Comments on: Crossword Puzzle Digression

By: How Puzzles may Improve your Mind | The Math Mojo Chronicles

How Puzzles may Improve your Mind | The Math Mojo Chronicles — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 02:55:37 +0000

[...] – There is another Math Mojo Chronicles post along these lines at Crossword Puzzle Digression. It mentions a good resource to help you understand the logic of the answers of the NYT crossword [...]

By: urvashi

urvashi — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:58:58 +0000

hi it ws really nice solving ur puzzles.gud attempt.

By: Jill

Jill — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:56:26 +0000

I too love NYT crossword puzzles. Been doing puzzles for about 50 years (yikes, I just dated myself)…
Mon-Wed can be fun if you only solve each clue from left to right or from top to bottom. I do them in pen so you have to careful since ink is impossible to erase – try as I may.
Todays, (Tuesday) fun clue was “even more certain: Lat. ans: AFORTIORI. Had to take Latin in school (which I failed twice) so thanks to solving other clues, I got it. I’m crazy for the Fri.Sat puzzles and they drive me crazy. At least my brain cells still work!

By: Alex Yaron

Alex Yaron — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:53:10 +0000

Having begun doing the puzzles about four years ago, I did notice that, over time, the Monday thru Wed. puzzles got so easy they were not worth doing, and the Friday and Saturday were hard. But I would add that they were hard to the point of sometimes being downright stupid. It is not impossible to make a puzzle impossible. And that is what I think some of the people Shortz chooses shoot for, and that is not challenging, it is merely annoying. Moreover, the Friday and Saturday actually are more in the line of Trivial Pursuit than they are crossword puzzles. I do not feel that googling “the name of Laverne and Shirley’s dog’s girlfriend’s favorite color” is cheating. I could be wrong, but I find it hard to believe that the people working these xword puzzles have spent a lot of time watching Laverne and Shirley!

Professor Homunculus sez:

Alex, my wife and I feel the same way. That’s why we do a lot of the older NY Times crossword puzzles, from puzzle-books, or from the online archives. At least when they did trivia back then, it was something that would stay interesting, like: The Elder Muse for practice (not an actual example).

Trivia of classical knowledge at least stays relevant – at least in an esoteric way.

Thanks for your thoughtful comment!

By: Heather

Heather — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:53:44 +0000

My mom was always a puzzle hound. She loved word puzzles, but I always liked “thinking” puzzles. I never considered crosswords “thinking” puzzles.. but then again I’ve never tried any hard ones. My son is addicted to those logic puzzles with the graphs. Usually those have solutions in the back that walk you through the logic if you’re stumped, and that’s why I love them too :) Maybe I’ll give crosswords another go.