Fantastic. Years ago, a freshman at Bennington, I had a professor who was Chinese. She taught me that we do not identify feelings, events, emotions…when we don’t have a word for them. In Chinese, she said, there is a word that means, “the very moment the chaos of a flock of birds taking flight all at once, suddenly shifts to what appears to be one perfectly synchronized wave, or ribbon of perfect unison..” She explained that it was what I’d described when I finally saw my paper coming together, and was able to complete, while hours earlier, I felt I had nothing. I think about it often. Cooking dinner, or a busy, stressful day suddenly opening up and simply gliding into evening. That’s why I love Friday/Saturday. For that moment that the dissonant grid becomes melodic. Lovely! Thank you Alex!
@CCNY I am curious what the word is? Perhaps a transliteration?
@CCNY Could you transliterate the word you described? That’s beautiful!
@CCNY What's the word for this lovely description of things coming together, please?
I’m looking for it. Very tough to find! If anyone out there speaks (I believe) mandarin, I’d be so grateful! But I’ll keep looking. If I find it later, I’ll add to my comment tomorrow!
@CCNY, What a great comment. Thank you. FWIW this particular puzzle came easily enough for me that I didn’t have the initial confusion leading to that moment of coalescence — although I enjoyed the smooth solve. But I know exactly the feeling you describe, in crossword-solving and in life, and will think of this post often.
@CCNY And at the other end of the scale we have words that have so many meanings they fail to explain any of them. I’m thinking in particular of the word, “love”. We use the one poor little word to describe how we feel about everything from our first girl/boyfriend, parents, children, spouses, friends, songs, books, movies, pizza… I guess same could be said about “hate”.
In my experience, those MENTAL NOTEs aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
"Hey, can you bring the sheet music tomorrow?" "I'll make a note of it." ("Okay, thanks. Just don't want to get into treble.")
@Mike I'm looking for a big score. Yeah, yeah. The same old refrain.
@Mike all of this strikes a chord with me.
All of these puns are really tone-deaf.
If you are short-staffed then you may need to have more than clef notes.
@Mike A good memory would be instrumental to your success...or should I say, "It's key?"
@Mike Did you see the video of the wing suit jumper who landed at the bass of that clef? I was worried about her, until I saw her pull the chord!
A first for me to solve both Friday and Saturday puzzles with no lookups. I plan to ignore all the comments that said they were too easy. In my opinion, they were perfect.
"Water tower" ... tricksy hobbitses!!!
@Alan Lehotsky why is a tug a water tower? This is something to do with tugboats?
I’ve been on a Wislawa Szymborska kick lately, the great Polish poet. I posted excerpts from two of her poems Wednesday night but they were emu’d (the word “dunnce” (with one n) was the apparent culprit). Hopeful but clear-eyed, funny, lyrical, a humanist of the highest order. Here’s her poem, “A Note,” inspired by MENTAL NOTE. A Note by Wislawa Szymborska (Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak) Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the sand, rise on wings; to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur; to tell pain from everything it’s not; to squeeze inside events, dawdle in views, to seek the least of all possible mistakes. An extraordinary chance to remember for a moment a conversation held with the lamp switched off; and if only once to stumble upon a stone, end up soaked in one downpour or another, mislay your keys in the grass; and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes; and to keep on not knowing something important.
@Puzzlemucker Lovely, lucid poem, moments that seem, and are, in their way, important, but still leave you searching for something unknown. Coincidentally (really coincidental, having nothing to do with the poem), one afternoon last week I stumbled on a stone and fell to the ground. a knee skinned, a knee and hands bruised, but nothing broken. The next afternoon we were about to go out and I started looking for my keys—searched my purse three times, looked in all possible pockets, nothing. Then I realized that I would have had the keys in my hand when I fell, and must have dropped them. Feeling hopeless, I went outside to look at the crash site, but of course, they weren't there. I turned to go back to our house, and I saw them! They were hanging on a telephone pole, where they must have been all night and all day. A dozen people must have walked past them, and everyone trusted that I would find them. One of those stunning moments that make life worth living.
@Puzzlemucker I must say that is a great translation - I just read the Polish original, and it and the translation have the exact same feel. Also, I'm not a great fan of poetry in general, but I liked this: an ode to the mundanity of life. @Dutchiris I'm glad you're ok after your fall! I once found some keys by a path in my local park. I hung them at eye level on the pole of an information panel. Nobody ever claimed them. They hung there for years, rusting. Poem materiał, maybe?
