NYT Crossword Column for Nov. 21, 2024

Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky Clues

THURSDAY PUZZLE — Katie Hoody made her New York Times Crossword debut just last month with a stunningly good and difficult Saturday puzzle that contained two sparkling triple stacks.

Today, she eases up on us with a grid that is not necessarily tricky for a Thursday — in fact, it’s fairly simple, as themes go — but that is approachable and fun. If you are just dipping a toe into Thursday puzzles, this may be a good one to begin with.

Today’s Theme

Let’s face it: Attention spans aren’t what they used to be. With life moving insanely fast, and with short, snappy social media sound bites taking the place of longform communication, it’s no wonder that our ability to focus for extended periods of time is shot.

Since we are all so short on time, there is, of course, a quick way to indicate that you are not about to invest what little time you have in reading a long novel, for example. Declaring that something is “TOO LONG, DIDN’T READ” can be shortened even further by using the initialism TL;DR, saving us a precious three or four seconds that could be used to doomscroll on our smartphones.

Ms. Hoody’s theme includes three classic novels that some people may consider too long to read. Each clue provides us with the book’s year of publication and its approximate word count. “DAVID COPPERFIELD” at 18A, for example, was published in 1850 and contains more than 350,000 words. I didn’t know that offhand, so I solved using the crossings until I could take an educated guess at the title.