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@Kevin "This is what a Saturday puzzle is supposed to be" Absolutely. Haven't seen one this challenging and enjoyable in a long time.
"Shortening for a city that omits 'onto'" is an utterly horrendous clue. How about "state that starts with IOW" for IOWA? What happened to Saturdays not being clued and filled identically to Tuesdays? I know the answer is "we get more money this way", but come on
Why is "swim with the fishes?" clued with a question mark? That's literally what you're doing. If the fill was "GETTINGYOURBODYTHROWNINTHEOCEANBYTHEMOB" you'd use a question mark
I know difficulty standards are in the gutter now. But "51-Down without its first letter" is egregiously bad, even for the modern crossword
@Bandit I do. That's why I whine about these. I miss when they offered any resistance at all or were willing to reference anything other than the most recent, most mainstream pop culture possible - it was nice to actually learn something from doing these. The easiness and enforced restriction is a drag
Back to Monday-level for the rest of the week, I guess
@marty If you don't like gimmicks, maybe don't do the NYT Thursday puzzle instead of insisting they stop doing the enjoyable thing they've been doing for Thursday puzzles for decades
If you're looking for puzzles that are of the difficulty and quality of the pre-2020 NYT, where do you go? This one used to be the gold standard, and I'm not sure where to get my fix now
Filled and clued like Highlights magazine. Since this is the Saturday standard now, not really seeing any point in renewing a very long subscription
@Derek Nobody born at any point in human history has outside of the NYT puzzle. It's not dated; it's a crossword thing
@DQ The NYT puzzles used to be the gold standard. They were challenging and clever and drew from a massive pool of knowledge and vocabulary. You were pretty much guaranteed to learn something from them. There are plenty of easier crossword puzzles to do if none of that appeals to you. Leave this one alone
These have really gotten to the point that they're so easy and watered-down that they're barely worth doing. No point in even complaining about this one specifically, because almost every puzzle is barely Tuesday-level now. It's a drag to go through the archives and see the standard of both difficulty and quality the puzzle used to be at. There's almost nothing separating it at this point from like, USA Today
Been going through the archives and enjoying how challenging Thursdays-Sundays used to be pre-2020. Tricky, clever clues and fill that assumed solvers were familiar with literally anything other than A-list celebrities and the most current possible events/vocabulary. Sad to see what it's turned into
I know the puzzle freaks out about mentioning anything that's not current pop culture anymore but they still make Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. Doesn't really need the "old" hedge
@Rahul Absolutely. This is (or at least comes close to, for the first time in a while) the level of difficulty Thursdays should be at. Enjoyed it all around
Maybe the worst week in the history of the crossword. Tuesdays all around, and I'm guessing it's not getting any better from here. Thankful for the archive at least
@Zézito Complaints about difficulty and "obscure fill" seem to have contributed to the puzzle becoming much easier and much worse lately, so I guess you should be thankful that you're at least usually the target audience now
@Zézito Before the puzzle made a point to cater to people like you, who hate the slightest hint of anything that might break a streak or make it take longer than your best time to solve a puzzle, this was Thursday level difficulty, which was appreciated. The best Thursday puzzle in a while
Best Wednesday in literal years. First one up to the standard of what the puzzle was before the revenue push that I can remember in a long time
@Barry Ancona I mean, not really, but it's about as close as anyone can ask for lately
@Lpr Not sure what the implication of this is supposed to be. The puzzles aren't getting easier (they objectively are), because of some unspecified thing to do with Will Shortz?
This was a Tuesday with long answers, but what else is new lately?
@Our AI Overlords Kind of ironic to call people who recognized that obvious non-joke for the straightforward, lousy clue it was, "humorless"
@B Editorial policy. Constructors have posted crosswords with their own submitted clues on sites like Crosshare after they've run here, and they take a real axe to anything that's clued in a remotely challenging way
@Wayne Harrison After thinking about it more it wasn't harsh enough. It's literally the worst clue I've ever seen
Even for a Tuesday - when you see clues like "Greek god whose name is an anagram of ROSE" and compare them to the clues in old Archive puzzles, it's wild the extent to which the editors have completely lost respect for the intelligence of solvers
@Mimi "over 25 entries being either foreign language, proper (capitalized) words, archaic, slang, and acronyms/initialisms" lol. God forbid the puzzle include things that are slightly less difficult than extremely recent pop culture, clues that essentially give you the answer, or anything else that might challenge you at all, like the puzzle used to include before its sole goal became money over quality
@Kevin Congrats! Give the old Fridays and Saturdays from the archives a shot and see how you do
@Andrzej It seems it's less that there's "something wrong with the theme" and more that you, personally, didn't understand it, or much of the fill. That's not really on the constructor. Liked this one a lot
Sorry, but getting a giant Monday on a Sunday is a real drag. I know it's not the 2000s anymore and the point of the crossword is to make every puzzle as easy as possible and bring in subscriber revenue, but this was ridiculous
With clues like these on a Friday, why not just go half a step further and literally give you the answer? What's the point?
There's really nothing worse than a Sunday clued and filled like a Monday. Who gets enjoyment out of something like this?
Listen I know the crossword isn't what it used to be. But 3 Down on the Mini really warrants a "don't worry, it's not as hard as you think"? That's where the "respecting solvers' intelligence" bar is at now?
@Ken There are plenty of crosswords out there for almost any level of proficiency. There used to be only one like the old NYT crossword, and now there aren't any
SONYREADERS are "Former e-book devices, until 2014"? So they came back in 2014?
Last few days of the crossword have been the best in years. So much more diverse in fill/cluing and more challenging and fun than any time I can remember since the post-COVID push for subscribers/dive in quality. Hope it keeps up
Almost shocked by what the standards have become here. Why not just publish a Monday every day?
This is in no way, shape or form proper Saturday difficulty, but that's a losing battle
@MrB This isn't much of a defense of the puzzle in its current state. Yeah, America-specific clues in an American puzzle might be obscure for people who aren't from America. This would be true on a Monday or a Saturday. Not sure how that addresses the valid complaint that weekend puzzles have become insultingly easy in general
I'm doing an old archive puzzle and the clues are stuff like "Decorticates", "German Expressionist Emil", "Savoyard guard", and other words/things no one has ever heard of that you have to actually puzzle out. It's challenging and interesting. This is not. Really sick of every weekday essentially being a Monday/Tuesday
Now that this is apparently what to expect from weekend puzzles, can anyone recommend a crossword that's as challenging and well-constructed as the NYT used to be?
@Barry Ancona You didn't miss it, because it wasn't there to miss. What would the "joke" be? What are you talking about?
@Zoe It was absurdly easy and straightforwardly-clued. I really miss when there was even a pretense at making Fridays and Saturdays challenging and interesting
The editor's original puzzle is available online, and the extent to which the original, clever, relatively difficult clues were butchered to make them as easy and dull as possible is a real drag. There used to be a shred of confidence here in solvers' intelligence, and it's really a shame the extent to which that's no longer true
@Bill Explains a lot about the quality of the puzzle lately that standards for solvers are now "I can get this chore over with more quickly"
@Chris "It had words I wasn't personally familiar with and required me to know things" is one of the weirder criticisms of a crossword I've seen
@Andrzej It's not an "attack", Andrzej, it's a general comment I used your reply for. Very rankled by the constant complaints in these comment sections about any hint of difficulty; the crossword quality has really suffered as a direct result. If that's not how you meant "the problem with", it's how I took it and how I meant it
@Barry Ancona This is a great one. Really miss when the puzzles were up to this standard