Ironically, The New York Times was one of the last newspapers to add a crossword puzzle. It first published a Sunday puzzle in and a daily puzzle in The standard black-and-white grid you find in newspapers is just one of many forms that modern crossword puzzles can take. Nowadays you can find puzzles that are round, diamond-shaped, with varied framework, where you have to fill in the black squares and more, says Mark Legasse, senior executive editor at Dell, one of the country's largest publishers of crossword magazines, with more than 35 puzzle titles.
Legasse has been doing puzzles since he was 4, and he loves to experiment with all kinds of puzzles. He, too, works with a stable of constructors who send in the puzzles. Despite the fact that we are in a computer age, he said, most crossword puzzles are still done by hand.
There are some computer programs that will generate them, but "the good ones are still done by people, especially puzzles with themes. Considering that Dell publishes 8 million to 10 million puzzle books a year — in addition to all the other options out there — you can get a sense of how popular crossword puzzles are, he said. We hear from people who said they've done them for 50 years.
Puzzles are fun, he said. And you can find the level of skill you want. In recent years, we've also been learning that they are good for us. They keep people connected," Legasse said. There are reports that they can stave off effects of Alzheimer's and other dementia, he said. Start your day with the top stories you missed while you were sleeping. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.
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Once you understand the theme and can guess what the other theme entries might be, you will have a leg up on solving the rest of the puzzle. Themes can be placed anywhere in the crossword grid, depending on the creativity of the puzzle constructor. But most commonly it will be in the longest Across and Down entries.
Below is how these answers were clued in this puzzle. But do notice that these particular entries cover a range of topics: Topography, pop culture, sports and, well, a pun about book covers. Some themes change part of a familiar word or phrase to make a pun. Three more long Across answers work similarly. In this puzzle, the theme entries were clued to make you think. Now imagine opening your Sunday New York Times Magazine to the crossword and seeing a museum come to life.
Guggenheim Museum in New York City:. In this puzzle, the black squares imitate the spiral shape of the halls of the Guggenheim Museum, and works of art that hang in the museum can be found throughout the puzzle by artist name, along with the name of the museum and other bonus theme content. The Times has even run puzzles where solvers had to write the theme outside the grid.
Talk about thinking outside the box! There is so much wonderful variety in New York Times crossword themes. These examples are just to get you started, but once you dive in and start solving, prepare to be surprised by the incredible creativity of the puzzle makers. She believes that, with enough peer pressure, anyone can learn to solve crosswords and enjoy them.
Twitter: NYTimesWordplay. How to Get Started. They make you a calmer and more focused person. Becoming a good solver is about understanding what the clues are asking you to do. Look at me. I do The New York Times crossword puzzle every day, and I once tried to shoot a basket on the wrong hoop when I was on my 6th grade basketball team.
Crossword puzzles are not about intelligence, they are about keeping your mind nimble and knowing what the sneaky trickster Will Shortz is asking of you. Show Will Shortz who's boss by attempting the puzzle! It's fun, really! There is no shame in missing an answer or not finishing the puzzle.
The key is learning what you missed. The more puzzles you solve, the easier it gets. Try these clues that are designed to be easy for most people: 1. Ready for another mini? The Mini Fill-in-the-Blanks Try this puzzle, with all fill-in-the-blank clues, and watch your brain work in ways you might not have expected:.
Now what do you do? Still not sure looking things up is fair? Solve it any way you like. Solve With a Friend Tip: Solving with another person can work to your advantage.
Are you ready to take your solving a step further? Words to Know Clue: A crossword clue is a hint that the solver must decipher to find the answer that is then entered into the puzzle grid. Fill: A general term for the words or phrases that fill a crossword.
The Mini Tenses Read carefully! What would be the answer for these two clues? The Mini Part of Speech How well do you know your parts of speech?
Try this mini on for size. If a clue is plural, the answer has to be plural. The Mini Plurals See if you can keep your plurals matching. The Mini Cross-References Get some practice on these clues. The Mini Partners Partner up with this mini. Some of the signals you see might include: Abbr. The Mini Abbreviations Can you tacking this mini, briefly?
Words to Know Constructor: The person who creates the crossword puzzle. Occasionally, left-right or mirror symmetry is used instead. Cracking the Harder Clues. Puzzles are a kind of nonthreatening way to remind us that there is still mystery in the world. Here are some more clue types to conquer:. More Clue Types Clues With a "? But what if we told you that the answer is a four-letter word?
Can you think of any other way the words in the clues can be used? On the surface, you might think that the clue is asking you about the current events you read about in the newspaper, but think: What other kinds of currents do you know?
The answer is five letters long. The Mini Question Marks Any questions? The Mini Quotes and Brackets Ready to have a conversation with your crossword puzzle? Try this one. Talk about tough cluing. This type of clue requires careful reading.
Not this time. The answer to that clue is RED. Depending on the puzzle, it might also be MET. The Mini Veiled Capitals Time to practice again. Watch out for those capital letters! Solvers either love rebuses or they hate them. The Mini Rebus Read up on how to put more than one letter in a square above and then practice with this mini puzzle.
Remember, question everything. He says it fooled everyone! Still stuck? Bear with us. Not to worry, it took us a long time, too. Sure it could. You Can Do It!
Take this quiz to familiarize yourself with some of the more common obscure crossword entries. Bonus: Crossword Themes. And once you nail one answer in a puzzle's theme, figuring out the other long answers is usually much easier.
What Is a Theme? Why Is There a Theme? But paper is still the preferred method by which seniors get their news: while 59 percent go online every day, they lag behind their younger counterparts. Something, however, gets muddled in using a tablet versus newsprint, and puzzlers worry about the loss of the ink-on-paper experience. I remember watching my grandmother solving a crossword, and I could see it was different from other activities because she had the paper folded a certain way, she had a pencil in her hand.
The New York Times is arguably the leading crossword in the puzzling world—and those who seek it out are still, largely, gravitating toward paper. Crosswords Classic acts as an aggregator of newspaper crosswords, from high-brow publications to lesser known, popularly accessible puzzles such as Australia's The Stickler Weekly and Glutton for Pun. While The New York Times declined to offer statistics about how many people are using its crossword app, it faces clear competition from others in the digital space.
Sharp points to a whole slew of crosswords that exist purely online, arguing that the subculture of Internet-only crosswords might pump life back into the puzzle.
Both Connor and Sharp lament the potential death of crosswording, with Connor going so far as to worry whether baby boomers might be the last crosswording generation: "As the older solvers die, how will the new potential solvers discover the pleasure of puzzling? Then again, the future of puzzling may be as fluid as the form itself. It was invented in the United States, not in Britain.
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