JD Gold
Brooklyn
13
Comments
-0.538
Avg Sentiment
2
Positive
3
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8
Negative
Brooklyn
Too, too many clues that basically hang on whether you watch as much (or the same) TV/ movies as the constructors. So many NYT crosswords like this these days. It just comes across as a very lazy way to increase difficulty, and is a far cry from the clever brain teasers and twists that these puzzles used to feature under a prior regime.
Honestly felt like just a bunch of inside jokes and references between Ms Hoody and herself mixed with a bunch of the most obscure Google search results. Finished in decent time, but absolutely joyless.
Worst puzzle I have seen in years. Less a crossword, more a meandering and unenjoyable journey through uninteresting trivia made difficult not through clever challenges, but rather simply deliberate obfuscation and terribly obscure cluing whose answers bear a relationship to the clues mostly in the constructors head alone.
I don’t normally comment, but after having done these puzzles every day for years, it is impossible not he become annoyed that difficulty has turned from challenging vocabulary and wordplay to, “do you consume the same pop culture and hobbies as the constructor.” It is lazy, and uninteresting and a cop out. It’s not a bad puzzle, but this trend has really sapped the fun and challenge from these puzzles.
A fun puzzle today with a nicely calibrated challenge. My only issue is cluing "bonus entry" as a "kind of contest." An "entry" is not a type of contest any more than an "at bat" or "overtime period" is a type of sport, even if that is the realm in which they occur.
I take issue with 12D, “Low Estimates” being clued as “Conservative Guesses”. There are plenty of situations where the conservative guess may in fact be intentionally on the high side, for example in budgeting for expenses.
Feels like “end at” has a very different , almost opposite meaning to “stop by.” Otherwise, a fun solve, thanks.
@Weak I will never understand the impulse of so many on this board to blindly close ranks behind whatever is on the grid/whatever the constructor did. If it was a confusing or suboptimal clue, that’s that. I could also probably understand an article on the front page if they misspelled several of the words. It doesn’t make it okay, it doesn’t make it not in error. Why are the standards arbitrarily lowered just because it’s a crossword?
@Barry Ancona Of course they were, in proportion and usually with much more universality. But these types of fills that require you to have seen a movie that flopped at the box office, or participate in an activity using a specific sort of twee, age-specific argot were definitely not par for the course.
@Barry Ancona The company is named for the man, Hugo Boss, a prominent designer of that era. He was personally an ardent Nazi and directly designed the uniforms as his contribution to their “program”- hence the very modern, form-flattering cuts, colors, insignia and trims- the idea was to make them look like intimidating “super men” looking toward the future, not mere politicians and soldiers. The clue specifies the man. After the war, the company continued on and distanced itself from its founder and former CEO during “de-Nazification,” but kept his name (indicating the pre-existing fame of the man and the brand he founded- although an odd choice to say the least, imho.)
@Katie no, one is very vague, the other very specific. Doesn’t help. If you were weighing something, would “under 10 pounds” tell you the weight? No, it only sets a ceiling, not the same, conceptually and linguistically different.
@Rob no, one is very vague, the other very specific. Doesn’t help. If you were weighing something, would “under 10 pounds” tell you the weight? No, it only sets a ceiling, not the same, conceptually and linguistically different.
@Barry Ancona The thread issue was an error on the website’s part, not mine. I understand there was some research and a book published about 10-15 years or so that “debunked” the myth of Boss’s role as a Nazi and downgraded him to a struggling textile manufacturer who used his connections to procure these contracts in a time of desperation for his failing business. The research and book were directly commissioned by the Boss company as a piece of PR rehab. Plenty of extant German firms made things for the regime and the war, they were just surviving in business, etc, so this is more palatable. I don’t trust the research or the book because of the source and the directed conclusion with which they began. There was no peer review and nobody still doing competing research. So respectfully agree to disagree. I will post this in both threads since there is some strangeness on the site.
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