Here’s a little-kept secret for you: Everyone can solve the New York Times Crossword.
If you’re rolling your eyes, check it out from us: Jackie Frere, director of community engagement, and Isaac Aronow, Gameplay’s editorial associate. Jackie was the one who tried the Monday crossword once, failed, was embarrassed, and gave up completely. Isaac settled for a while but was unemployed at the start of the pandemic. We challenged ourselves to see if we could start fresh and complete a New York Times Crossword on Saturday in the next few weeks. Spoiler alert: We did.
In case you didn’t know, the New York Times Daily Crossword has a hard curve as the week goes on. Monday is the easiest puzzle, and then Tuesday is a bit harder, climbing up to Saturday, which is the hardest day of the week. The Sunday quiz is sometimes claimed to be the hardest puzzle of the week, but much of that difficulty comes from the larger size of the Sunday puzzle, rather than clues, answers, or topics.
The Mini doesn’t have a difficulty curve like the daily crossword, so its difficulty depends more on the individual puzzle you take, than on the day of the week it runs. Minis rarely include advanced solving elements such as rebus (more on these later) but will often include intermediate solving elements commonly found in midweek puzzles. If you feel comfortable solving mini-games, we recommend that you feel comfortable solving crosswords every day until Wednesday.
It takes time, practice, and a little help from the Games team, but you can also solve a Monday puzzle and eventually a Saturday crossword. Let us show you how.
Getting Started with Mini
If you haven’t heard of Mini, it’s an everyday crossword created by Joel Fagliano, a senior puzzle editor. It’s free, it includes pop-culture clues, and chances are it can be solved in minutes – or seconds, the more you play.
Dip your toes in the water crossword by solving Mini every day. You’ll get a feel for how the tools work on the app or the web, and you’ll start to gain confidence in your problem-solving skills.
Let’s tackle the Mini together from February 8, 2022:
Once you’ve completed the Mini in about a week or so, it’s time to try a puzzle on Monday.
Dive in every day
Opening crosswords every day can be difficult, especially if this is your first time solving. Do not be afraid! Contrary to popular belief, crosswords are not a contest of the number of puzzles that one person knows. Yes, random facts and knowledge will come in handy as you fill in the crossword grid, but believe in yourself.
When attacking the net directly, try a few times to find out your tackle style. Jackie likes to go around the grid and fill in what she knows. She would then keep going back and see if her memory was prompted by any of the letters that had been filled in, or if the answer “came” to her a second time or third or not. Isaac likes to start with easier types of clues, like fill-in-the-blanks or acronyms.
Rachel Fabi, a columnist for Wordplay, takes a different approach. “I start every puzzle the same way: I start in the northwest and work my way up,” she says. “So it’s going to go back and forth between horizontal and down in the corner and then build what you have, until you have the whole thing.”
Did you go as far as you could? Try using auto-check to make sure your answers are correct. Do you need any adjustments? Go ahead. If you’re still having trouble, check it out Play on wordsyour new best friend. Wordplay is a daily column written by The Games editors explaining the New York Times Crossword clues, hard answers, and more. That one provided by Rachel, Deb Amlen or Caitlin Lovinger may have the key you need to open the rest of your puzzle. And they are very good at explaining what certain crossword clues are asking you to do or how they might trick you.
Now that you have some tools under your belt, let’s tackle the problem Monday from March 21, 2022:
Take some time to solve Monday’s puzzles and don’t be afraid to use the tools we mentioned above. “The more you tackle, the better you get and the quicker you can tackle these things – but just believe in yourself; You’ll go further than you think,” says Sam Ezersky, a digital quiz editor. “And when you keep coming back to these Monday quizzes, you’ll keep getting better.”
For more homework, read Deb’s guide to “New York Times crossword puzzle solution. It’s filled with tips, tricks, and definitions of crossword lingo. We didn’t say this would be easy!
Here’s the second year Wordplay columnist Rachel Fabi recommends:
So are you ready for Tuesday
Honestly, Tuesdays don’t that much harder than Monday. One big lesson to learn is to make your dealing experience your own. Some smart puzzle players might consider using automated checks or Google to cheat, but at the end of the day you should solve the puzzle in a way that feels most comfortable to you. Google a word or answer if you don’t know. You can learn something new and use that piece of information in a quiz in the future.
The beauty of crossword puzzles is that you won’t know all the answers. That’s the fun part! It’s a learning game. But you will be surprised by how many things you know. And if you’re struggling, don’t be afraid to take a break. “You have to put it down and come back to it,” Sam said. “I would say boldly that every time you put this thing down and you come back to it an hour later, you’re totally seeing something you’ve never seen before.”
Another tip to help you open a puzzle is to know a thing or two about clues. First, the clues and their answers should always match. A clue in the plural will have a plural answer, a clue in another language will have an answer in the same language, the parts of speech will always be the same and the tenses will match. Also, clues with initials or abbreviations in them will always have an abbreviated or abbreviated answer, so the answer to “J. “Lo” will be AROD and not ALEX RODRIGUEZ, but there is an exception for acronyms used for the sake of brevity – for example US, VIP or MLB.
And now, you may have noticed that Monday and Tuesday always have a theme. It’s possible to tackle everyday tasks without finding a topic, but Rachel suggests always identifying a topic if possible. “It’s so much more gratifying when you figure it out early on and then use it to predict what’s to come,” she says. The thread can give you an extra hint if you haven’t found the other long answers in the grid.
We will further expand on the concept of theme and derelict puzzles in part 2. But first, try tackling Tuesdays until you feel ready for another challenge.
Here are five Tuesdays that Sam Ezersky recommends:
