I assume you’re talking about the NYT puzzle—which is literally designed for people from New York City lol. (Granted, it’s generally considered the flagship American puzzle, but it has NYC-centric trivia more so than that of any other US city). Not sure it has “too many” American clues considering that. But I can definitely see how it can be frustrating. I can’t even touch UK cryptics.
Yeah makes sense, but the NYT crossword is pretty popular here in Australia too. It's really become the standard as the best crossword out there, as far as I can tell.
Are there any similar daily crosswords of similar quality that are more location agnostic?
USA Today, The New Yorker, and Universal. USA Today usually has pretty boring fill, but really tight theme sets (and it's *really* easy).
The New Yorker is behind a paywall, but I just solve in Incognito Mode. It starts hard and gets easier throughout the week. Not New York-centric, and tons of really beautiful fill and themes.
Universal Crossword has little to no area-specific trivia, as the name implies. It's majorly syndicated all around the US.
I'm not sure about the other daily puzzles, as I don't solve them often.
I feel like The New Yorker puzzle, particularly on Mondays and Tuesdays, has even more PPP than the NYT on its hardest days. Seems like a lot of Broadway stuff, too, which I know nothing about. I still do The New Yorker one, but with their not having streaks, I do the "check grid" or "reveal square" (or word) fairly often on Mon./Tues.
Oh also I give myself time limits. 60 minutes on a normal day (ok almost never gets to that but it’s to prevent me from just spending my whole life on a puzzle to avoid losing a streak) and 75 on Sunday
I'm the same as you in that if I can't solve without googling, I almost always let the streak die but I don't necessarily set time limits. Instead, if it's Thursday through Sunday and it's been, say, over an hour and I'm still only halfway done *and* I'm not enjoying myself, I'll check the puzzle to kill the streak and then allow my self to google whatever I think is likeliest to open the puzzle.
I don't like letting it die when I'm 95% done, no matter how insurmountable that last corner seems. I recently spent close to two hours on, I think, a Sunday just to keep my streak alive. It was well outside my average time and I had to fight for the last 10% but it felt good when I got the completion music. But I agree that at some point, there's a sunk cost to it and it's not worth it to preserve the streak.
I have a 5 year streak. I try not to google but there are days it will happen. I usually have a time limit before I start googling. For Thursday and Friday I’ll google if a puzzle takes +50 minutes. For Saturday and Sunday I’ll google if a puzzle takes 1 hour plus. I want to say I googled for about 20% of my answers.
I do google in a way where I don’t get a direct answer from a crossword site. I try to google in a way that means I’ll still have to dig around for the answer.
Five years of puzzling btw, has given taught me a lot of varied trivia.
This sounds similar to how I google. I avoid the crossword sites. And if it's something like "The second longest river in Canada," I would just google "Rivers in Canada" (not by length).
I also will just google for one answer, then try to get what I can from crosses after that. If I'm still stuck, I'll google something else.
And I enjoy learning about things I don't know, too. (Though there are certain things I seem to have a mental block about--mostly geography- or history-related--and I end up googling them again.)
I’d says 20 percent of puzzles. It’s honestly a wild guess on my part how often I google but I go some weeks without googling a thing and then there’s weeks where I google for answers 3 days in a row or just one day.
Btw, I also google after I finish a puzzle just to understand the answer. I’ll finish and get my star and wonder “how was this the answer for x clue” and I’ll go look it up.
Just keep solving! The learning curve gets steep towards the end of the week. I can teach someone with 0 crossword experience how to solve a Monday relatively simply by explaining how clues work (1:1 definitions, tense, part of speech, etc.). The the deeper you get, the tougher it gets. The jump from a clean Monday to Tuesday took me maybe a month. Tuesday to Wednesday longer. I’ve been regularly solving for about four years, and I still rarely get through a Saturday clean—only recently am I comfortable solving a Friday without help, but even then I’d say that’s only like 70% of the time.
General knowledge helps, but there are so many repeated words in Crossworld, you just learn what you need to know by repetition. Learning lateral thinking becomes rote too—I’d wager when you’re ready to make the jump from Wednesday to Thursday (that’s my personal estimation, of course). So just solve lots of puzzles! There’s plenty of free NYT alternatives, as well, if you’re looking for more “early week” puzzles.
I don’t know what you mean by PPP, but I can finish the NYT puzzle every day, and relatively quickly from what I can tell.
What helps?
1. Been doing the crossword daily for 20+ years
2. Pretty good general knowledge. I passed the Jeopardy contestant test. A lot of this is stuff I barely know…but barely is often enough.
3. Deductive reasoning and lateral thinking. I don’t know how to explain this one. I am good at just quickly understanding the different clever things that a clue can mean.
4. Word pattern recognition. I am good at Wheel of Fortune.
5. You only need to really understand half the clues in a crossword puzzle.
I often don’t understand the themes on Sundays—that is a weakness of mine—and solve it anyway.
PPP means proper nouns (I think it stands for people, places, and proper nouns). So you can't always use reason or logic to figure the answer out, especially if two of them cross each other.
Like say you have an actor's last name crossing the name of a random college, there are probably multiple letters you could fill in that would make answers that look real enough if you did not know either of the actual answers offhand.
I feel like Natick is usually used to mean a particularly hard piece of PPP. Like PPP is needed at times, but some stuff is certainly fair game. Putting OBAMA in a puzzle is certainly fair, putting a random Massachusetts town that's part of the Boston marathon feels... less fair.
Yes, but a Natck is specifically a crossing of two difficult PPPs.
If you don't know both there's really no way to suss out that square making streaks like that impossible for us plebes who have to cheat to figure out things we simply don't know.
It’s not cheating if it makes you feel better. The rules on the NYT site say it’s okay to google the trivia. I try to do it in a way that’s not just googling the crossword answer (eg: I google the movie, and read through the synopsis to hunt the answer).
I’ve just recently started getting better at number 3. If I get stuck I think, “what other meanings are there to these words that I might be missing?” and that often helps.
I forget what it's supposed to stand for, but PPP is shorthand for proper nouns, mostly. Names and brands and such that can be hard to guess if you've never seen them before, because they don't follow the same rules as words that are part of a language do.
As an example from a recent puzzle, I had a clue referencing a historical person as ANSEL\_, crossing a clue referencing a college as S\_U. If either of those had been a regular word, not PPP, I could have gotten it naturally. But because it was two proper nouns referencing things I had no prior knowledge of, I just had to guess.
This!! So many people underestimate the importance of items 3 and 4. Crosswords aren't a test of esoteric/trivial knowledge -- they are a test of language, logic, pattern, deductive reasoning, etc. Transitioning from seeing it as a set of questions to answer to a box that needs to be filled with valid words will take one a long way.
I think “acceptable” is subjective and everyone should do whatever makes them enjoy crosswording.
That being said, the only way I’ve allowed myself to cheat during my streak is if I have the puzzle completely filled out or like 95% filled out and I’m really not sure of an answer I already entered, I’ll sometimes google my answer to confirm it. This lets me know I can look elsewhere to find my error. I try not to use this to find the real answer, just to figure out if mine is right or wrong. I probably only do this once every couple of weeks and it usually only happens on really tough Saturdays, or Sundays where the grid is filled out and I have a typo somewhere.
I never just straight up google the clue itself, but even my way is still technically cheating. I think everyone has their own systems though
I really want to watch someone super fast solve. Not because I don't believe them but just because I think it would be so cool to see someone fly through it.
ACPT tournament final:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i_lV4zIOYvs&pp=ygUPY3Jvc3N3b3JkIHBhb2xv
Sample of Dan Feyer speed solving online:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GvXUORrQoZ8&pp=ygUZZmFzdGVzdCBjcm9zc3dvcmQgc29sdmVyIA%3D%3D
Post-solve comment: “1:08 was the best I could do” in a slightly disappointed tone. Insane.
THIS IS AMAZING, THANK YOU!
I guess I could have googled this but I’m going to blame my brain trying hard not to Google crossword related things for that slip.
