How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle: Tips, Tricks and Techniques to Master America's Favorite Puzzle
by The New York Times, Amy Reynaldo
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Book Summary Information
Author: Amy Reynaldo, The New York TimesEditor: Will Shortz
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-07-10
ISBN: 0312365543
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Accessories:
- The New York Times Daily Crossword Puzzles Volume 72: 50 Mid-Level Puzzles from the Pages of The New York Times
- The New York Times The Puzzlemaster's Choice: 75 of Will Shortz's Favorite Crosswords
- The New York Times The Joy of Crosswords: 150 of America's Best-Loved Crosswords
Book Reviews of How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle: Tips, Tricks and Techniques to Master America's Favorite Puzzle
Book Review: A generally good guide
Summary: 4 Stars
As I'm reviewing a book about American-style crosswords on Amazon UK, let's talk a bit about the puzzles. New York Times Crosswords are non-cryptic, but much more subtle than the non-cryptic puzzles seen in newspapers here. There are often themes on which the longer answers are based, or gimmicks like entering some answers backwards or writing short theme-related words like ON / OFF in single squares. It's only fair to note that there are also lots of clues requiring US-based cultural knowledge - Heisman trophy winners, US place names and so on. Far more so than with any UK newspaper crossword, there's a system of increasing difficulty through the week, with Mon/Tue puzzles accessible to beginners, and Fri/Sat ones hard enough to take even the experts about 5 times longer than Mon/Tue. (Sunday puzzles are usually about Thursday standard, though on bigger grids.) The other big difference is that every letter is checked (i.e. in an Across and Down answer). This means you can get help with answers you've never heard of, but on the other hand means that the constructors have to use some words you've never heard of.
So why do these puzzles? Possibly as a change from our own puzzles, possibly because you don't like cryptic crosswords (though I don't buy the notion that cryptics need some special way of thinking that's not required for these puzzles), or possibly because you just want to see what some very ingenious setters (sorry, constructors) can do.
Amy Reynaldo is a very quick solver of NYT and similar puzzles and has placed in the top 10 of the American Crossword Puzzle Championship, so she knows her stuff. Can she pass it on successfully to us? Well there's not nearly so much technique to convey as in a cryptic crossword tutorial - success at NYT puzzles is largely a matter of knowledge and experience. Amy takes the various levels of difficulty associated with particular days of the week and talks about them in order, taking you through a sample puzzle first and then giving you a dozen or so to try.
There are some hints for each puzzle at the back to help get you started.
The solving process described for the sample puzzles is a bit unbelievable - even when we get to the tricky Fri/Sat puzzles, complete chunks of the grid are filled in completely in turn. Maybe it does work that way for Amy, but most of us get left with little problem areas that we have to keep coming back to. Reflecting this kind of process might have reduced the extent to which you might read the sample solving and think "I'm just too stupid for this".
The most useful parts of the book are probably the lists of frequently-used answers, boxed tips like "How to spot your mistakes", and sections like "Top 10 ways constructors try to trick you".
There are just over 60 puzzles in the book, and as far as I can tell (Fri/Sat puzzles are still often beyond me), these are well-chosen and mostly quite recent. Each set seems to gradually increase in difficulty - sensible, though a bit depressing when you can't finish the first couple of Fri/Sat puzzles. Because there's a considerable step up from Thurs to Fri/Sat, I think it would have made sense to revise the order of the week and put the section on Sunday puzzles between Thurs and Fri/Sat.
More How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle: Tips, Tricks and Techniques to Master America's Favorite Puzzle reviews:
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