PR Betz

I’ve done the puzzle for over 65 years, most of the time successfully, but it’s become a stupid exercise in trying to parse a not very interesting cuteness. For me at least, a good puzzle should be a lexical challenge, in which you would burrow into the etymological roots of the language rather than play around with linguistic foibles that are estranged from reality. I’m saddened by this lack of regard for common sense.

I find so much of this puzzle, which I did complete, so foreign as to be beyond bizarre. The makers of the NYT puzzles seem to think that people with a very au courant hip knowledge of cultural terms should be the solvers. That’s far from fair to the average capable puzzler. I’ve been completing NYT crosswords for 56 years but feel increasingly discouraged. Unfortunately, I sense that the editorial staff couldn’t care less.

This is dumb in relation to what a crossword puzzle is for most people. It’s very clever in terms of something other than a basic crossword puzzle. I realize that there is no normative definition of the term. But if you want to make a crossword puzzle an insistent exercise of linguistic tricks, often combined with fairly esoteric insider slang and a lot of obscure, extremely marginal urban references, then you’ve reduced your audience to a smug coterie. Maybe there should be two crossword puzzles a day: one for people with a reasonably sophisticated understanding of linguistic ambiguity plus an ample knowledge of scientific, geographical, and historical lore; and another for people whose minds are trained on esoteric trivia and overly subtle sleights of tongue. Are you looking to make your audience smaller? That appears to be your intent.

I’m bored. You bet. Create some real puzzles instead of cutesy gimmicks that have to be overly explained.