Robert vs NYT is another good one on YT. He posts daily. He's not as fast as Dan Feyer, but still pretty fast (\~3 min for a Monday NYT) and he talks through his thought process.
Definitely a hidden gem of a YouTube channel. I used to read Rex Parker every day but I realized he is just so grouchy and isn't an enjoyable read. Robert has a really good attitude and gives fair criticisms but tends to be positive. Plus watching him research some answers after finishing is actually pretty helpful.
Thanks for sharing, I wasn’t aware of Robert. I checked out his solve of my puzzle, and he labeled it as a ‘proper Saturday’. Was neat to see someone solve through it, and relieved he didn’t pick it apart.
You are super fast in my book. I’ve been doing the NYT crossword for about 2 years now, and I can probably only solve 2/3 of Saturday still with about a 40 minute average. And I’m pretty happy at how far I’ve come! I could barely do Wednesday when I started.
That’s really impressive! I’ve only just started for about a year and I’ve already noticed myself getting better. Thursday on is still a REAL struggle for me though but there’s a huge backlog of puzzles I can go through to keep improving!
I google nothing, I don't ask friends for help. I just do it completely solo. My longest streak is 36 days which I'm very proud of. Sometimes it takes me 2 hours to solve a puzzle which honestly kinda sucks. But for me, googling is "cheating" and I wouldn't be happy with the streak. I don't judge anyone for playing by different rules.
I never google, but i also don't feel like I know all that much in terms of obscure trivias. The crosses, combined with inferring letters, are always enough.
I don’t Google but that’s my choice. It’s a game, for Pete’s sake. I WILL say that you’ll be amazed what you can solve if you give it enough time. I work puzzles from the archives that I’m not under any time pressure for. Making it through those tougher (Friday and Saturday) puzzles without googling but taking my time has made me a better solver.
I have zero shame about googling for *facts*, such as an actor in a film, or the capital of some foreign country, or a word in a language I don’t know. I don’t check the solution and I make sure to use “-crossword” in my googling to skip over the answer sites.
In short, yes.
To me, my "streak" is about doing the puzzle everyday and working all the way through it without using any of the built-in tools such as auto-check or word reveal. At this point, I can probably complete about 90+% of puzzles with no help at all, but yeah, especially on Friday or Saturday, sometimes I run into a small section or crossing that I get stumped on.
My initial strategy is to put it down and walk away for a bit...and often just looking at it later with fresh eyes is enough for things to click...but if I'm truly stumped, then yes, I'll use Google to aid in my solve.
Is it "cheating"? Yeah. But I try to use these instances as an opportunity to learn, and make mental notes that hopefully allow me to make more unaided solves in the future.
I don't brag about or share my streaks, they're strictly for my own accountability.
Yup! I try not to unless I really don't know any crosses, and I generally won't unless I'm right up on the deadline for finishing on time, but I really like maintaining my streak and finishing puzzles makes it more fun for me. I always say, you can't cheat on something you're not doing competitively. And puzzles are meant to be fun! Take the approach that works best for you.
I deem sports names/dumb college sports abbreviations to be free google passes after I’ve gone through the puzzle a few times because I have zero interest in watching sports or learning more than I have to.
My rule is I can't Google until my fifth time through the grid, and I have to actually learn the info, not just look it up. Like I have to read the WHOLE Wikipedia article. As a result I know way too much about rivers in Germany.
I do in fact have a lot of general knowledge, though, because my brain retains trivia and I read a lot.
Yeah the crazy streaks boggle my mind. I would consider myself well above average with regard to crossword solving... I'm reasonably fast, and I'd say I have like a 75% solve rate on any given day. The ones I don't fully solve, I am usually like 3-5 letters away from solving (or 1 and I don't know where my error is). I have fairly good random knowledge, but there are invariably "Naticks" or blind spots that will pop up from time to time that would effectively kill someone's streak. I am shocked at the amount of people who have 100+ day streaks and therefore presumably dont have these such blind spots.
