# Question about NY Times Crossword **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Tags:** board-card-word-game\ **Created:** [December 11, 2022, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-ny-times-crossword/976334 "2022-12-11T14:33:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 7
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2022, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-ny-times-crossword/976334/7 "2022-12-11T15:47:34Z")
> [@Southern\_Yankee](#): > > some squares actually contain multiple letters > [@BlankSlate](#): > > ‘rebus’ Yes, these kinds of gimmick puzzles are called “rebus” puzzles, because in an actual rebus, pictures are used to stand for words or parts of words. If you were solving a rebus crossword on paper, you could draw a symbol or picture in one of the squares instead of multiple letters. For example, I’ve seen rebus crosswords based on Greek letters, where you could write a symbol like \pi in a square to stand for the letters PI, or \theta to stand for the letters THETA. Here’s a recent thread about these sorts of crosswords (which, as @Maserschmidt notes, the NYT tends to run on Thursdays and some Sundays). As you can see from this thread, some solvers love these, some hate them. > [@NYT crosswords after Wednesday](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nyt-crosswords-after-wednesday/971677): > > I’ve been gradually working my way into more and more difficult crosswords. Went through an entire batch of the Wednesday repeats. Moving on to Thursday. THEY SUCK! I don’t mind the hard words or the hard clues - they make me work harder. But it’s the gimmicks with some words spelled backwards or part of the answer omitted for chuckles. One recent puzzle had the letters EAT omitted from every answer that would have included them such as thEATer. For those of you that do crosswords, will t… --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-ny-times-crossword/976334)._