@Andrzej I haven't yet read enough of your comments to know for sure (that probably will never happen; certainty is hard), but I like to imagine on many days you might have instead have chosen to describe how A Note registers "the life in mundanity" (a word I suppose we must have after all).
@Puzzlemucker Thank you for sharing this. Somewhere on a shelf I have a collection of her poems that I picked up some years ago but never really explored. I will do that today.
Random observations: • A pair of terrific original wordplay clues in [Lightly cut?] and [Those whose time has come and gone?]. • Also, re clues, SCENT has appeared in the major outlets more than 200 times but never in the [Trail of evidence] sense. Bravo on that, Alex! • JORTS reminds me of JARTS, two words my brain loves the sound of. • Also, re JORTS, this puzzle is brought to you by the conjunction OR – FORCED, ASHORE, BORON, DORM, JORTS. • Oh, those gorgeous long downs: ALONG THOSE LINES, BUSINESS ACUMEN, DETECTIVE BUREAU, REVERSE COMMUTE. • Lovely rare-in-crosswords five-letter palindrome (REFER). • Rather than an area-by-area fill-in, this, for me, was more like a drip-to-puddle-to-sea, where the box filled organically as a whole, like when a picture gradually emerges from being fuzzy and foggy to being crisp and sharp. That is a sweet solve. Maybe these observations aren’t so random after all, Alex, as they all contributed to a splendid outing, where I started hopeful and ended gratified. Thank you so much for making this!
@Lewis We are also enjoying the puzzle in Asheville. Great observations. Cheers!
@Lewis I note that DEREK is a portmanteau of Duane (Allman) and Eric (Clapton) so that the two guitar legends could share top billing.
@Eddie I’m very tired of this repetitive comment
@Eddie And does you has Cheezits? Any connection to the Val McDermid character (I think also named Eddie) who does?
Using ChatGPT for puzzle clues, as in the mini puzzle today, seems to me the beginning of a slippery slope (even if it is acknowledged in the clue itself).
@Ann Young- you are so right - I knew by the third clue this puzzle was created by AI - it’s sad because it makes me want to give up right away! It’s going to be a slog and totally unsatisfying.
@Ann Young I know you're talking about about using ChatGPT for constructing, but I want to confess that this week, I tried to use it in the most minor way to solve an Oct 2023 puzzle that I noticed had synonyms for "nothing" within the answers. I found NIL, ZIP, and NADA in 3 of the theme answers but could not for the life of me find one in PANnEcOTTI, so I asked ChatGPT to help me find it. That sweet little AI tried valiantly in different languages but couldn't find it either. Finally, I looked at Wordplay and realized that 4th word should have been PANZEROTTI, which I'd never heard of. So I went back to ChatGPT to report what I found, and it gushed about how smart I was to have figured out the pattern even though I had that one incorrect word. If nothing else, I got a little ego boost from my new best friend. I promise that's all it is. I'm not going to start dating ChatGPT like some people apparently do. 😝 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/technology/ai-chatgpt-boyfriend-companion.html" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/technology/ai-chatgpt-boyfriend-companion.html</a>
@Ann Young Agreed!! I was hoping someone else would bring this up. Really disappointing.
This was a new Saturday PB for me. It solved quicker than a typical Wednesday for me. I'm curious if others have a similar experience? TIL that BASE is a acronym!
@Michael Weiland This went fast for me, too. Well under my average, but not a PB.
@Michael Weiland yes this was my fastest time ever for a Saturday. And by a lot.
@Michael Weiland A faster than average Saturday for me, but nowhere near my Saturday best. Xwstats.com calls the puzzle "Very Easy", with 87% solving faster than their Saturday average, and 73% solved much faster (>20%) than their Saturday average. But this is based on a small sample size and will change throughout the day.
@Michael Weiland Quite fast for me but not a PB. Lost a bit of time to noSEdive for BASEJUMP
@Michael Weiland I was less than half my Saturday average, but not a PB. However, my run of almost identical times hit 4 in a row: - Wednesday: 9:33 - Thursday: 9:34 - Friday: 9:37 - Saturday: 9:41
@Michael Weiland I was about 30% faster than my average Saturday for the last two months.
@Michael Weiland Not quite a personal best but very close.
