Darian

@Ernest I am right there with you. So many of these clues would be much better if they just added a word. "Didn't shrink"? I dunno, grew? Expanded? What do you want from me? "Didn't shrink from," would have been so much better. "Oh, now I get it, it means rose up to a challenge." Nobody, and I mean literally *nobody* would say, "That person didn't shrink the challenge. He dared to do it!" It's literally a misdirect because the clue is intentionally incomplete to get you on the wrong track. The fact so many of these puzzles are ending up this way is truly maddening.

@Dave S Nope, I just tend to chuck names in the, “Who cares?” part of my brain that clears them from memory as soon as the puzzle is finished. Learning TIG is a woman’s name just makes it even worse. I don’t know anything she’s done, and I really don’t even care to look her up. It’s basically just an unguessable name that makes it that much harder to get any kind of foothold in the SE corner. It’s not that I don’t want challenging puzzles. Hell, I’ve flown through so many Saturdays recently that even I surprised myself. The thing is, I want them to be challenging in a *good* way. I want punny clues or turns of phrase that make me chuckle or feel smart when I enter their answer. I don’t want to finally see the answer for, “Unlike this clue,” is ACROSS and roll my eyes in disgust. If a puzzle just frustrates me and makes me want it over with, that’s a bad puzzle. I have no qualms about categorically stating this is a bad puzzle. Even if I had known all the proper names or brands, I didn’t feel any kind of fun entering half of these answers. At this point, I’m having more fun solving free alternatives, so why should I continue paying $40 a year for wildly uneven difficulty and unsatisfying puzzles? There haven’t been many good puzzles ever since Fagliano took over as editor, and I wouldn’t hesitate to say that there have been some Wednesdays that were tougher than recent Saturdays. It’s just been a downward spiral for months.

@Puzzlemucker I know this probably wasn't your intent, but you make it sound like you're upset because the plebes came out of the woodwork to try the thing you once loved and you're disappointed that the comments section isn't filled with the same ten people every week going, "Wow! What an amazing exercise! Bravo to this constructor for his deliciously tricky cluing!" If more people are trying the puzzle, that is a GOOD thing. If lots of people are complaining about the puzzle, that is also potentially a GOOD thing. Maybe for far too long the puzzle was too insular and catered only to a small, dying audience. Now that more people have tried it, they've voiced opinions that you otherwise wouldn't hear because you were too busy giving yourselves self-congratulatory feedback about how smart you were. I'm not trying to stir the pot too much, but I do want to point out how some of these comments read to someone with tons of solving experience but less than a year under his belt of doing the Times. Stop trying to close the doors to the country club or you won't have a country club left. Like someone further down said, I'd love to see what some longtime solvers would have to say if the next Saturday puzzle was filled with Gen Z trivia and terms coined in the last 5 years. Bet most of the comments would be about "kids these days..."

@Clem Definitely feeling you there. When I see a good 20% of the clues are proper or brand names I’ve never heard of, I just turn on autocheck and breeze through. I’d just have to cheat and look most of them up, anyway, so why bother? I love exactly how you put it in your quote there. It’s like these crossword constructors get so enamored with a section almost working that instead of putting in the effort to rework them and make them fun, they just look up some crazy name or foreign word that has the letters they need and run with it. It feels like the hallmark of a bad construction that could have gone through more passes to result in a better product. I don’t mind a challenge. I’ve had some themeless puzzles where I had to capitulate and get help solving them, but I still felt satisfied in the end because they seemed fair. These kinds of puzzles don’t. They’re a breeze if you know the random trivia and a terrible slog if you don’t.

@Eric Yeah, if I have to google your answer, and it turns out it’s not really an accepted spelling of the word, that annoys me. Adjust your puzzle if you have to, but don’t just put whatever you want for fill. That’s just sloppy construction.

@Evan Did… did you just try to convince people World of Warcraft isn’t an RPG? The entry does not say Warcraft. If it did, you would have a point that that’s an RTS game. But WoW is very clearly delineated as an MMORPG, which is certainly a subset of RPGs, just like almost all Final Fantasy games are turn-based RPGs. Only two of the mainline Final Fantasy entries are MMOs compared to 14 RPGs, so it would be an odd choice to describe MMO over something like Star Wars: The Old Republic or Elder Scrolls Online.

@Laura Stratton That just sounds like a nightmare to me, but you do you. If I had to sit and pore over a crossword puzzle for almost 90 minutes, I think I’d commit seppuku.

@Steve L I was always under the assumption that PEGging meant hitting the player accidentally, such as with a wild pitch or on a throwing error to a base. It appears you are correct that it refers to simply a fast, accurate throw, but I doubt anyone who isn’t a baseball fan would ever get that.

@Ed When you “belt” out a cry because you are “blue”, it’s a SOB. Don’t feel bad. That clue was very good, but only in hindsight. If you couldn’t get any letters from any of the longer answers, it would be a real bear to get that one right.

@Jennifer I feel like it should just be a general rule that if you’re going to use a person as the clue in one direction, all of the crossers should be general words and not another proper noun or obscure term. Nearly every time I have been unable to solve a crossword without autocheck, it was because of someone who had an uncommonly spelled name, like Symona or Carleeda.

@george For some people, this is true. For others, that moment is less of an, "Aha!" and more of a, "What the ****?! Are you ****ing serious?! How was I ever supposed to get that?!" So YMMV.

