A cruciverbalist's blog

January 4, 2021 1:30 PM

CrossBoss is a blog, launched July 2020, dedicated to the New York Times crossword puzzle. Its proprietor, Morgan Russell, solves every day's puzzle and then posts a review of it, including his personal solve time (4:56 for today's "easy" Monday puzzle); an assessment of its difficulty level ("relative to day of the week. An 8/10 Monday is still much easier than a 4/10 Saturday, unless otherwise specified.); an enjoyability rating; and occasionally, a link to a live-solve video on his YouTube channel. The review commentary in each post is the best part. It includes commentary on the quality of the puzzle's construction as well as comments on what he liked or learned about some of the answers.
posted by beagle (25 comments total)

There's a similar site at Rex Parker Does the NY Times Crossword Puzzle, including a frightening 2:46 solve time for the same puzzle. One of these days I would like to see a column written by people (like me) who enjoy crosswords but still struggle to solve the harder ones at all. Because what's "hard" to the hardened cruciverbalist is usually not what's hard to me, and vice versa.
posted by wnissen at 1:57 PM on January 4, 2021 [11 favorites]

Thanks for posting this. I'm a devoted reader of Rex Parker's blog and am amused by his schtick and his "voice" even if I am a skeptic about his posted solving times. It will be interesting to read another blog on the same puzzles just for a difference of opinion.
posted by chavenet at 2:54 PM on January 4, 2021 [1 favorite]

I understand that some people need to power through the NYT crossword and post incredible solve times, but it seems at odds with spending some quiet time early in the morning exercising some of the remaining brain cells. Making it a speed competition seems to drain all of the pleasure out of it (except for solving a Saturday puzzle in under thirty minutes - that feels great.)
I've had the app for a couple of years, and the statistics tell me I have a 100% solve rate on 2220 puzzles (archives), which is why I decided I needed to start doing the Spelling Bee afterward every morning for a really frustrating new hobby.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 3:21 PM on January 4, 2021 [4 favorites]

Anybody manage to find an RSS feed for this blog? I love it but I’m not going to remember to go to the site every so at.
posted by JoeBlubaugh at 3:23 PM on January 4, 2021

It’s a Wordpress site, so https://crossboss.blog/feed/ may work.
posted by zamboni at 4:29 PM on January 4, 2021

I'm with you, buckaroo. During the pandemic, every* night when the puzzle gets updated I video chat with my kids and we do it together with screenshare. They shout, I type. Great bonding time, lots of snark and kibitzing, and letting them get the hard ones brings me great happiness. And we need more happiness these days.

And we do the spelling bee directly after, but the rule is you have to get the 7-letter word(s) before you can fill in any others. Drives 'em crazy.

* well, every night when they aren't busy on other video calls
posted by skippyhacker at 4:34 PM on January 4, 2021 [8 favorites]

Boy now even more time spent if I take up puzzle readership. Spelling Bee has revealed my obsessive streak! Mollycoddled, oh please!
posted by Oyéah at 4:54 PM on January 4, 2021 [3 favorites]

Spelling Bee is so hard! Way harder than the crossword puzzle. As a dedicated Scrabbler, I find it really hard to force my brain to recognize that you can use the letters more than once so I miss tons of words.
posted by Daily Alice at 5:17 PM on January 4, 2021 [2 favorites]

I love this. Exactly the kind of thing I would never have found on my own but greatly enjoy. Thank you for posting!
posted by entropyiswinning at 5:24 PM on January 4, 2021

>There's a similar site at Rex Parker Does the NY Times Crossword Puzzle,
I recognize Rex's name from one of the several discussions on the blue (previously and previouslier ) about how white-dude oriented Wil Shortz 's editorial stance is. Rex was one of a bunch of crossword "industry" folks to write an open letter imploring Will to do better.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 5:55 PM on January 4, 2021 [2 favorites]

I don't post my times, but I'm exactly the type of person who needs to track my time and do them as fast as possible to prove god-knows-what to myself. Rex's times are a little... let's just say that posted times like "three minutes, but I was asleep and doing it in the shower without my contacts in" feel pretty common. I still love Rex's super-curmudgeonly voice and the fact that if he likes a puzzle, that's about the highest praise it can receive. Looking forward to adding this one for some nice counterbalance.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:00 PM on January 4, 2021 [3 favorites]

(Also I was, weirdly, considering a post about Rex's blog this morning, and then got distracted by other things. This is better than what I would have done.)
posted by Navelgazer at 6:01 PM on January 4, 2021

My wife and I had a very long streak going that unfortunately broke in the middle of the pandemic, and we just haven't been as committed to the NYT crossword since, and part of that is because of some really bad editing on Shortz's part. At this point, I probably play the Spelling Bee more frequently than I complete the crossword. I think Rex's criticisms of Shortz are valid, but I often find him to be a bit, well, too much in other aspects of his criticism. It'll be interesting to compare Morgan's thoughts to Rex's.

While I'm here, I'll also highly recommend Evan Birnholz's Sunday WaPo crossword for those who haven't tried it yet. The clues/answers seems a lot fresher and I've found very few, if any, questionable clues (which seem to be a weekly occurrence with the NYT). I also like that he varies the difficulty from week to week, so it's not always ridiculously hard meta-puzzles.
posted by noneuclidean at 6:27 PM on January 4, 2021 [1 favorite]

Great post - I will definitely read more of this.

