The Next Best Thing Officially Goes Interactive. Have At It.
Morning routine: en route to favorite coffee place where they use the steamed milk to draw fern leaves right into your latte, stop off at Homer’s Variety to pick up—what, no Times?
Nice lady behind counter: “There’s only one distributor for the whole area. You’d have to go to Hartford to get one.”
Can she tell by looking at my face that I’m considering doing just that?
“It’s a Monday anyway. It’d be too easy.”
I know, but you don’t understand. Just because it’s too easy doesn’t exempt me from having to do it.
“You could go to the library and do it online.”
No, that’s the thing. I already pay the $34.95 per year for the online puzzle, even though I prefer to solve it on newsprint. For that luxury I pay a dollar a day Monday through Saturday, plus $3.50 on Sundays, so that’s—WHAT?—$494 a year just for the fucking Times puzzle? Let’s see what the Berkshire Eagle has to offer.
Oh right. This is why I shell out the dough.
To be honest, I haven’t done enough crosswords syndicated by the Chicago Tribune to know if today’s is a representative sample or not, but this was just so—perfunctory.
The single Ah! Moment (not to be confused with an Aha! moment) came with 43A: “Sink” or “swim” = VERB—although I'd like to think the Times would have had the courage to leave out the scare quotes.
It makes you realize that constructing a good puzzle requires a whole lot more than just saying, “Oh look, here is a collection of words that fit together.”
Which brings me to a question that has nagged me for a long time: just exactly what is it that makes the New York Times puzzle so superior? This is not a rhetorical question. I really want to know.
Let me get you started by saying what I think is a small part of the answer: it’s smart, it’s fresh, and often has what people in the biz call “lively fill.” But is that all it takes to make a crossword good? Let me also say that, for me, anyway, it's rarely the theme that makes a puzzle satisfying. There's usually something else going on. Something mysterious. Tell me what it is.
Nice lady behind counter: “There’s only one distributor for the whole area. You’d have to go to Hartford to get one.”
Can she tell by looking at my face that I’m considering doing just that?
“It’s a Monday anyway. It’d be too easy.”
I know, but you don’t understand. Just because it’s too easy doesn’t exempt me from having to do it.
“You could go to the library and do it online.”
No, that’s the thing. I already pay the $34.95 per year for the online puzzle, even though I prefer to solve it on newsprint. For that luxury I pay a dollar a day Monday through Saturday, plus $3.50 on Sundays, so that’s—WHAT?—$494 a year just for the fucking Times puzzle? Let’s see what the Berkshire Eagle has to offer.
Oh right. This is why I shell out the dough.
To be honest, I haven’t done enough crosswords syndicated by the Chicago Tribune to know if today’s is a representative sample or not, but this was just so—perfunctory.
The single Ah! Moment (not to be confused with an Aha! moment) came with 43A: “Sink” or “swim” = VERB—although I'd like to think the Times would have had the courage to leave out the scare quotes.
It makes you realize that constructing a good puzzle requires a whole lot more than just saying, “Oh look, here is a collection of words that fit together.”
Which brings me to a question that has nagged me for a long time: just exactly what is it that makes the New York Times puzzle so superior? This is not a rhetorical question. I really want to know.
Let me get you started by saying what I think is a small part of the answer: it’s smart, it’s fresh, and often has what people in the biz call “lively fill.” But is that all it takes to make a crossword good? Let me also say that, for me, anyway, it's rarely the theme that makes a puzzle satisfying. There's usually something else going on. Something mysterious. Tell me what it is.
posted by DO at 9:39 AM
2 comments
