Alright, so, let me tell you about the second day of tackling this New York Times crossword puzzle. I’m no expert, but I’ve been dabbling in these things, and it’s becoming a fun little challenge.
I kicked things off this morning, a bit later than I wanted to, but hey, life happens. Grabbed my phone, opened up the NYT app, and there it was, waiting for me.
First thing I did was just scan through the clues, you know, to get a feel for it. Some of them looked pretty straightforward, but others, man, they were cryptic.
I decided to start with the across clues, just because. I filled in a few easy ones, like that one that was a few letter word. Felt good getting those first few words down. But then, I hit a bit of a wall.
- There was this one clue about a “High-speed blender button” and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out. I googled it and found the answer should be “puree”.
- Another one asked “capital city founded in 1050”, I googled and found it was “OSLO”.
- Then there was one more, “WWI battle locale”, it was “YSER”, I also googled it.
So, I switched to the down clues, hoping for a breakthrough. I managed to piece together a couple more words, using the letters I already had as hints. It’s like a little puzzle within a puzzle, you see? I’m starting to think the Monday puzzles are way easier, so maybe I should start there and work my way up. I heard the Saturday ones are brutal!
I saw this article talking about people solving these things in like, 11 seconds! That’s insane! It took me way longer. I also read somewhere that some puzzles have a theme, and if you can figure out the theme, it makes things a lot easier. Didn’t see a theme in this one, though, and I saw the average time for those puzzles was more than nine minutes. Felt a bit better about my time. There was a tip about going straight for the fill-in-the-blank clues first, so I might try that next time.
Anyway, I kept at it for a good chunk of time, maybe half an hour or so? I finally filled in all but a few squares. I’m leaving it for now, gonna come back to it later with fresh eyes.
It’s definitely a different kind of challenge, these crosswords. It’s not just about knowing the words, but also about figuring out the wordplay and the clues. I’m not sure I’m hooked yet, but it’s definitely an interesting way to kill some time and keep the brain busy. We’ll see how day three goes!
