I do my daily crossword on the Seattle Times site, which is a pretty good app and it’s free, but it’s (I think) three weeks behind the NYT. And sometimes, for rebus squares and the like, the person who put it into the app put it down slightly differently than I do, so it doesn’t mark as “completed” (and sometimes, the “official” answer isn’t even possible to enter into the app).
I did this puzzle in 24 minutes. But my answer to the “common clue” did not make complete sense to me, seeming like a partial fit. Having read the above explainer, I think this puzzle is pretty neat. I probably would have never figured out the other variations.
I did an old puzzle which had been sitting around an unknown number of weeks. It had a “Scrabble triple letter” clue for horizontal words. I thought that was clever too. That one took me longer.
I guess it was from last week. This one was clever too.
Just wanted to throw a thanks your way. I stopped my local paper and subscribed to the electronic NYT. Printing out the crosswords was a dandy idea.
It’s not too often that you find something cheaper that also turns out to be better.
mmm
Now you have 2 weeks’ worth of puzzles to catch up on.
And you have access to the archive too for whenever you run out of puzzling!
The archive is one of the best parts. I am sad however that they removed the acrostic archive…
I wish it went back farther. It would be fun to try some puzzles from various decades. The first ever Sunday NY Times crossword from February, 1942 is available without a subscription:
I have a NYT crossword book that contains, I think, one representative puzzle from each year going back to 1940-something. The old puzzles are interesting, but I wouldn’t call them fun to solve.
mmm
ETA: Oh yeah, I just completed the specific puzzle referenced in the OP. I didn’t get the full gimmick of it until I read Rex Parker’s write-up. This one was probably more enjoyable for the creator than the solver.
I am about 15 clues into solving today’s puzzle. This is the first time I’ve tried solving electronically rather than on paper.
I gotta tell you, I think I may be sold on this method. Much to my surprise, I might add.
mmm
I truly hated Saturday’s puzzle, which Sam E. designed. It wasn’t just that it was hard (it was), but some of the clues were attempts to be clever that were instead just poor clues.
I felt better after reading the comments - more than 500! - since I wasn’t alone in that.
The barber clue was misleading because I don’t consider the answer to be one word, so I started with the more obvious answer until it didn’t work. The Cleveland answer baffled me even after it was filled in until I read the Rex Parker column. That was fairly obscure.
Yeah, the Saturday puzzle was pretty bad (I didn’t like the barber clue or the “smacks forehead” one, and the NFL anagram was lazy and I imagine very annoying for a non-football fan). I found today’s (Sunday) one pretty boring too.
The one in the OP I actually found really fun and clever.
If it hasn’t already been mentioned here and/or isn’t widely known, Will Shortz had a stroke a few months ago. He’s been absent from his weekly puzzle gig at NPR for a while but all they would say every week is that he was “away” and they’ve had some other puzzle guy filling in for him. They finally announced a couple weeks back that it was due to a stroke. Sounds like he’s recovering ok but will be awhile before he’s back.
Anyhow, I’ve noticed in the puzzle app the last couple weeks that Joel Fagliano (the guy who does the NYT daily mini puzzle) has been doing the editing, and it seems to me that the crosswords have been a little harder than usual.
Good, because they’ve been getting too easy. I too was mildly infuriated by the barber clue (I put in ‘oops’ as I suspect many others did) and got off to a bad start. Otherwise, Saturday was properly difficult even though it wasn’t a great puzzle.
Yeah, those bothered me, the first one in particular. In addition, I think lastin’ line was intended as a pun on elastin, except if you put an apostrophe at the end with the elision of the ‘g’, I kinda think you need one for the ‘e’ at the front as well. Except, that would make no sense. I just didn’t like this clue.
It’s not elastin. It’s “lasting line” and the answer makes sense to me.
But why the apostrophe at all? Why is the clue “Lastin’ Line?” instead of just “Lasting Line”? Typically, in my very limited crossword experience, you only would abbreviate/shorten the clue if the answer was also abbreviated.
If it’s just to make the pun with “Last In Line” that is stupid, because the answer has nothing to do with it, unless they are making a very tenuous connection to Scar from the Lion King who was “last in line” to the throne (which just occurred to me, but can’t actually be what they were intending, right?).
Exactly.
I thought the NYT paper puzzle on March 24 (Feeling Possessive) was very hard. Took me seventy-five minutes and I had to look up several clues. Sometimes I just know exactly what the creator is thinking. Not this time.