I do only the Sunday NYT - and have been for years - because it’s the only one I have access to. I’m a paper-and-pen guy.
A big part of my fun is to go, after completion, to Rex Parker’s site (not sure if I’m allowed to link it here, just do the Google). He deconstructs every NYT crossword, and others, every day. His snarkiness and grouchitude are a joy to read (others may certainly differ).
mmm
I print out all the puzzles from the Oregonian online paper: NYT, Birnholz, Daily, etc. And the jumble just for fun. There are five puzzles on MT, and four on WTFS. Sunday has three. Sometimes Friday and Saturday are too difficult, but I can usually get most of it. The wife and I have a friendly competition, which she loses around 99.9% of the time. I don’t mind the trick puzzles on Thursday.
I don’t see why not: It’s:
He is – love and hate for me. The minutae he bitches about can get on my nerves, but it’s fun enough to read, especially for the comment section where there’s a bit more sanity and some fun regulars. I do have to take regular breaks from reading his blog, though.
It seems to me that the Saturday puzzles have gotten a little easier over the years. When I go back to the Saturday puzzles from years ago in the app archive, they seem harder. I can now finish a Saturday puzzle without help about once every 6 or 8 weeks, and I can’t finish any of the old ones. I thought today’s was not too awful.
I finally got a 3:59 Monday today. Yay!! And there was enough slack in my solving that 3:30 is not outside the realm of possibility.
Nicely done!
Do you do it on a computer? I play on my phone and I don’t think my thumbs could ever move that fast.
That was on computer, yes. The fastest I could do a Monday on the phone with my fumbling fingers is probably somewhere around 5:30. I wish there was a way to sort times by what device I used to solve it. I do see a 6:05 a few weeks ago that I would have done on my phone, so I’m basing a fast estimate off that.
I might have to try computer. I do them on my iPad, and a couple of years ago a Monday glitched in the NYT system and it lost my results, so I went back in and redid them…even knowing the answers in advance, I was somewhere around 5 minutes.
Yeah, it’s much easier. I started with iPad, and I did have a handful of sub-5 results on that, but with iPad, it still runs about a good 45 seconds slower than on the computer, once you get used to the little shortcuts.
I got through it pretty quick - 4:55, so your 3:59 is very impressive to me. I would have to type and move accurately, and not get stuck, to come close to that.
Trust me, two years ago I didn’t understand how it was even possible to get to 4 minutes, but with this one, I felt I could have gotten 3:30 if I didn’t stumble at a couple of places. It’s weird, because it didn’t feel full-tilt like some other tries I’ve made at 4 minutes. So I think part of it is just relaxing and letting it flow.
But then there’s these folks with sub-3s out there. Back when Rex Parker on his blog posted solve times, I swear every Monday was between 2:30 and 3:30. (for example, I picked 12/21/20 at random on his blog, and it’s a 2:50 solve time. Mine was 7:31 for the same date.)
Do you use a mouse, or just all shortcuts?
Oh, no mouse, no. I don’t think I’ve ever even tried it with mouse – just tab, shift+tab, and arrows. I think ESC lets you enter rebus answers. There may be other keys, but those are all the ones I use. I just use the NY Times interface. I know that are people who like other software for their solves, but I’ve never tried anything else (I think Across Lite is the popular one.)
All right, thanks, I’m going to try that. 
Note that for the rebus answers, you can just enter the first letter of the word.
Actually, that is a good tip. I hadn’t tried it enough to determine whether that was a universal rule or not. I’ve used it at times when i couldn’t figure out how the puzzle wanted me to enter an unusual type of rebus or multi-letter answer (like T across, but F down), and found that just entering the across one was enough. Now I guess it works for all manner of rebuses.
It may help in particular if you’re going for a short solve time.
I’ve done 10 or so Mondays from the archive, and not once was I as high as my Monday average, 6:22, and two of them even came in around 4:45. I’m still reflexively reaching for the mouse sometimes, but whatever, this is way faster. #themoreyouknow
I may have mentioned this earlier but something I do to make the easier puzzles slightly more challenging is to complete them Scrabble-style. Meaning after completing one clue, every subsequent one I complete has to cross an existing solved one. So no jumping around the board.