It’s Wednesday again, which means it’s time for a fresh new crossword puzzle. This week’s entry should fit that description nicely. Our panel of reviewers tell us that this one weighs in at Tuesday/Wednesday on the NYT difficulty scale and that at least one of the clues should make you groan or wish to pummel the author (who will therefore stay safely out of reach).
If you’ve visited before you know the drill: you can download the puzzle in either Across Lite format or as a printable PNG image. Happy solving.
I think this is more difficult than most of yours… What’s with the Tuesday/Wednesday?
Me
Comment by Mom — July 28, 2008 @ 5:22 pm
The more I review people’s reactions to crosswords, the more I find out how extremely relative difficulty rankings can be. One person will breeze through a section in seconds, while the next will find some set of crossing words that are outside his expertise and be stymied for the next 5 minutes. I suspect that what tripped you up on this puzzle were a few incidences of wordplay that were pushing into Thursday/Friday level — it’s easy to see when you don’t know a straightforward fact, but a misleading clue can leave you with nowhere to turn. The guy next to you is likely as not to say, “Oh, he probably means…” and fill it in immediately, while possibly being stumped by the straightforward bit of trivia next to it. Since I tend to find (as a solver) that when those clues finally reveal themselves they add a nice bit of satisfaction to a puzzle, so I won’t promise to stop putting them in.
Comment by keeper — July 28, 2008 @ 5:39 pm