@Michael Weiland I beat my average time for any day other than Monday and my best for any day from Thursday onwards. Okay I've only been doing the crossword for 55 days though I have been working backwards through the months too and have only one crossword left for November. I do typically beat my average with the daily crossword six days a week, but today was extreme.
In re:EXCONS…. I really prefer seeing person-first language. So system- or justice-impacted people. People who were formerly incarcerated. I work with people who have been to prison; they have worked hard to atone for their crimes, and they should be allowed to move forward without language that collars them as criminals. Imagine being identified by a term that reminds you, every day, of the worst thing you’ve ever done. And the trauma you endured because of what you did. I’m not saying this to complain—today’s puzzle was great! I’m saying it because I appreciate this community, I want to be genuine here, I find that language hurtful, and I’m probably not alone in that.
@Josh Excellent comment. It's great when someone shines a light on something I haven't given enough thought to. Thank you. And you said it with kindness.
@Josh Unfortunately, “people who were formerly incarcerated” doesn’t make for great crossword puzzle fill.
@Josh Thanks, Josh. Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it always bothers me a bit when there's a jokey clue about prisons or people who've been incarcerated.
Any puzzle where my initial foothold into the puzzle is "Derek and the Dominos" rates an A+.
My youngest years were spent in a 19th floor apartment overlooking Eastchester Bay in the Bronx. My parents tell me they spent many hours holding me by the window; I was a fussy baby, but the view outside sometimes calmed me, watching the barges traverse the bay. My first word was TUG boat and I still have a fondness for them. They are more charming than such a workaday vessel has any need to be. I enjoyed the puzzle but SCUD and UPI did me in. After 45 min I turned on autocheck and it was just that letter U. TIL that meaning of SCUD - though to be fair, I didn’t know of a cloud movement called SCaD either.
@Noemi I love that story. I take care of a lot of different babies, and one of my tricks for the fussy ones is to look out the window and tell them stories about what we're seeing.
@Noemi I only knew SCUD from an October 2023 puzzle. No, I don't have that great of a memory. I've been working my way through the archives and probably solved that one a couple of weeks ago.
Completed in 2/3 of my average Saturday time, which isn't saying much because I'm still pretty slow. But once again, finished with no lookups. I'm learning that the key to completing most puzzles without lookups is simply believing that I can do it. Just having faith that the answers will come eventually, either through crosses or patterns, or logical guesses. With this one, a lot of my first entries were CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR (4/15 puzzle). spamemail before EMAILSPAM. OHwOw before OHBOY. epA before DEA (showing my bias here). CAverN before CANYON. ROamS before ROVES. With some of them, I was on the right track but initially couldn't figure out answers that would fit in the spaces. I guessed 13A had to do with taking a final exam but I wanted the answer to be ALONG THE LINES OF the little blue exam books we used to use in college. (Do they still use those?) 35A makes me sad and angry right now. I don't need to say why, right?
@Beth I had the same thought about 35A. And yes, at least where I went to college (I see you’re in Greenbelt — I was a Terp!), as of my final 13As last year, they still use the little blue exam books. Sometimes they’re pink or yellow, though! Truly innovative, lol.
"This is corpspeak for a task you might effort, assuming that there’s buy-in across the board, it’s been blue-skied, and related parties have the bandwidth to facilitate its completion." Impactful. I'll circle back and interface with you again about it.
Please please please can we stop with “I bar” in the grid? This is literally never used by anyone in construction (at least anyone who knows what they’re talking about). “I beam”, sure, but “I bar” always struck me as a fake phrase made up by crossword builders to make something fit.
Nick, They're usually I beams to me too, and I'm not in construction, but they're not a crossword invention. <a href="https://www.ohiogratings.com/grating-types/swaged-i-bar" target="_blank">https://www.ohiogratings.com/grating-types/swaged-i-bar</a>/
@Nick S. In my work, my civil engineer colleagues use the term "rebar." Never heard them use "I bar."
@Nick S. Completely agree. This was a clue that probably gave people with construction knowledge some trouble. I’ve been in construction nearly 30 years and IBAR is a new one to me! My initial guess was IRON, which is a little more plausible.
It's been years since I retired, and the word "bandwidth" still makes my skin crawl.
@jb For me it's "tiger team". Oh, and "best brains exchange", which reminded me of some Frankenstein-like scene with mad surgeons removing organs from the senor execs (they were supposedly the best brains) and putting them where I dunno. Working in a regional office in Montreal, I would translate these terms into French and that always made them hilariously funny to my coworkers .
