Puzzaz. But, for whatever reason, I find the NYT app more comfortable and still use that. I pretend to myself, ridiculously, that they've silo'd the crossword money so it can't help pay or offset Dean Basquet's salary.
All the crossword money goes to pay for the farm upstate where they send the puppies that shit on mommy and daddy's bed.
I'll do the WaPo's crossword--which I think is mostly the LA's Times's--in my browser occasionally. It's pretty reasonable, but it's not an app.
My post above needs an encliticectomy, which isn't as awful as it sounds.
It's fine if it's not an app if it's usable on an iPhone, but that seems hard to pull off.
they've silo'd the crossword money so it can't help pay or offset Dean Basquet's salary
1) Racist.
2) Hilariously, I was having this same negotiation with myself last night. Unlike you, I didn't give in.
I predict big things from ITONYA. It could be the biggest crossword movie since ULEES Gold. But surprisingly I haven't seen it in the NYT yet.
Way to congratulate yourself on your moral fiber.
I am also interested in recommendations for this.
Fine puzzles are available free at least weekly at:
brendanemmettquigley.com
bewilderingly.blogspot.com
gridsthesedays.blogspot.com
I also recommend subscribing to the American Values (formerly the Onion) crossword, which is edited to a Shortz-level standard without the Times's various stodgy constraints:
avxword.com
Sometimes when it is slow at work I do the crosswords in The Guardian online - haven't hit a paywall there, but we do support the paper as well.
10 is super helpful. Looks like those sources, plus puzzazz, would do the trick.
Puzzazz sounds like a sparkly infection.
Sputnikzazz is a sparkly midcentury satellite.
10 gets it right, RWM's suggested list is almost identical (subbing out Will Nediger for Matt Gafney: http://xwordcontest.com) AV Club is the obvious place to start.
I forgot to mention my actual favorite non-NYT puzzles, Fireball Crosswords. Subscription required, but it's well worth it as Peter Gordon maintains the very highest standards. http://www.fireballcrosswords.com/
Come on, get to the real point of the post, you want to compare fastest times on the NYT mini puzzles. 13 sec on the regular and 28 on the Saturday large ones.
I feel about the mini-puzzles the way I imagine Brit crossword-solvers feel about the American style.
20 - do Brit crossword-solvers feel that it is would be unthinkably humiliating to admit that you'd ever even done an American-style puzzle, much less boast about one's time in finishing one as somehow some kind of accomplishment? Because if so, I agree about boasting about mini puzzle times. "Whoo I demonstrated lameness in less time than you did."
Sorry SP. It's all out of tough love.
But also WTF are British puzzles hard.
That was short for "wow, the FUCK are British puzzles hard (i.e, hard as fuck) not the usual use of the acronym.
On topic because of cognitive decline: "The President Can Draw a Clock" is my new favorite headline that isn't from the NY Post.
26 I've certainly been curious about that. The doctor's comment about "good genes" was bizarre and unfortunate and signing off on his getting 4-5 hours of sleep a day maybe even more so.
Though Trump got the harder test that doesn't ask the question about who is the president, it reminds me of my father responding to "Who is the President?" with "I think people made a mistake but Trump."
27: Given Trump's penchant for eugenics and the current fucked up immigration moment it was a truly demented answer. The guy seems to have been something of a sycophant for Obama as well. Probably an unstated qualification for the position.
Apparently, there are all kind of rules about how you draw the clock. If they don't change the test, I'm going to have trouble when I get older because of all the digital clocks.
Like the hands have to stay inside the circle of the clock or you lose points.
Anyway, it turns out doctors make a big deal of knowing what day it is and where you are. If you want to get out of the hospital quickly, don't forget those.
I hesitate to harp on this because even if he has all his cognitive function he's still unfit, but the same doctor gave height and weight that just like his personal doctor in 2016 had it miraculously work out to 29.9 BMI, and contradicting his driver's license, so the statement is really not trustworthy one bit.
I'd never thought about before, but I'm honestly surprised that Trump has a driver's license.
Not to be able to drive would betray the memory of Robert Moses.
33 is very true. I was once in hospital and they woke me up every hour all night to ask me. The other guy in the room was pleading with tears in his eyes to be moved.
Hard American crosswords are impossible because nobody has the level of general/lexical knowledge they demand unless they've been doing hard American crosswords from about the age of five.
To a different room or did he want more pathos from your reply?
39: You know you're old when you hear the name "Ione Skye" and think of crosswords.
I used to use one one on iOS just called Crosswords which let you pull from various newspapers, cryptic and otherwise. But I've basically stopped doing crosswords as I can't concentrate on both the crossword and the podcast I'm listening to. Sorry crosswords, podcasts come first.
But also WTF are British puzzles hard.
It's not that they're hard, though some are, it's that there's this enormous body of assumed knowledge and rules that (most) non-cryptics don't have. If you don't have that, they're basically impossible, in the same way that reading Chinese is "hard" for an English monoglot.
39. You prove my point. I had to google Ione Skye.
Oh God, what an epitaph. "Here lies all that was mortal of Ione Skye, beloved by all who knew her. She had a nice set of letters."
43 gets it right. It's basically a foreign language. The clues make no literal sense much of the time, they are just puzzles that you have to know all kinds of conventions to decipher and then figure out "oh, it's this word, but not actually that word, an abbreviation of it, with this other word, spelled backwards, inserted into the middle of it". You even have to learn the conventions to figure out which 25% of the clue is an actual clue while the other 75% is rules for how the letter rearrangement game works.
They say you die twice. First when you die regular and second when the last person writes you name for 7 down.
You even have to learn the conventions to figure out which 25% of the clue is an actual clue while the other 75% is rules for how the letter rearrangement game works.
Or, often, which 25% of the clue is the definition, which 50% is the rules, and which 25% is misdirection based on your knowledge of the conventions.
By the way, the Graun's Quiptic crosswords are a pretty good introduction to the cryptic style, being halfway between a triva crossword and a full cryptic, usually with pretty clear clues and no misdirection. You're still going to need a bit of a leg up, like this, say, but if you're looking for an entry point, it's either that or one of the easier setters, and I don't know who they are these days.
I do the Graun moron crossword when I want to cheer myself that I am not demented, just depressed. It works except for the days when I can't finish it.
Oo, that second link in 50 looks very helpful, thanks.
American crosswords (even the hard ones) resolve more when you know the few dozen words they love to use for vowel density and placement reasons - iota, Etna, eke, ante, etc. - such that many tough clues end up being extra-roundabout references to one of that set, to avoid the perception of cliche. At least esne is now mostly eradicated, and eft is rare.