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toblix

Crosswords

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Chris (topher Remo) got me into the NY Times Crosswords app by mentioning it somewhere, and for the last months I've given every new daily puzzle a  go, though I never actually complete any of them. Has anyone else tried that app? How well do you usually do, and what's your process? Mine is:

  1. Go over each row and fill in the ones I'm certain about («ACTOR PESCI») in black, and those I'm pretty sure of in grey.
  2. Do the same for each colum.
  3. Repeat until I'm not making any progress.

I never do the thing where I switch between words to figure out multiple ones at the same time, since the UI makes that clunky. Also I never look anything up, because I consider it cheating – how about you? US sports stuff is usually the bane of my crossword solving efforts.

 

Crosswords!

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Adding to your process, sometimes when I'm stuck I try to make guesses for the end of words based on the tense/plurality of the clue. Or fill in individual letters when I'm pretty sure the answer is one of a fixed set of possible answers like EON/ERA, TSAR/TZAR/CZAR. Or make educated guesses whether or not a square in a partial clue contains a vowel or consonant.

 

I tend to look things up when I get stuck for too long. Sometimes I learn something new that helps out in future crosswords, like a common fill relating to an athlete or actor that happens to have a first last name composed of 3-5 common letters, most of which are vowels.

NYPD Blue actor Morales (4)

ESAI

Hockey player Bobby (3)

ORR

 

Been doing the AV Club crosswords for a few years, which has recently broken off from from The Onion and are trying to make it as a separate entity called The American Values Club. Weirdly refreshing to be doing crosswords that are slightly more in tune with my brain, are allowed to use foul language and have open editorial bitterness seep into the descriptive clues.

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Yeah, I sometimes add letters I'm almost certain about too, like plural s-es, but it has gotten me into trouble more than once. Also, I agree that the words you miss are learning opportunities, so I'm trying to make an effort to go back and look at the puzzle solutions to see what I missed.

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I do the globe and mail cryptics with my Dad. Working together, we average over 3/4 completion probably. Though to be fair the globe and mail cryptics are not particularly hard so far as cryptics go. I like the cryptics because compared to regular crosswords, they rely more on word games like puns and anagrams than they do knowledge of factual trivia.

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I use the Crosswords app on iOS. Much wider selection. The only ones I can solve there are UK-based Independent Concise, Manchester Eve. News and Puzzle Express.

 

The US ones have too much US-specific stuff that I don't know nor want to know.

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I do crosswords regularly, but I have never been a huge fan of the iOS app. The screen on my phone is just too small for me to comfortably finish a puzzle (it's sad, but pretty much the only reason I buy print newspapers anymore is for the crossword puzzles).

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I do crosswords regularly, but I have never been a huge fan of the iOS app. The screen on my phone is just too small for me to comfortably finish a puzzle (it's sad, but pretty much the only reason I buy print newspapers anymore is for the crossword puzzles).

I got an iPad Mini recently and after that I use almost no apps on my iPhone, because the screen is so small. How did I ever manage to do most of my reading on an iPhone (using instapaper)??? Haven't actually tried Crosswords on the iPad, but should.

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The Android app is awful, far worse than the IOS app. Thankfully you can get books of NYTimes crosswords for like 5 bucks, and I have a book I've been chipping away at in my office. 

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I've done some cryptics with my housemate occasionally; there's a setter in Australia that usually takes the Friday slot who likes to play weird games. One memorable crossword had all the across clues be movie titles that were one letter too long, except for one: FOOTLOOSE. (The puzzle did point out that there was a theme and which one was the intact member, but still.)

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I use an Android app called Shortyz (yes, I know). It's pretty good about presentation and UI, and pulls from a bunch of different sources, including NYTimes if you have a subscription. I usually do the LA Times ones as far as I can (usually I can do monday and most of tuesday), and then turn on show errors, even though I know I shouldn't.

 

 

Like Toblix, I have issues with when they go to American athletes, senators, geology, and other culturally grounded stuff.

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WEIRD.

 

For some reason my NYTimes Crosswords app started messing up the dates this Monday. Selecting Sunday 26th is fine, but clicking on the Monday 27th box, it says Tue, May 28 instead and gives weird error messages. Selecting the actual Tuesday 28th gives Wed, May 29 and so on. This happens both on my iPad and iPhone. Anyone else have this problem? Deleting and reinstalling the app did nothing, other than removing all my old solutions.

 

Also, the American Values crosswords is just great.

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DAY 3

 

So I contact support and say a bunch of thing, but anticipating them just telling me to reinstall, I lead by saying that I tried that and it didn't work. Guess what they responded with?

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DAY 3

 

So I contact support and say a bunch of thing, but anticipating them just telling me to reinstall, I lead by saying that I tried that and it didn't work. Guess what they responded with?

... "We are sending an agent over to pleasure you while we look into the issue. Also have some money to make up for the disappointment. And hey, while we're at it, we'll have the agent bring chocolate chip cookies as well."

(Probably not, huh. I suck at guessing this stuff.)

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DAY 3

 

So I contact support and say a bunch of thing, but anticipating them just telling me to reinstall, I lead by saying that I tried that and it didn't work. Guess what they responded with?

"Try to reinstall again."

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Yeah, they asked med to reinstall.

 

DAY 4

Another person admitted to having the same problem on the issue board thing! This means it's not just me!

 

I wonder what's causing it. How can an iOS game have a bug that manifests immediately after a fresh install for only a few users when the variables on the devices are so few? Since it's a calendar GUI thing I immediately tried setting my iPad to American Texas hamburger mode, but that didn't change anything. So what's left that can make this weird error appear? The wallpaper?

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It never occurred to my until this moment that developers can use game metrics to diagnose bugs. 

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I do the globe and mail cryptics with my Dad. Working together, we average over 3/4 completion probably. Though to be fair the globe and mail cryptics are not particularly hard so far as cryptics go. I like the cryptics because compared to regular crosswords, they rely more on word games like puns and anagrams than they do knowledge of factual trivia.

 

Yeah I do those as well.  They're a lot of fun.  I'm a bit nervous about getting into the NY Times Crossword because I'm not a huge fan of traditional crosswords, and I like how cryptic crosswords typically have validatable answers.  NY Times Sunday sounds like it mixes wordplay with trivia, and will often lead you down a huge set of incorrect answers you're forced to back track on.  But that's mainly going off the crossword documentary I watched about it, I'm planning on giving them a try soon.

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