Comment by kitd
6 hours ago
I do Wordle, Pips, Strands, Connections & Sudoku. Of all of them, I find Connections definitely the hardest, even without the occasional US cultural references that I miss.
6 hours ago
I do Wordle, Pips, Strands, Connections & Sudoku. Of all of them, I find Connections definitely the hardest, even without the occasional US cultural references that I miss.
Just Connections, Wordle, and Mini for me (in that order), with the occasional Crossword (tend towards a barbell strategy of just doing maybe Mon, Tue, Sun to get the quick hits and a real challenging puzzle).
Also experience the odd difficulty due to Americanisms, but can't really fault a puzzle coming from something called the New York Times for that. I do however think the puzzle setting for Connections is inferior to The Wall from Only Connect, where they got the idea from. If you haven't seen that yet it's definitely worth a watch (it gets harder as as a season progresses).
I still think the ultimate puzzle is the Sunday crossword (followed closely by Thur-Sat), though Connections is great. And definitely difficult (but never feels unfair).
I cancelled my subscription a few years back due to the way NYT was covering the current administration. At the time, I believed they'd never offer a "puzzles only" subscription because then they'd lose a large part of their subs. But, I was wrong. And now they offer a puzzle-only subscription.
There's a great documentary about the Crossword with Will Shortz that came out about a decade ago that's interesting.
Spelling bee is also pretty consistent.
I would say the Saturday puzzle is definitely harder. Sunday’s is just bigger.
100%. Every now and then they'll throw out a particularly tough Sunday, but I've yet to do a Saturday that wasn't difficult.
And if you didn't know this, Thursdays and Saturdays can have rebuses.
In 2023, 55% of visits to NYT's website were to games, not news. The puzzle-only subscription points to the NYT's fate as a game company that also offers news, much as airlines are credit card/loyalty point companies that also offer flights.
So my hunches were correct (majority of people were subbing to play the games), but not my conclusion: that they wouldn't split it off.
I've always thought that Will Shortz was one of the most powerful people at the NYT (slightly joking, but sorta not).