This is the crossword puzzle thread

Recently I picked up a copy of the Oregonian in order to do the NYTimes puzzle and I kept it aside for weeks and then finally did it -- it was a Wednesday puzzle and I had a few minutes to spare -- and it was all Latin themed clues, which was nice, and was almost enough to make be believe that divine providence had caused me to hang on to it, almost.

Also while cleaning up I found the enormous bag of old GAMES magazines from the 80s that my friend gave me and which I have yet to explore. Rah!

The difficult part about crossword making is the clues, of course...

it was a Wednesday puzzle and I had a few minutes to spare -- and it was all Latin themed clues, which was nice

omg ysi?

Yes and no. I mean, it takes me several hours to create the fills and usually I'm so relieved to be done that I can rush through the clues in mere minutes. But it's a challenge to make really good clues, ones that will make the difference between an easy and a (more interesting) difficult puzzle. For instance, I like to put a lot of pop-culture references in my puzzles, but a lot of times these are hard to create ambiguous clues for; some end up just being fill-in-the-blanks.

(xpost)

Re: YSI: Oh uh I did it and then recycled it. It might still be in my recycle bin though. But it'll have the answers.

Har, no worries Casuistry. Are we talking about cryptics or non- here btw?

Cryptic thread is another one, mostly UK posters, but jaymc and Casuistry show up too.

i can do ny times up through wednesday 80-90% of the time with a fair amount of ease, thursday closer to 50-60% (usually with some help), friday almost never, and i dont think ive ever finished a saturday ny times x-word

Oh. I have. Either I get hopeless stuck on a Saturday (30% of the time?) or it takes about 45 minutes. Or, it did when I was doing them all the time.

last week's sunday ny times crossword i did in less than an hour (this is not usually the case for me).

i cannot, under any circumstances, ever finish a cryptic crossword

New crossword from me.

Haha "what johns do."

The school clue is super-great, too!

I was momentarily thrown by two spellings not conforming to the way the NYT would render them -- and then in both cases yours seems more Korrect, and theirs seems more of the variEnt.

I'm pretty sure I know one of the two you mean. Is this the other? Because I think that's always spelled like that, even though a word that contains that word has a NYT-preferred variant.

Nope, two different ones -- 9 across and 48 across.

And actually, funny though it may be, I'm kind of annoyed with "what johns do," just because it's a bit of a stretch, even for a Tausig-type puzzle. Really hard to work with five theme fills, though!

Nope, two different ones -- 9 across and 48 across.

Ah! I had originally used the variant for 48-A until I looked it up in Wikipedia and saw that that was a common mistake.

my pops schooled me on that holiday sunday NYT puzzle. :(

i got ben tausig's book and i'm about halfway through it, although his cluing seems to have gotten harder as he went along.

I think you can get away with one giant stretch per puzzle, so long as it's , you know, funny.

Try to be a little sneakier with the clues, maybe? "When Romeo dies" -- the present tense gives that one away far too quickly. Make it past tense, so there's at least a chance that I'll panic for a moment trying to figure out if we know the year -- or, better, "Where Romeo died", and I might think you're going for "GENOA" and realize that won't fit and wonder if I am misremembering the story -- or, maybe even better, for a good Thursdayish clue, find some other character who dies in a similar place, but whose name does not immediately ring of Shakespeare, and I'll be mystified for a while, but it will eventually come to me. Because it's that sort of strip-tease, right?

"What johns do" is nicely phrased for sure, though.

That's a fair point, Chris. My thought process for that clue was basically, "I need something that happens there ... Oh, well, obviously: Romeo dies ... Is that too easy? ... What happens in Othello? ... *reads Wikipedia article about Othello* ... yeah, not really feeling that ... I should probably be working right now ... All right, 'When Romeo dies.'"

That's sort of what I meant about the clues being the hard part. But you saw the movie, right? How Will Shortz basically rewrites half the clues for the puzzles he accepts?

Anyway I'm not trying to discourage you, of course. I just want more awesome crosswords to do.

