I remember doing this one the day it was published. At first I thought it was presumptuous of them to assume that Clinton would win, but then I finally caught on. A brilliantly constructed puzzle. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/33 "2010-03-07T14:57:20Z")
> [@Oslo\_Ostragoth](#): > > Hard Sudokus can’t be done with pen. There are too many things, beginning with exclusionary rules, that can only be done with pencil. I always do them with pen, no problem. I know some people write in “candidate” numbers in the corners and eliminate them, but I never bother. I’ve never found one I couldn’t keep straight in my head. There are really only a handful of elimination strategies. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/34 "2010-03-07T15:22:26Z")
Really, what happens is that as you do more sudokus, and get more practice with them, the line where they can’t be done in pen gets harder and harder, until eventually a very good puzzler will never encounter a puzzle that can’t be done in pen. You will, though, need to learn or devise new techniques for doing them to make this possible. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/35 "2010-03-07T15:33:47Z")
I think I ended up being able to do them that way because I basically never knew you weren’t supposed to. I just started trying them on weekdays, and never knew anything about strategies or conventional procedures at first. I just started filling in numbers. For a while, I was getting stuck a lot on the harder puzzles until I started figuring out some of the more complex elimination procedure. It seems to me, though, like there are usually only one or two spots where you really need to think through something complicated. There are always a few gimmes, then a trick or two, then once you get a tricky one or two it’s like breaking a log jam and you can cruise through the rest. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/36 "2010-03-07T16:07:19Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > I think I ended up being able to do them that way because I basically never knew you weren’t supposed to. I just started trying them on weekdays, and never knew anything about strategies or conventional procedures at first. I just started filling in numbers. For a while, I was getting stuck a lot on the harder puzzles until I started figuring out some of the more complex elimination procedure. > > It seems to me, though, like there are usually only one or two spots where you really need to think through something complicated. There are always a few gimmes, then a trick or two, then once you get a tricky one or two it’s like breaking a log jam and you can cruise through the rest. Are you talking about ones you find in the newspaper, or do you ever buy the books that have the hard, extra hard and “watch out!” sections? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/37 "2010-03-07T16:13:15Z")
The newspaper mostly. I bought a supermarket book once that had a star system of one to six stars, but I didn’t find the six star puzzles any tougher than the newspaper. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/38 "2010-03-07T18:25:10Z")
You’ve got to be careful with the sudoku books; many of them seem to have poor quality control. My mom’s recently taken up sudokus, and a couple of weeks ago she sent me a photocopy of one she was working on that she’d gotten stuck on: It was almost finished, but she just couldn’t figure out any way to get anything for the last few spaces. It turned out that it actually had four different valid solutions, and the reason she couldn’t finish it was there was no way to logically rule out any of those four. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/39 "2010-03-07T19:02:43Z")
I guess I just haven’t tried any of the really super hard ones then. If I did, I probably try to do them the same way I always do, because I don’t really know any other way. Most likely I’d just get completely stuck somewhere and give up. That’s happened before. Other times I’ve tossed a puzzle down out of frustration, then picked it up again hours or even days later and discovered that I’d somehow overlooked something incredibly obvious. Maybe that comes from trying to keep everything in my head. ---
**Author:** ![Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a9a28c/32.png) [@Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oslo_Ostragoth)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2010, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608/40 "2010-03-08T05:57:04Z")
> [@Omniscient](#): > > I believe that all puzzles should be done in pen and without any trial and error and I’ve found that there’s no way to do harder Sudokus through pure logic and visualization. Dude. I gotta challenge you on this. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-times-crosswords/530608.md?page=3)