Doing this puzzle made me feel like I'd been given a pile of tiny gears and parts, and, with a few false starts, managed to reassemble them into a working watch. It was a pleasure to set the last letter in place.
@Bruce Sounds like you solve for time.
Caitlin, I have an ASK. Please don't put any more CORPSPEAK into the WORDPLAY. I come here to get away from that. Mmmm-kay? Thaaaankkkssss.
@MC I thought that sentence was brilliant. A perfect bit of satire for a Friday night.
@MC Perfect! Every encounter with this nonsense reminds me why I left finance and started over in healthcare (by no means safe, but better).
My hopes for more challenging puzzle for Saturday in light of the easy peasy Friday we just had have been dashed. What's with the easy weekend puzzles? Where is the chew??
@DawnW I strongly agee. A Saturday puzzle needs to be puzzling!
Well I enjoyed it! Mercifully few proper names and no baseball or big name ins product placements. Thanks.
for the mini (i was redirected to this page from the info page on the mini on the app)- i really don't appreciate the use of chat gpt in this puzzle. sure, it was "cheeky" but the carbon footprint of ai is incredibly large, and while one prompt won't kill the planet, i never want to see it used in a puzzle that i like to do because i like seeing author's personalities in their works, and i certainly wouldn't want the new york times to make a habit of this practice. please reconsider the use of generative ai such as chatgpt in the future.
@shawn Really? It's one clue. The constructor thought it would be funny to have ChatGPT write it's own clue. To me, that IS showing the constructor's personality.
Another fine candidate for a themeless Wednesday puzzle. To me, much too "gentle" for a Saturday offering. Solid enough, though some of the long entries seemed FORCED and/or a bit BORON: EMAILSPAM, MADEASTOP Liked "Those whose time has come and gone?" for EXCONS. TABARD was new to me, so I've made a MENTALNOTE.
@Xword Junkie Even though I finished this one well below my Saturday average, it was still well above my Wednesday average.
@Xword Junkie Read more fantasy novels, and words like TABARD will come more easily. Playing RPGs helps too. Those things are full of TABARDs and halberds and greaves and such.
@Xword Junkie The pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales embark from the TABARD Inn. A footnote in the Project Gutenberg text informs us: The Tabard — the sign of the inn — was a sleeveless coat, worn by heralds. Not to be confused with the TABARD Ale House in Wantagh.
@Katie Agreed. And am I the only one who has no idea what most of the vegetation described in fantasy settings looks like in real life? Like what’s a “heath” or “gorse”?
Really good puzzle, but really, does anyone REFER to spam as “EMAIL SPAM”?
@Patrick Probably only when making the distinction between that and text or phone call spam. Otherwise, what would be the point? Still, I don't have a problem with it as a crossword answer. It's not wrong. Just awkward.
Really enjoyed the puzzle this morning — great cluing and clever answers (or perhaps the other way round!). My only gripe is that for me it was way too easy for a Saturday. Finished in half my average Saturday time — or perhaps a more meaningful measure, I finished the puzzle before my coffee!
Stop sending me so many emails, Pam. (Anyone else think maybe a dental click goes “kaching!” ?) This puzzle scudded.
I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Crunchy but very fair, my favorite kind. I wandered around the grid, and my last spot was the crossing of TUG, TUT and TRIES. Sports are always tough for me, and I also fell for “tower” as a tall building rather than a boat. Great aha moment. Thanks for the fun and the challenge, Alex Tomlinson.
@Shari Coats Ah you answered my question. I couldn’t figure out why water tower was the clue for tug. Tugboat, duh! Thanks
ACTION ITEMs after NYT puzzle editing meeting: Start a new category. Call it "Themeless Wednesday". Make end of week puzzles hurt again.
Nancy J., Yes, a couple NEARFATAL Saturdays to get the blood pumping would be nice.
Those long down entries had me worried, but this was a nice, smooth solve. A bit more crunch would have been appreciated though.
@Dave S I get a kick out of seeing your comments in here. I was going to set my Identifier as "Dave S Barry's Bay" Go Figure...