Speaking of Tausig puzzles: the numbering of the clues in the Onion one this week (the sports issue) is completely off!

Haha, rly? It was correct online.

Yeah, it's bad enough that 1/3 of the down clues are sometimes randomly deleted; this time I was like, "Yeah, that's not gonna work."

Another new one. Title is exactly the same as Ben Tausig's Ink Well puzzle last week but with a different interpretation.

I think this is your hardest one yet, for sure.

Good!

Do you have .puz files?

Wow, jaymc, that last one is really good.

I used to want to make my own crosswords, and looked for books on how to construct them, but never could find any. Are there such things, or do you just get in there and figure it out?

Most books about crossword puzzles seem to have an obligatory section on making them, I think. I read Eugene T. Maleska's book, and boy was he proud of the awful crosswordese he used to drill into his puzzles, but I'm pretty sure it had a chapter on making puzzles.

No, I don't have .puz files. I need to look into that. Also crossword constructors are always talking about a software program called Across Lite?

And thanks, Rock. I just sort of figured it out through trial and error. All you really need to know is the basic rules for what the grid needs to look like: no words shorter than three letters, diagonal symmetry. But any good software (like Crossword Weaver, which I use) will help you make sure you don't do anything irregular.

When I started out doing themeless puzzles, I would just start at the top-right and work my way around the puzzle intuitively. With themed puzzles, I do the theme fills first and then work outward from the middle.

I'm still a little wtf over this Tausig one from the other day (I'm working through his book). The clue is "Good Buddy" and the answer is "CBER". I assume it's CB radio, but still doesn't quite make sense to me?

cockblocker?

I'm guessing that someone who uses CB radio is a CBer, in the same way that Tausig uses the clue "Recipient of 'You've got mail' message" for AOLER.

just "CBer," as in one who does CB? seems ok to me

xpost dang it

http://www.filmaffinity.com/imgs/movies/full/31/317347.jpg

Yeah guys, I know that CBer is one who does CB, but how do you get that from "good buddy"?

that is CB slang, they say stuff like "ten-four, good buddy."

http://www.impawards.com/1977/posters/smokey_and_the_bandit.jpg

Across Lite is the program that you use to enjoy .puz files, and you can get it from the NYTimes website, and they distribute their puzzles to online subscribers in that format. Someone you know might have a year's worth of such .puz files, but he has perhaps already worked through them all.

Also, you're supposed to have no more than [a certain number] of black squares if you hope to get published by the big-leagues, and certain black-square formations are frowned upon (full 90 degree right angles -- basically anything Tetris-y).

I think it's 17% black squares, or 40 squares in a 15x15 puzzle. Though Tausig had one that was 46 recently.

certain black-square formations are frowned upon (full 90 degree right angles -- basically anything Tetris-y).

I didn't know this.

I'm not sure it's as hard-and-fast a rule as the percentage one, but on those rare occasions when I see such a puzzle, I'm always a little startled by it. I dunno, I should flip through one of my NYTimes books to make sure I'm not fooling myself about it.

Diagramless puzzles, of course, are all about that.

http://www.cruciverb.com/index.php/articles/htmlpages/120

A++ for "Paris's friend," Jaymc -- actually took me a while, with excellent payoff

Total pro-level theme on that one, too!

Ha, I sort of wrote that one with you in mind, N!

The "Paris's friend" clue, I mean.

I had to look that one up after I got the answer, I don't watch that show.

I didn't love it because there's two ways to fill it in, one of which leads to writing down some non-words. Which, when I put it like that...

Interesting shape today.

Pretty fun once I clocked what was going on.

I really enjoyed today's crossword puzzle. There was a gimmick but it wasn't too hard to figure out. I loved the rebuses around the edges as well as the whole concept and pleasing visual pattern

Also it changed colors upon completion

yes! crust, cheese, pepperoni, mushroom and pepper

and the slice lines worked in

35-Across in Friday's puzzle is one of my favorite fills in a while.

And I love that according to the notes she's been submitting it for a few years and trying to convince the editors that it's valid and widely spread enough.