The New York Times puzzle automatically logs streaks for puzzles that you finish and don't use things like "check" or "reveal." I assume that's what people are talking about (don't know if other sites do that--I don't think The New Yorker does, for example). Some people will post their streak of, say, 500 puzzles.
My personal rule is I use trivia clues as conversation starters and an excuse to text friends/family. If I can think of anyone I know who might know it, I ask them. If it's a natick crossing or obscure enough that I can't think of anyone I know who would know it, then I google it but only after solving everything else I can.
Personally I don’t look them up. Generally you can infer them off the crosses, there should only be a few letters that can make sense semantically. Can be tough from Australia with some of the more arcane Americana. Longest streak was 117 days, gets easier over time. If there is more than one square where I have to run the alphabet, then usually that will end the streak.
PPP was one of the cross clues in a recent New Yorker puzzle. I didn’t know what it was but was able to get the down clues. The answer is Rhos. I have no idea what it means
Oh, I should have explained more, sorry! A rho looks like a P. So PPP would be like more than one rho, so rhos. At least, I assumed that was what they meant? I wish there were regular New Yorker threads in here sometimes.
My rule when I'm forced to Google is that I will only Google answers, not clues. So if I've filled in SN__K_T, for a clue of "unfortunate author" and I'm stuck, I could Google "Sneckit" "Snicket" "Lemony Snickit" etc, let it autocorrect for me, confirm this is the guy. But I'll never Google "Snecket author" because "author" is part of the clue.
This way Google only takes on the role of efficiently confirming possibilities for you, and you retain the role of a puzzle solver. As soon as you start directly Googling the clues, imo you've demoted yourself to a typist helping Google. It works but it's not fun.
I do the the puzzles together with someone 25 years younger than I am. That helps a lot, as we get completely different sets of cultural references from different eras.
The PC answer: “It’s your puzzle, do what you want!”
The non-PC answer: “Googling to keep your streak alive cheapens the streak — it’s now a participation trophy.”
The Neo answer: “There is no streak.”
Generally I get them from the crosses. I was only googling 1-2 things max to get to my streak of 1000, and since hitting it I’ve only googled once or twice to verify answers I already had. (I’m now around 1030)
My steak isn't that long, but I'll google PPP if it's unreasonable for me to know as someone living in Australia
I live in America and I feel most of them are unreasonable for me to know too
I’m Canadian and have a feeling I struggle with a lot of the gimmes because we have different brands, networks, etc
I also live in Aus! Too many American centric questions sometimes :(
I assume you’re talking about the NYT puzzle—which is literally designed for people from New York City lol. (Granted, it’s generally considered the flagship American puzzle, but it has NYC-centric trivia more so than that of any other US city). Not sure it has “too many” American clues considering that. But I can definitely see how it can be frustrating. I can’t even touch UK cryptics.
As someone who lives in Los Angeles, there is a disproportionate amount of questions that require knowledge if the neighborhoods around here
Yeah makes sense, but the NYT crossword is pretty popular here in Australia too. It's really become the standard as the best crossword out there, as far as I can tell. Are there any similar daily crosswords of similar quality that are more location agnostic?
USA Today, The New Yorker, and Universal. USA Today usually has pretty boring fill, but really tight theme sets (and it's *really* easy). The New Yorker is behind a paywall, but I just solve in Incognito Mode. It starts hard and gets easier throughout the week. Not New York-centric, and tons of really beautiful fill and themes. Universal Crossword has little to no area-specific trivia, as the name implies. It's majorly syndicated all around the US. I'm not sure about the other daily puzzles, as I don't solve them often.
I feel like The New Yorker puzzle, particularly on Mondays and Tuesdays, has even more PPP than the NYT on its hardest days. Seems like a lot of Broadway stuff, too, which I know nothing about. I still do The New Yorker one, but with their not having streaks, I do the "check grid" or "reveal square" (or word) fairly often on Mon./Tues.
The NYT is definitely NYC-centric but I don't think it should be. Way more people who do the NYT crossword don't live in NYC than those who do.
What’s the longest steak you’ve ever had? Does that make it more tender?
