Games

David Leonhardt and his wife, Laura, take on a puzzle by Matthew Stock and Christina Iverson.Jump to: Tricky CluesDeb Amlen is on vacation this week. David Leonhardt, the senior writer who oversees The Morning newsletter, has kindly agreed to step in and talk about today’s puzzle by Matthew Stock and Christina Iverson.FRIDAY PUZZLE — When my colleague Deb Amlen asked me a few weeks ago to spend a day filling in as the Wordplay columnist, I was thrilled. When she told me that I would be writing about a Friday crossword puzzle, I was a little less thrilled and more than a little daunted. Friday, as you all surely know, is one of the week’s most challenging puzzles.I may be a journalist — I’m approaching my 25th anniversary at The New York Times — but I feel more comfortable playing games that are based on numbers and strategy than on language. I was an applied math major in college, and I don’t pretend to be an expert Scrabble player or crossword completer. Fortunately, I am married to somebody who is an expert at language games. My wife, Laura, an obsessive and joyous reader, was happy to help me with the completion of today’s puzzle.Whether you’re more like me or more like Laura, there’s much to savor in today’s puzzle.Tricky Clues1A. We admit it: We couldn’t resist immediately scribbling S-ALSA in response to a “Mexican condiment” of five letters. But that’s why we were using an erasable pen. The error of our ways became clear as soon as we saw that the second letter of the answer needed to be an R, for RIC (2D’s “Singer Ocasek”). With an assist from MINA (the “Kimes” of 4D), I thought back to a delicious meal we ate last month at Tacos El Gordo in Las Vegas. One of the toppings there? CREMA. And, yes, you should endure the lines at Tacos El Gordo if you’re in Las Vegas.11A. “Alternatives to booths, perhaps” may immediately conjure restaurants or, for those of us of a certain age, phones. This uncertainty encouraged us to come up with a longer list of potential booths, and we soon thought of one that was less salient because it rarely appears without its modifier: voting booths. From there, and again with some help from Ric Ocasek and Mina Kimes, we got to MAIL-IN BALLOTS.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Hanh Huynh carves out a place for himself.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming with, well, me. Deb Amlen has stepped out for the week, and in her absence I have the pleasure of writing the Wordplay column for today’s crossword, constructed by Hanh Huynh.Regular solvers may remember Mr. Huynh for his New York Times debut last year. He constructed a Thursday puzzle that featured a dastardly rebus, and to this day it remains the only grid I can remember having really and truly given up on (thankfully, not when I was meant to write the Wordplay column). Mr. Huynh seems to be feeling more charitable toward us this time around — his theme doesn’t require quite as much head-scratching to figure out. But don’t get comfortable: It’s still a Thursday crossword if I’ve ever seen one.Shall we take the lid off and see what’s inside?Today’s ThemeHave you taken a deep, calming breath? Good. Now I can tell you that this puzzle contains a rebus that works differently in Down and Across entries.Whenever I’m faced with a Thursday puzzle, I use my crossings to see whether I can identify some added trickery. My hackles go up especially when there are symbols in the grid — like the circles in this one, for example.Let’s begin our investigation at 21-Across: The “Longtime judge on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ and ‘America’s Got Talent’” should be SIMON COWELL. But his name is 11 letters long, and there are 13 squares to be filled. At 9-Down, the “Popular backyard game” appears to be a five-letter word. But bocce doesn’t work with the crossings, and CORNHOLE doesn’t fit … or does it?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Step into the house of mirrors with Jeffrey Martinovic.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — Today’s crossword, by Jeffrey Martinovic, is a doozy, and it reminded me of a seemingly impenetrable puzzle featured in an episode of “The Simpsons”: Professor Provolone’s Picto-Puzzle, which Lisa finds on the back of her lunch kit. The normally sharp Lisa can’t solve the puzzle — and begins to doubt her own intelligence after Bart, Milhouse, Nelson and Martin solve it instantly.I felt a lot like Lisa today, for a few reasons. First, I really was spiraling into despair as I hopelessly stared from this grid’s revealer to its theme entries and tried to make the connection: Had I lost my ability to solve crosswords altogether? When the trick finally clicked — as it tends to do after you stare angrily for long enough — it turned out to be similar to the solution of the Picto-Puzzle (which Lisa did eventually solve). I’ve included relevant scenes from the episode below, should you prefer to theorize