Looks like we're again doing the thing where the wordplay column link is supposed to show up on the page of the completed puzzle, but never will. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/2025/04/19" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/2025/04/19</a> This page typically has a picture and a link to the Wordplay column. But it doesn't now. And for that reason, I'm guessing, there are only 2 comments, 45 minutes after the puzzle drops. But we really can't be bothered to provide a consistent service for those who are paying a fairly high price for access to the games and to the discussions, right? Same way we can easily ignore their common and persistent requests for some explanation of why the emus delay post, innocuous posts, for hours or days. Our subscription money only enables us to see the games. Anything else, discussion forums, links occurring in regular places, not so much. While i've been typing this nonsense, I keep checking to see if the link is up. It is not. "What's the big deal?", you say? You're obviously on the page you want to be on. Well, yeah, but I had to find a way other than the normal way. Well, I'm off. Let's hope they someday figure out what's going wrong. Wait, that's too hopeful--maybe someday they'll figure out that things are going wrong, whether they know how to fix them or not.
@Francis And it finally appears, about an hour late.
There’s some real gems in here, Alex. Quite an enjoyable solve. Thanks.
A very satisfying solve with first class clues. Nicely done and thanks.
Another great one this week. Thanks, Alex!
Anyone else think TABARD should have been discussed as a Tricky Clue? Or is it just MEdieval?
@DeniseP Ah, your comment came in as I was writing mine. I did not intend mine as a snarky response to yours. ;-)
@DeniseP The clueing seemed completely straightforward to me; it was one of those things I picked up somewhere along the line, and for some weird reason, it stuck my brain, unlike many more useful things! Go figure!
@DeniseP It’s tricky CLUES, not tricky answers. I have to remind myself of that sometimes!
If I add up my solving times for Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week, I get my Wednesday.
@Turing Mine wasn't as bad as that, but it's a weird week when Wednesday ends up with my longest time.
Really enjoyed this puzzle - lots of interesting long fills and clever short ones.
Beam before IBAR, tsk before TUT, ciao before TATA, and EMAILSPAM is quite awkward. Overall a fairly straightforward birthday solve extending my streak to 337. Closing in on the magic 365!
I enjoyed this one. I have to admit, I moved forward with a slight bit of trepidation. Words were falling in place in layers, forming a framework. I started to doubt myself, I was feeling duped. "Is this too easy for a Saturday?", I wondered. Mental note to self; If I ever construct and submit a puzzle, make sure to insert "DEB" prominently, top-center. Thanks Alex!
replay, It was too easy for a Saturday. I wonder if the editors didn't want to run it on a Friday when DEB normally writes the Wordplay column.
I had EchOeS for a while, thinking it was such a genius way to mark what comes and goes… Other than that, I liked this puzzle! Enough to sink my teeth into without too much obscurity.
@Robin I did too, and ElderS before that.
Almost an hour and 50 minutes into it, I turned to the Column in need of some letters for my 13A, __A_PAPER, where 7D had spoiled my TERMPAPER, and 17A, __T_ONITEM. The latter was the first thing in the Column and was enough to finish the puzzle. I was sort of amused to find those last two fills right above my first one, which was still partly in Pencil, because I had felt kind of silly typing OHBOY there, even after 9D suggested it could be at least partly right. I made lots of wild guesses of that sort. Fortunately, there were also gimmies all over the place.
@kilaueabart Pretty sure OHBOY was my third try after OHwOw and one before that that I can't even remember at this point. I lot of trial and error in this puzzle.
This one had some nice fresh fill, but gave itself up more easily than I look for in a Saturday. I’m not a speed solver but all the puzzles this week have been below average solve times for me. I’m hoping for a tricky Sunday. I hesitated to put in EMAILSPAM thinking it redundant, until the crosses compelled it. I guess spam has taken on a more generic meaning than junk email. In any case, with apologies to the Monty Python ensemble, “I don’t like EMAILSPAM.”
@Marshall Walthew There's phone call spam and text spam as well. There's also a lot of junk mail from the Post Office, but I don't think we call that spam.
@Marshall Walthew My sons are gamers, and I've heard them talk about 'spamming' a key as a tactic, meaning to hit a key rapidly and repeatedly. I like it.
Any puzzle with DEB and DEREK in it is okay by me. CAverN before CANYON slowed me down a bit and having no idea what a Dental Click is and knowing next to nothing about rugby almost did me in. Other than that, it was a pretty smooth solve.
@Vaer Dental click is the sound we make with our tongue against our teeth when we’re tut-tutting someone in disapproval. Because English phonology doesn’t include dental clicks—we won’t have a phonemic unit for it; none of the Indo-European languages do—we instead represent the sound with the “tut” or “tsk” approximations.
