Broke Ground In A Way Nyt (2024)

FAQs

Which nyt crossword is the hardest? ›

The crosswords are designed to increase in difficulty throughout the week, with the easiest on Monday and the most difficult on Saturday. The larger Sunday crossword, which appears in The New York Times Magazine, is an icon in American culture; it is typically intended to be a "Thursday-plus" in difficulty.

It's Not Cheating, It's Learning

Let me say something that may be controversial, but it needs to be said: It's OK to look something up when solving a crossword. Crosswords are ultimately learning tools, whether you're learning some trivia or an interesting new word or phrase.

Every letter is "checked" (i.e. is part of both an "across" word and a "down" word) and usually each answer must contain at least three letters. In such puzzles shaded squares are typically limited to about one-sixth of the total.

For those new to the game, we reveal the secret in a nutshell: The clues each have two parts. One part is a normal definition of the answer; the other is an additional hint using wordplay. Having two hints in each clue might seem a big giveaway to solvers.

The Monday crosswords are the easiest, and the puzzles get harder as the week goes on. Practice on the Mondays before pushing yourself to Tuesday puzzles. The Saturday crossword is the hardest of the week. Contrary to popular belief, Sunday puzzles have the difficulty level of a midweek crossword.

Clues should reflect the difficulty of the puzzle. Our difficulty scale increases through the week, with the easiest puzzles on Monday and hardest on Saturday.

The common theme is a desire to be intellectually challenged. Roughly, people who are more into words are more likely to solve crosswords while people who are more into logic are more likely to solve Sudoku.

These features mean that crossword puzzles cause large areas of your cortex to be active, and stimulate new connections in your brain. The hippocampus will then remember those new connections, strengthening both your hippocampus and cortex.

Force = f, n. Former = ex. Fort = ft. French = fr.

Fill in the blanks first

Every puzzle usually has a small handful of fill-in-the-blanks, so if you're looking to get an early confidence boost, scan the list of clues for fill-in-the-blanks and knock them out early.

What does fig mean in crossword? ›

abbreviation. figurative; figuratively; figure.

Matching Answer. AMAH. 95% AYAH.

Tackle the easiest clues first.

Scan through the clues, and knock out all the easiest ones. Not only will this give your gameplay some structure, but also it'll give you an ego boost! Typically, fill-in-the-blank clues are the easiest. For example: “___ of Oz.”

However, many times the blank space can be filled in with two or more words. In easier crosswords, multiple words will be indicated with (2 words) or (2 wds.), but more often than not it will be up to the solver to determine how many words fill in the space. Another hint sometimes used in clues is (hyphenated).

Sunday puzzles are sometimes asserted to be the most difficult puzzle of the week, but much of that difficulty comes from the larger size of Sunday puzzles, rather than the clues, the answers or the themes.

The New York Times Crossword increases in difficulty from Monday to Saturday. The Sunday puzzle is approximately on the same difficulty level as the Wednesday or Thursday puzzle, and is larger than other daily puzzles.

Mondays through Thursdays, we'll publish themeless puzzles that decrease in difficulty throughout the week, with a new beginner-friendly puzzle on Thursdays. You'll also find something new on Fridays: a themed puzzle, of light-to-moderate difficulty.

The Telegraph is the ideal starting puzzle and it is the one I started on. Whatever the paper, though, my advice is that 90% or so of cryptic clues consist of (a) a definition of the answer and (b) another way of getting the answer by manipulating its letters - lying side by side, with either coming first.

As you go, Connections should get easier. Once you've grouped one category, you have fewer words to choose from for the remaining three, and so on and so forth, until the game is over and you've won.