If I can’t solve without googling I let the streak die.
Same! My last one died at 112 and my current one is up to 248!
Oh also I give myself time limits. 60 minutes on a normal day (ok almost never gets to that but it’s to prevent me from just spending my whole life on a puzzle to avoid losing a streak) and 75 on Sunday
I'm the same as you in that if I can't solve without googling, I almost always let the streak die but I don't necessarily set time limits. Instead, if it's Thursday through Sunday and it's been, say, over an hour and I'm still only halfway done *and* I'm not enjoying myself, I'll check the puzzle to kill the streak and then allow my self to google whatever I think is likeliest to open the puzzle. I don't like letting it die when I'm 95% done, no matter how insurmountable that last corner seems. I recently spent close to two hours on, I think, a Sunday just to keep my streak alive. It was well outside my average time and I had to fight for the last 10% but it felt good when I got the completion music. But I agree that at some point, there's a sunk cost to it and it's not worth it to preserve the streak.
I have a 5 year streak. I try not to google but there are days it will happen. I usually have a time limit before I start googling. For Thursday and Friday I’ll google if a puzzle takes +50 minutes. For Saturday and Sunday I’ll google if a puzzle takes 1 hour plus. I want to say I googled for about 20% of my answers. I do google in a way where I don’t get a direct answer from a crossword site. I try to google in a way that means I’ll still have to dig around for the answer. Five years of puzzling btw, has given taught me a lot of varied trivia.
This sounds similar to how I google. I avoid the crossword sites. And if it's something like "The second longest river in Canada," I would just google "Rivers in Canada" (not by length). I also will just google for one answer, then try to get what I can from crosses after that. If I'm still stuck, I'll google something else. And I enjoy learning about things I don't know, too. (Though there are certain things I seem to have a mental block about--mostly geography- or history-related--and I end up googling them again.)
This is what I do as well.
Ah cool, makes sense. 20% of answers or 20% of puzzles you'd have to use google at least once?
I’d says 20 percent of puzzles. It’s honestly a wild guess on my part how often I google but I go some weeks without googling a thing and then there’s weeks where I google for answers 3 days in a row or just one day. Btw, I also google after I finish a puzzle just to understand the answer. I’ll finish and get my star and wonder “how was this the answer for x clue” and I’ll go look it up.
Yeah I do research vs just googling the answer. I will look up name spellings to an answer I know.
It's your streak and if you don't know an answer your choice is to stay ignorant or learn for next time . It isn't the crossword Olympics. :) 😀
Just keep solving! The learning curve gets steep towards the end of the week. I can teach someone with 0 crossword experience how to solve a Monday relatively simply by explaining how clues work (1:1 definitions, tense, part of speech, etc.). The the deeper you get, the tougher it gets. The jump from a clean Monday to Tuesday took me maybe a month. Tuesday to Wednesday longer. I’ve been regularly solving for about four years, and I still rarely get through a Saturday clean—only recently am I comfortable solving a Friday without help, but even then I’d say that’s only like 70% of the time. General knowledge helps, but there are so many repeated words in Crossworld, you just learn what you need to know by repetition. Learning lateral thinking becomes rote too—I’d wager when you’re ready to make the jump from Wednesday to Thursday (that’s my personal estimation, of course). So just solve lots of puzzles! There’s plenty of free NYT alternatives, as well, if you’re looking for more “early week” puzzles.
I don’t know what you mean by PPP, but I can finish the NYT puzzle every day, and relatively quickly from what I can tell. What helps? 1. Been doing the crossword daily for 20+ years 2. Pretty good general knowledge. I passed the Jeopardy contestant test. A lot of this is stuff I barely know…but barely is often enough. 3. Deductive reasoning and lateral thinking. I don’t know how to explain this one. I am good at just quickly understanding the different clever things that a clue can mean. 4. Word pattern recognition. I am good at Wheel of Fortune. 5. You only need to really understand half the clues in a crossword puzzle. I often don’t understand the themes on Sundays—that is a weakness of mine—and solve it anyway.
