Four of the clues to today’s NYT mini-crossword appear to be rebuses done via icons – but only some of them appear visible on my screen.
For example, one of the clues shows a little pic of a bee then a + then… nothing. The answer turns out to be ‘bowl’, so I’m guessing the missing icon is an owl.
Another has a little pic of an automobile then + ( - @)
Again by figuring out by crossing words, the answer is ‘cargo’, so I assume it was supposed to be the pic of the car + (pic of a goat - @)
But clearly this is wonky. Why would some of the icons be visible and the others not? Is there such a thing as an Icon dictionary that I have failed to keep properly updated? (Yeah, personally I never use icons other than an occasional classic smiley face.)
That reminds me. I get the syndicated Sunday NYT crossword in my local newspaper. I think it appears one or two weeks after it appears in the NYT itself.
Once in awhile the clues contain special characters such as accent marks. Whenever it does, the clues do not show up correctly in my paper. I have to guess what the or clue was supposed to be. That’s annoying.
I am in the same boat - my local Sunday NYT puzzle, I’ve learned, was printed in the actual NYT two weeks prior.
It is usually accurate, but recently some of one puzzle’s answers depended on a letter in the relevant clues being italicized. In my copy, they were not. This made it impossible to solve the theme clues. Of course, I didn’t realize this until much work and frustration had taken place.
I think the online puzzles are even worse for this.
I do the mini-crossword every night as soon as it comes out at 9 PM (Central time). I do it in the NYTimes app on my kindle. FWIW, I didn’t have any trouble seeing those little pics a couple of nights ago.