Yeah, back in my younger days, commuting to Manhattan from the burbs, every Monday morning I would dive into the used newspaper bins on the tracks at GCT and grab a Sunday NYT magazine. I couldn't afford a NYT subscription. I kept the Sunday crossword in my train bag and would work on it all week during my commute. I liked the fact that it wasn't a sprint, but a marathon (for me, YMMV).

Now I have a coworker who saves all of her NYT magazines and gives them all to me once every few months. I tear the crosswords out (after reading the mag) and put them in a folder. Right now I have about 30 of them waiting for me - yay!
posted by sundrop at 6:29 PM on January 4, 2021 [5 favorites]

The hardest part of the weekly nyt crossword experience is the first minute of the Monday morning crossword before I realize they’re not trick questions.
posted by condour75 at 8:25 PM on January 4, 2021 [7 favorites]

I've been liking Two No Touch after I finish each day's puzzle.
posted by hypnogogue at 8:43 PM on January 4, 2021 [1 favorite]

As a recent re-upper to the NYTimes crossword, I look forward to delving further into this. The New Yorker also has a cross-word puzzle which is ... interesting but at times really... maddening. Wrong, even. Whereas the Times is a bit of a known quantity, that is, it's clearly written by and for us white guys. Which feels dumb and narrow.

Any-rate, since we're comparing finish times, I've never taken longer than 25 minutes to finish any puzzle. *cough/'google'* what? Seriously, I imagine my times are average: if I can go through the puzzle answering almost every clue using a letter from the word I just finished, (Mondays and Tuesdays (often) after having the same revelation as condour75) - it's not so interesting. The frustration of realizing it's the third choice that they're looking for is far more fun. I've never looked at 'Spelling Bee,' I look forward to that, thanks!
posted by From Bklyn at 4:43 AM on January 5, 2021

Like skippyhacker, I do the puzzle virtually, in my case with a niece who lives far away. The joy is figuring out the hard parts together and laughing over our bad guesses. Sometimes I do it alone, but it is not as much fun!
posted by pangolin party at 4:57 AM on January 5, 2021

PS--If you love Boggle, Spelling Bee is for you!
posted by pangolin party at 5:04 AM on January 5, 2021

Making it a speed competition seems to drain all of the pleasure out of it

I started doing crosswords regularly maybe 18 months ago. I would do the USA Today puzzle every day, and maybe Newsday (this is a terrible puzzle every day of the week, completely joyless; don't waste your time). I would do the NYT Sunday puzzle at my in-laws' house when I saw there, and got a bunch of NYT Sunday compilation books last Christmas. I finally treated myself to a NYT puzzles subscription two or three months ago.

This is all to say that I'm not a long-time crossword-solver. But I do solve quickly. And I often find myself racing against the clock. It seems silly. Wouldn't it be better to take my time? Hell, I don't even see half the clues or answers on many days because I get them from the crosses. Which, on the one hand, saves me from seeing a lot of really drecky fill (three-letter acronyms, I'm looking at you). But on the other hand, am I really experiencing the puzzle?
posted by uncleozzy at 5:51 AM on January 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

Thank you for sharing this - I'm adding it to my resurrected Feedly account so I can keep checking in. I enjoy the NYT puzzle every evening but it's difficult to find crossword blogs written by hobbyists who have no desire to compare finish times or enter contests.

Spelling Bee is satan's work though and after trying it for a week NEVER AGAIN. It doesn't accept every word!
posted by kimberussell at 7:23 AM on January 5, 2021

Yeah, Spelling Bee can be pretty inconsistent with what it will accept. Often a word will work one day, but not on another. They do recycle the letter groups remarkably often.
The only redeeming feature is that you can contact the editor and complain bitterly.

Sometimes it even works.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 8:53 AM on January 5, 2021

The most annoying thing about Spelling Bee is what it accepts vs. what it rejects. "Chica" is ok, but "yoni" isn't? So, some foreign-language words in common use in English, but not others? Grrr....
posted by the sobsister at 8:59 AM on January 5, 2021

The one that I find the most infuriating is "ALEE" precisely because that word seems to appear in nine out of ten NYT crossword puzzles, but somehow Spelling Bee thinks it doesn't exist?
posted by Daily Alice at 9:59 AM on January 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

The most annoying thing about Spelling Bee is what it accepts vs. what it rejects.

@notaspellingbe1 is there for you.

It's all Sam Ezersky's fault, yet there is method to it. From the somewhat self-aggrandizing NYT feature The Genius of Spelling Bee:

“There is a basic framework to the game, and that dictates how I edit,” Mr. Ezersky said. “I start with the following:

No proper nouns or capitalized terms, unless they have a reason for the lowercase context.

No vulgarity or vulgar slang.

No clear variants or British variants on American English words.

Nothing with hyphens or contractions, or anything that’s more regularly written as more than one word.

Nothing so informal that players might say, ‘That’s not really a word … ’

“We really do want solvers to find as many words in the complete list as possible,” he said. “If there’s a lot of esoterica in the list, what’s the point? Had the computer list for the puzzle (O) A D G N R U remained unedited, a part of the solution would have included words like OGDOAD, ONGAONGA, ORAD, ORGANON and OURANG.”
...
“If there is anything I don’t recognize, I look it up to confirm that it isn’t just my own blind spot,” he continued. “But there are also what I call the ‘Scrabble words’ like PENK, TEIL and NIRL that I just know most players will not be familiar with and won’t try in the game. Anything that feels like a no-go — RAFFIA notwithstanding — is removed from the list.”

posted by zamboni at 3:17 PM on January 5, 2021 [2 favorites]