Tough but satisfying puzzle today, and very impressed that the constructor is still in high school

I set a personal best on Monday with my first solve under 2 minutes (1:40, which blew away my previous record) and didn't even realize it until today.

Damn, leeee, that's fast. My best Monday time is like 2:30.

Wow, yeah! My best is 2:27. Monday is the only day I actively try to solve as quickly as I can, hoping to set a new personal record, but sub-2:00 feels impossible. (I did this Monday in 3:22.)

I nearly beat my best on Monday, but for me that's 4:09 vs 4:06

i cannot pick out the letters on an ipad fast enough to get under four minutes

fwiw i appreciated that the other day the nyt crossword was by a dude named cohn and he worked 'walking in memphis singer' into it

I should mention that my old best (on a Tuesday, no less) was 3:01. I honestly thought that maybe the app was bugging out or something because I don't remember the solve being noteworthy in any way.

I really like the theme for Tuesday's (December 10), but it's also not necessarily something that has wide appeal.

Funny you should say that....

Today's annoyed the hell out of me, but that would have been largely fixed by having the 'paintings' highlighted when you're viewing the 'thefts', as well as the other way around.

Agreed.

Also Naticked.

A new Friday record today, I kept waiting to hit some snag but nearly everything fell after working around to get the crosses. Very few "this specific person".

(for scale, we're still talking nearly 8 minutes)

Not sure I care about today’s gimmick

I feel like I've seen it a few times before, possibly more clearly signposted.

I solved the grid without getting any of those then had to go back and look at them for a few minutes till the penny dropped. I think I was misled by straightaway parsing identity = ID = Idaho for the potato and so missing that it was ID entity

Huh, I liked this. Wondering if James meant Wednesday, which was lame and imo not quite right in its revealer.

I kind of have higher expectations for a Thursday though

Creepy coincidence time! I did today's NYT Saturday by Rose Conlon.

6 down: Base for fire-walking, answer is COALS.

31 across: Zendaya's role in Euphoria, answer is RUE

Then I picked up Paulo Pasco's centenary crossword in the New Yorker 100th Anniversary issue.

62 down: HBO Drama starring Zendaya as Rue Bennett, answer is EUPHORIA

67 down: One of many under a fire walker's foot, answer is HOTCOAL

Haven't done the latter...yet.

I was doing a little sewing project today and there were a bunch of loose needles in my wife's sewing basket

I was like, if only I had a case to put them in

today's minute cryptic was excellent

Regulars in bars keep spinning alt-country album (5)

Really interesting and chewy puzzle today.

NYT Sunday, I should clarify.

Yes, I solved everything but didn't get why, so I had to read the blog for the explanation. By my metric it's not quite a victory.

I thought it was easy!

1605 is the streak now btw. Teamwork makes the dream work.

I can see that, and it's quite a bit trickier than you'd expect on a Sunday, but I've been puzzle brained lately and was able to figure out 3 of the 4 puzzle clues, after which I could pretty easily guess the remaining letter.

Ah yes the household name Ludovico Einaudi

Don't forget Malcolm Turnbull.

Not a fun one today.

I had fun.

Well I eventually got through it via crosses and deduction, but still. It felt tougher than a lot of Saturdays.

I liked today (Thursday). I've made a habit of starting with downs because they often seem easier than the acrosses, but thankfully I didn't do that for this puzzle.

Yeah it was fun

very clever! I didn't finish the revealer until the end of the puzzle and didn't understand it until after I finished, so did the whole thing knowing the first two letters were missing but not that the letters were at the start of the clues. so it took a while.

Tickled that YASSIFY made it into yesterday's puzzle.

Ya that was a good one.

Also great crossword today (co-constructed by Nick Offerman!)

Very clever theme today!

Yes indeed! It took me until the very last theme answer to clock what was really going on. Felt satisfied that we still got it done in below average time despite it being quite difficult at first.

Yeah, enjoyed today's a lot, fun theme. Only started doing the NYT regularly a month or so ago, didn't realise there was a thread here.

Welcome, ailsa!

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