Unpleasant Realities Nyt (2024)

FAQs

What is the hardest day of the New York Times crossword puzzle? ›

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.

2. Question Mark Clues. Clues that end in question marks indicate a play on words in the clue or answer.

The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases that cross each other, by solving clues in the Across and Down columns which lead to the answers. The New York Times Crossword increases in difficulty from Monday to Saturday.

Mondays have the most straightforward clues and Saturday clues are the hardest, or involve the most wordplay. Contrary to popular belief, the Sunday puzzles are midweek difficulty, not the hardest. They're just bigger.

Unlike the Times crosswords, Mr. Shenk, who is 57 and lives in New York, said his puzzles won't get markedly harder as the week progresses, though Monday puzzles will be the easiest. The Friday puzzle, he said, will have “a little contest element.” Winners of the contest may get a crossword mug.

Fill in 3- and 4-letter words you know.

Look through the crossword puzzle for shorter words and check the clue to see if you know the answer. Filling in the shorter answers first can give you some extra letters to help you solve longer words. Some clues could be: “Primate” for APE.

WEDNESDAY PUZZLE — The small dashes in a puzzle's list of clues can signify a number of things. They can refer to the name of a symbol: a dash, a minus sign or a hyphen, for example.

Although not present in all crossword types, circles are typically placed around letter squares in crosswords to refer to squares that will form part of a theme. After solving the crossword, the circled letters can be combined together to spell a word associated with the theme, or name the theme itself.

Literal Clues: In a special type of clue called an &lit the clue's definition and cryptic halves are the same (“and literally so”). You may also see the term all-in-one for these types of clues. This is usually indicated by an exclamation point at the end of the clue. An &lit clue does not have a division.

What does GP mean in crossword puzzles? ›

Grand prix – GP. Group – GP. Gunners/Gunmen – RA (Royal Artillery)

A rebus puzzle has one or more squares in the grid containing a multi-letter word that represent a particular picture. For example a puzzle might contain the word crossroads where cross is all in one square. Optionally the square can also represented by a picture, e.g. of a cross.

How hard could it be? The Saturday crossword is actually the hardest puzzle of the week. Mondays have the most straightforward clues and Saturday clues are the hardest, or involve the most wordplay. Contrary to popular belief, the Sunday puzzles are midweek difficulty, not the hardest.

Puzzle hack: Don't waste time puzzling over clues that you can't solve right away. Pick out the easier clues – what you know and fill-in-the-blanks clues – and solve those first. tl;dr: Check your answer by seeing if you can correctly fill in the other entries that cross it.

Monday is the easiest and Saturday is the hardest, with Sunday puzzles being larger and having the difficulty of about a Thursday puzzle. The biggest jump in difficulty is from Tuesday and Wednesday as the words get longer and longer and the clues get trickier. Hope this helps.