@Steve L I think the sentiment is, "Anyone who applies himself can do the crossword." The idea is to grow the audience so it doesn't just consist of the same people year after year. Just like a church that has nothing compelling to offer younger people will eventually fold as its membership ages and dies off, the crossword will eventually become the domain of only the most dedicated of hobbyists. I just don't see why making the puzzle more accessible is a terrible, awful, no good, very bad thing. I like Mondays just as much as I like "gettable" Saturdays. I don't harrumph just because I can solve your typical Monday puzzle in about 4 minutes. It's still a fun brain exercise, and many of the themes are playful and interesting. I just think it's possible to have a challenging Saturday without having to have a bunch of clues that are really anti-clues. Check out the Simon and Schuster MEGA Crossword Puzzle Book series. Their Saturday puzzles manage to be tough and fulfilling without having to resort to the most extreme of tangential connections to clue nearly every answer in the puzzle. They're a lot more fun to solve as a result.

@Steve L The Wii has been off of store shelves for over a decade. It would be really nice if we could update some of these clues. I get that it’s a wonderful bit of crosswordese, but the Wii is practically ancient by video game console measurements. It’s almost 20 years old at this point. Kids born when it came out have already graduated from high school.

@Steve L Trust me, it’s not just you. I had to turn on autocheck halfway through to get a single word in the southwest. I solved the entirety of the northeast with no issue, but there was no way I was making any headway in the southwest without help.

@Darian I meant read the comments, but I suppose I’ll also be dreading the comments on this post. :P

@Lewis Admittedly, many of us newer solvers are experiencing whiplash going from Shortz' style to Fagliano's. While it's entirely probable that this puzzle would have been hard under either editor, it's a lot easier to scapegoat Joel because the entirety of the puzzles' difficulty and cluing has been a mess for weeks now. If this is indicative of a typical Bryon Walden puzzle and not the editor steering the clues into insane misdirection and lying territory, then I'm just going to skip them or turn on autocheck immediately in the future. I derive no joy from solving a puzzle where I'm swearing at an answer every few minutes.

@Steve L You could also say: "I didn't *intend* to hurt you, but I *hope* you have a speedy recovery." And you would not be able to substitute hope for intend and vice versa. I think "Intent" with a T would have been a much better clue. The noun forms of intent and hope are far closer synonyms than the verb forms of intend and hope.

@Leon D Yup, just what I thought. Not being a woman, I would have had no idea there was a women's clothing brand called Guess. And besides, I've heard of Lee jeans, but always get them mixed up with Levi's and think there's an 's in there, so that wasn't of any help. Also, I still think the answer is pretty BS because Lee makes jeans for both sexes, while Guess is strictly a women's brand. Least the constructor could have done is give us another unisex brand like Levi's. Maybe they did and Joel thought it was too easy? In any case, just not the biggest fan of that clue.

@Withnail I don't like looking at a puzzle for too long. It makes me frustrated, and when I get too frustrated, I'm going to just look something up. I've noticed I'm the same way with video games. When I play a game, if I get stuck on a hard part, I'll usually give it the old college try, but if I'm just getting absolutely nowhere, I'll look up what to do in a guide. I don't have fun if my progress is stopped for too long. I may even drop the game if it just becomes a slog of bad boss fights, extremely repetitive gameplay, or constant Moon Logic puzzles. Some people relish the challenge. They'll sit there and stare at it, thinking through all of the possibilities in their head, and they'll try numerous things. They get an endorphin rush when they finally solve it. I don't. My frustration only increases when I see the answer and how inane or crazy it was. I'm not likely to think something is clever. I'm more likely to think, "Why didn't you clue that in a way where a typical solver would have any chance of solving it?!" and feel bad afterwards. Neither way of solving is wrong, per se. It's just different personality types. Some people are okay trying on their own in an escape room and failing because they took too long to solve "that one puzzle." They'll come out of it saying I was great. I would come out of it saying it was awful and poorly designed. If I was in danger of running out of time, you bet I'm asking for a hint and excoriating the room online.

@Cherry Probably because nobody is going down to their local ice cream shop and ordering a pint for consumption. That would be like someone going to a Mexican restaurant, and saying the alternatives were 3 tacos, 1 burrito, and a 12 enchilada party pack. One of these things doesn't belong...

@Hardroch It’s not only a fun term for adventure games, but it can apply to other kinds of logic puzzles as well. I was doing an extremely esoteric puzzle in an escape room once where there were clearly pictograms of moon phases, but the locks they seemed to go with were 4 letter and 5 letter word locks. None of the provided symbols seemed to provide letters that made words, and I was starting to get rather frustrated. After several minutes of getting nowhere, I finally asked for a hint. The coordinator said, “How else could the moon phases and these letters be related?” At that point, I had an epiphany, and my entire entourage laughed hard as I input MOON and LOGIC to unlock the locks. It reminded me of those Professor Layton puzzles where they specifically try to misdirect you, but the difference there is you have an actual background to look at that can be an additional clue to the puzzle. In the crossword, the only help you might get is from crossers. So if you’re having trouble and can’t get the crossers, you won’t have any letters for the Moon Logic clues, which just makes it that much harder to see what the constructor is on about.

@Steve L The difference is Rex knows most of these constructors very well, so when he sees a certain name in the byline, he knows to steel his brain for a different kind of puzzle. Those of us who are new to the Times have no idea who any of these people are. Heck, if you solve on mobile or iPad like I do, you’ll never know unless you click the info button in the upper right. Having no knowledge of who these constructors or what their styles are, I don’t know what to expect from the grid. I can only attempt to solve it at face value. The closest analogue I can think of is Harvey Estes, a prolific cruciverbalist who contributes about 50 grids to each Simon and Schuster MEGA Crossword Puzzle Book volume. When I see his name, I know to be in for a tough solve with lots of misdirection in the clues. Perhaps if I had any idea who any of these Times constructors were, my mind might be in a different place when solving, and I wouldn’t hate the puzzle as much.