This Friday's NYT crossword is mine...

[Puzzler]

... if anyone's interested. A tough unthemed puzzle. My 66th


-Puzzler/MAS

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. Hey! That's great - my favorite puzzle (not yours specifically of course, the NYT in general).

I will have to look for it.

I have many books of the Sunday puzzles - my favorite way to relax (and I swear the Sunday ones are easier now than they were years ago).

Congrats!

[mokawanis]

2. If I'm out and about tomorrow I'll pick up the Times

and take a crack at it.

[littlemissmartypants]

3. Well Done. n/t

[Trajan]

4. Friday and Saturday kill me ....

For me, it's like this:

Monday - 100%
Tuesday - 100%
Wednesday - 90%
Thursday - 60%
Friday - 15%
Saturday - 5%


Yeah ... It's been that way for many years .... I do appreciate the Monday and Tuesday gimmes .... Ill sometimes beat even a Friday, but it's rare ....

BTW: I do not use reference materials while puzzling ... I did long ago to learn (Crossword Dictionaries for the education), but I stopped using them 20 years ago ....

[RudynJack]

7. I can do puzzles now

because I spent my teen years using those resources. They were invaluable in learning words like "ort", "edam", "ara (when the clue is Parseghian), "Aga or Agha" "Rani or "Ranee", "Raja or Rajah" (depending on what letters the puzzler needs).

I'm in my 50s now and I wonder how young people today can do crosswords, because of the cultural references. Then I remember I learned the references to 50 years before MY time, largely through crosswords. Plus, I always loved old movies and I liked to read.

[RudynJack]

5. Seriously?!

I'm a NYT puzzle addict. You did this one?

I can't wait for tomorrow. Can you give me any insight into how they're crafted, what separates a Thursday from a Friday, etc? Seriously, my best friend and I do the puzzles every day. I have a subscription and go back and get old puzzles on my Kindle. We've discussed how they're made, and I've only speculated.

You can PM me if you want...

But wow... good for you. Tomorrow's puzzle will be special.

[SecularMotion]

12. Wordplay

I'd recommend this, if you haven't seen it already. I did the NY Times crossword puzzle everyday for about 20 years until I stopped buying the paper in 2003 when they were beating the war drums for the Bush war with Iraq.

[DFW]

6. Friday puzzles are the worst!

They're always the ones where across is "Obscure healing root only found on the island of Nauru," intersecting with one down that is the "One-word term that best describes the effect of Herbert Hoover's economic polices had upon Medieval Spanish literature."

[RudynJack]

8. Fridays are awesome

because they have 15 letter answers. Saturdays are great, too.

The answers are usually not as obscure as you claim... I enjoy the clever answers that make me smack my head.

But yeah, sometimes you have to know history and literature . But it turns out making a good guess works most of the time. A four-letter French name with an "N" in the third spot? It's "Rene". Do a few thousand puzzles and it's second nature.

[DFW]

9. Do a few thousand puzzles and you don't have a day job!

I have today off, since I worked last weekend, but I have to work the next three weekends with no time off in between, and I don't have time to do a few thousand (or even a few hundred) crossword puzzles. I'm usually up by 5 Am and lucky to get to bed by midnight. If I had the time to do thousands of puzzles, I might know those obscure healing roots of Nauru, too. It's not French names that throw me. What drives me nuts is a clue so obscure, that even after I see the answer, I've STILL never heard of it.

[RudynJack]

10. Do a puzzle or two a day

for 40 years, and it's not hard.

And I've had a job since I was 13, so take your labor superiority elsewhere.

[DFW]

11. I'm not on your intellectual level

I need more than 3 minutes to do a crossword puzzle, and I'm in a different country every day for work. Try your snobbery on someone else. I have even less time for that than I have for daily crossword puzzles.

[RudynJack]

13. MY snobbery?

LOL

I'd give a longer response, but I have to go to work.