@Vaer agree with the cavern confusion. As a dentist, I thought the ‘tut’ was a judgemental click on poor oral hygiene… I need to get out more. Otherwise quite straightforward.
@Vaer Were you thinking of "In a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine"?
Helium is NOT an inert substance. There are many examples of compounds of He. It does however belong to the group of "Noble" gases.
Super8ing, It always gets a reaction in the comments, that’s for sure.
@Super8ing To be fair, it's not noble, either.
An enjoyable puzzle. But it seems the Saturday puzzle is not meant to be “enjoyed”!
Literally less than a third of my average time for a Saturday. Wednesday took more than twice as long Maybe I was just on the right wavelength today, and it has been a hard week at work, but it felt… easy? I mean, it has some lovely long vertical answers. There were very few obscure proper names and they were all short. I think we’re all familiar with spam and action items :)
Not a scientist, but I was really hoping that 49A was an [exo] PLANET, as in the transit of a planet across the face of its star - may create an eclipse like phenomenon, which from earth could look like a blinking light. I think this is how many exoplanets are discovered.......? I like puzzles that make me look up stuff
@Ragland Yeah, you're right. That is one of the ways exoplanets are discovered. The other way is by observing "wiggles" in the stars movement, indicating it is revolving around a center of mass of it and some (presumably) pretty massive planet. But I think the pulsar is different in that it doesn't "seem" to vary in brightness because of an occasional planet transit, it actually *does* vary in brightness because of the internal dynamics of the star.
I started wearing Ray Bans because of Don Henley, so I went in the direction of Miami Vice. The 80's were so iconi.
@Margaret Don Johnson was in Miami Vice. Don Henley is in the Eagles.
Well that was quick. I think my favorite was the Sleeveless Medieval Garment, which I could almost, but not quite, remember from various British novels. Think I'm going to be making dental clicks all day. Speaking of medieval British novels, Cadfael. Both the books and the TV version starring Derek Jacobi.
@Lynn I've a list of clues called "Thanks, Final Fantasy!" and that clue was added today! Of course, "Final Fantasy, e.g." is on that list.
@Lynn Oh, yes, you just reminded me of the dental clicks clue. I still don't get that one. Is it like a TSK? Could someone please explain?
I can't help wondering about puzzle difficulty. I believe I am a fairly competent solver but certainly not good enough to be competitive. Today took me 40 minutes, which is below the time it typically took me a while ago. (Six months? A year? I am not really sure.) Not having access to the mean and standard deviation of the time taken for everyone who does these puzzles, I can only guess at the range of ability possessed. I looked at the xwstat.com website, and it seems they have access only to the statistics of those who give them access to their NYT accounts. In today's world of hackers and scammers, I imagine many of us do not do that. So, my guess is that the people who did today's puzzle in 10, 15, 20 minutes are in the minority. If I was a manager in the NYT Puzzle Dept., I would be trying to please as many customers and potential customers as possible, as I would see my job as providing a good product as profitably as possible. Egad! Am I a closet venture capitalist? Not at all. I simply recognize the need for a service/product provider to make enough profit to stay in business so they can continue to provide the service/product. (Cont.)
@Renegator My theory on the NYTs theory: More people can solve easier puzzles, which leads to more subscribers.
@Renegator Median solve time on XWstats is 14:50, but I suspect it skews to the fast side because it's more for die-hard puzzle fans.
Phew, all that said, I suspect that the NYT will not return to the difficulty levels people so fondly remember. While they might periodically publish a difficult puzzle to please the top tier solvers, that runs the risk of scaring away potential customers of lower solving ability, so I would guess that they would do that rarely. My take away? I am glad I am not a top tier solver. No, not sour grapes... I enjoy the time I spend sussing out the entries. If it went by in 10 minutes on a Thursday, I too would be disappointed.
@Renegator Oops. This is part 2 of my previous post.
@Renegator On the other hand, if they lower the level of the hardest weekly puzzles such that one can master the needed techniques in a year, then folks may start getting bored and leaving after about a year. That's what happened with me with Wordle and Sudoku. At one point I realized I had all the tricks and just stopped them. With the NYT crossword, I find that after 8 years of daily solving, I am still learning new ways of sussing out seemingly intractable quadrants. I'm still not at the point where I never have to look anything up, but just in the past year, my look-ups have dropped to almost never. It is because I keep learning new strategies that I continue regular solving.