about what Professor Provolone and Mr. Martinovic’s riddles have in common. Otherwise, read on to see what the theme is all about.Today’s ThemeToward the end of our numbered Across clues, we learn that a certain “Feature of this puzzle’s grid” also describes “the answers to the six starred clues” (62A). After solving HOITY-TOITY for “Highfalutin” (11D), I expected the theme might have something to do with rhyming reduplication (a process that leads to the creation of words such as hokeypokey, easy-peasy et al.). But other themed entries stymie that theory: At 4-Down, “Hold on, repeat that?” is WAIT, WHAT, and the “Calculus calculation” (46D) solves to a single word, MAXIMUM.But look closely at the letters that make up those answers, and you’ll see that they all share LATERAL SYMMETRY (62A). This means that each letter featured in the themed entries can be split vertically in two halves mirroring each other. The grid, too, features strictly lateral — as opposed to rotational — symmetry, breaking with crossword convention.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Judy Bowers makes her New York Times debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — It’s been over 75 years since the first New York Times Crossword, and language has significantly evolved. And yet there has been little change in much of the field’s crosswordese — i.e. vowel-heavy words that frequently appear in crosswords, but hardly ever apply in everyday speech.We are still just as likely as ever, for example, to encounter H.G. Wells’s “Eloi,” from a novel he wrote in 1895. And though the era of the Oldsmobile has ended, puzzles have yet to stop featuring its final model, the “Alero.” I occasionally explain such terms in Tricky Clues, especially if I’ve just learned them, but improving one’s solving skills is largely a matter of learning these well-worn words by rote.That’s why I have to hand it to Judy Bowers, the constructor of today’s crossword. In this, her New York Times debut, she has managed to do something remarkable with a different constraint — without sacrificing flashes of relevance.Today’s ThemeRead carefully, because the revealer at 54-Down describes just about every part of the crossword in its hint to unlocking today’s theme. We have to identify the “Number of letters in every word of the answers to the starred clues.” Simply put, we’re looking for a number — and since “Plethora” (57A) solves to a fairly straightforward SLEW, we can assume via crossings that it’s the number TWO.Maybe the above number was all you needed for your “aha!” moment. But if you’re like me, you needed more information. And while “Follow our lead!” (32A) is a straightforward DO AS WE DO, other expressions in the theme aren’t so common and may require more crossings to solve: 37-Across, for example, solves to HI MA, I’M UP (its clue being “Morning, mother!”).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

David Kahn makes progress step by step.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — Lewis Carroll is said to have popularized the word ladder puzzle, in which the solver is tasked with transforming a four-letter word into another by changing its letters one at a time. The number of “rungs” on the ladder depends entirely on the two words selected. The game has also had other names, including “doublets” and “word-links.” I might have called it “The quip of Theseus.” (Sorry).An impressive word ladder appears in today’s crossword, which was constructed by David Kahn. Traveling from one end of the puzzle to the other reveals a meaningful message. Mr. Kahn, it should be noted, is nearing the top of another ladder, as he inches toward his 200th puzzle for The New York Times. Phew. What’s my excuse?Today’s ThemeThe eight-step ladder in Mr. Kahn’s puzzle begins with a “Nonrenewable energy source”: COAL (1A). From there, we travel through a couple of unremarkable words in the theme set — COOL (21A) and WOOL (30A) — and pause briefly on two energy sources, WOOD (35A) and FOOD (39A). The production of each of these, we learn, contributes to a certain “symptom of climate change” at 36-Across. This entry may be obvious to most solvers since the term is often used interchangeably in discussions about climate change: GLOBAL WARMING.But Mr. Kahn isn’t finished. After trading FOOD’s letters to get FOND (42A) and then FIND (52A), we land on a final “Renewable energy source” that completes the ladder: WIND. And I got that renewable energy source knocked right out of me as I felt the significance of the completed theme.It also seems apt to have “Goes extinct” (49A) as a clue in today’s puzzle after a Sunday crossword by John Rippe and Jeff Chen that tackled this very subject, and which Caitlin Lovinger cited as the first instance in recent memory of being so “emotionally moved by a theme.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Kate Hawkins opens our solving weekend.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — This is Kate Hawkins’s lucky 13th puzzle in The New York Times, and it’s a fun one. It’s enjoyable for all the usual reasons — lively fill and amusing cluing — but it also has something else.Accessibility is an important part of crossword construction and editing, and it’s a consideration no matter what day of the week a puzzle is slated to run. The Times Crossword becomes progressively more difficult as the week goes on, and solvers need ways to make headway.Puzzles that run early in the week must be evenly edited so that the entries and clues are suitable for beginner solvers. Slowly opening the tap midweek to allow more difficult entries and more challenging clues is an art form. But it’s the Friday and Saturday puzzles that tend to freak out newer solvers, and for good reason: The reputations of those grids precede them. Paul Sorvino, the actor, once used a term I can’t repeat here to describe — with admiration — how difficult the Saturday puzzle can be.So I’m happy when I solve a Friday crossword that is fairly accessible, as the one by Ms. Hawkins is, because it means that I can encourage solvers who don’t think they’re ready for one of the toughest puzzles of the week. That doesn’t mean that getting through it was easy, but, in this case, the pleasure of the solve far outweighed the struggle. And that, to me, makes Ms. Hawkins’s puzzle a perfect opportunity for those who would like to try their hands at a Friday crossword.Tricky Clues5A. The “Things attached to spines: Abbr.” are not nerves or muscles, but PGS, which is short for “pages,” because this clue refers to the spines of books.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

David Kwong makes magic again.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — David Kwong is a magician, and one of the things I like about his puzzles is that his enigmatist’s sensibilities and knack for illusion inform his crossword themes.In his last puzzle in The New York Times, Mr. Kwong used elements of a common idiom as a cipher to describe other phrases. When I finally understood what was going on, I sat back and gasped like Mr. Kwong had just pulled a rabbit out of his hat. Not that Mr. Kwong would stoop to such a cliché. I’m not even sure he owns a hat.Today’s puzzle solved like an exercise in misdirection: While I was busy looking at the grid one way, Mr. Kwong was palming a relevant bit of the theme and hiding it in a not-so-obvious place. It’s a lovely example of the kind of prestidigitation I like to see in his crosswords, and I’m happy that he’s back.Today’s ThemeAsterisks, which are also called stars when they are included in crossword clues, are a fairly common feature in puzzles. They typically indicate that the clue and its answer are part of the theme.In Mr. Kwong’s puzzle, the stars mean something else, and solvers must read the revealer at 63A in a different way in order to figure it out.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Joseph Gangi makes our eyes play tricks on us.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — A cognitive phenomenon known as frequency illusion, also called the Baader-Meinhof effect, describes that feeling you get after encountering something once and then seeming to notice it everywhere. This phenomenon came to mind as I was solving Joseph Gangi’s crossword, which happens to use a theme style I just wrote about (click at your own puzzle-spoiling risk) only two weeks ago.This is Mr. Gangi’s third puzzle for The New York Times, and one might refer to its theme as a frequency illusion, in the sense that once the grid is complete, we realize how infrequently a certain bit of language was inside of it.Today’s ThemeThe revealer for Mr. Gangi’s puzzle is tucked at the bottom of the southeast corner, occupying the last Across clue. A “Feature of 20-Across” is, “when sounded out, a feature of today’s puzzle” (73A), clues included. (Say that three times fast.) There’s nothing obviously out of the ordinary — nothing glaring, one might say — and for me it was only when the Greek mythology in the grid came together that everything snapped into place.POLYPHEMUS (20A) is the “Cave dweller of Greek myth” in Homer’s ODYSSEY (41A). He is also called THE CYCLOPS (60A). A “Classic feature” of this character is his ONE EYE (73A). And now, even with only ONE EYE open — I hope you can see where this is going — the entire grid and clue set features only one “I.” That’s in the circle at the top of 18-Across, and it’s fittingly centered in the upper part of the grid, just like the eye in POLYPHEMUS’s head. Tricky Clues18A. The nature of this “Cry after a poke” is ambiguous — “That hurt!” or “I’m awake!” both fit in our squares, for instance. This grid’s answer is I CAN’T SEE, and presumably the poker is the one who needs a better sightline. (N.B.: Please do not poke a stranger. May I recommend a gentle tap?)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More