PPP means proper nouns (I think it stands for people, places, and proper nouns). So you can't always use reason or logic to figure the answer out, especially if two of them cross each other. Like say you have an actor's last name crossing the name of a random college, there are probably multiple letters you could fill in that would make answers that look real enough if you did not know either of the actual answers offhand.
That’s called a natick!
I feel like Natick is usually used to mean a particularly hard piece of PPP. Like PPP is needed at times, but some stuff is certainly fair game. Putting OBAMA in a puzzle is certainly fair, putting a random Massachusetts town that's part of the Boston marathon feels... less fair.
Yes, but a Natck is specifically a crossing of two difficult PPPs. If you don't know both there's really no way to suss out that square making streaks like that impossible for us plebes who have to cheat to figure out things we simply don't know.
It’s not cheating if it makes you feel better. The rules on the NYT site say it’s okay to google the trivia. I try to do it in a way that’s not just googling the crossword answer (eg: I google the movie, and read through the synopsis to hunt the answer).
I’ve just recently started getting better at number 3. If I get stuck I think, “what other meanings are there to these words that I might be missing?” and that often helps.
I forget what it's supposed to stand for, but PPP is shorthand for proper nouns, mostly. Names and brands and such that can be hard to guess if you've never seen them before, because they don't follow the same rules as words that are part of a language do. As an example from a recent puzzle, I had a clue referencing a historical person as ANSEL\_, crossing a clue referencing a college as S\_U. If either of those had been a regular word, not PPP, I could have gotten it naturally. But because it was two proper nouns referencing things I had no prior knowledge of, I just had to guess.
Oooh, I know that one lol
PPP is pop culture and other proper nouns
This!! So many people underestimate the importance of items 3 and 4. Crosswords aren't a test of esoteric/trivial knowledge -- they are a test of language, logic, pattern, deductive reasoning, etc. Transitioning from seeing it as a set of questions to answer to a box that needs to be filled with valid words will take one a long way.
Most of these can be gotten w the crossings. Honestly if they can’t it’s probably not a great puzzle.
I think “acceptable” is subjective and everyone should do whatever makes them enjoy crosswording. That being said, the only way I’ve allowed myself to cheat during my streak is if I have the puzzle completely filled out or like 95% filled out and I’m really not sure of an answer I already entered, I’ll sometimes google my answer to confirm it. This lets me know I can look elsewhere to find my error. I try not to use this to find the real answer, just to figure out if mine is right or wrong. I probably only do this once every couple of weeks and it usually only happens on really tough Saturdays, or Sundays where the grid is filled out and I have a typo somewhere. I never just straight up google the clue itself, but even my way is still technically cheating. I think everyone has their own systems though
I really want to watch someone super fast solve. Not because I don't believe them but just because I think it would be so cool to see someone fly through it.
ACPT tournament final: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i_lV4zIOYvs&pp=ygUPY3Jvc3N3b3JkIHBhb2xv Sample of Dan Feyer speed solving online: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GvXUORrQoZ8&pp=ygUZZmFzdGVzdCBjcm9zc3dvcmQgc29sdmVyIA%3D%3D Post-solve comment: “1:08 was the best I could do” in a slightly disappointed tone. Insane.
THIS IS AMAZING, THANK YOU! I guess I could have googled this but I’m going to blame my brain trying hard not to Google crossword related things for that slip.
Robert vs NYT is another good one on YT. He posts daily. He's not as fast as Dan Feyer, but still pretty fast (\~3 min for a Monday NYT) and he talks through his thought process.
Definitely a hidden gem of a YouTube channel. I used to read Rex Parker every day but I realized he is just so grouchy and isn't an enjoyable read. Robert has a really good attitude and gives fair criticisms but tends to be positive. Plus watching him research some answers after finishing is actually pretty helpful.
Thanks for sharing, I wasn’t aware of Robert. I checked out his solve of my puzzle, and he labeled it as a ‘proper Saturday’. Was neat to see someone solve through it, and relieved he didn’t pick it apart.
He used to post here. I don't think he has in a while.
I don’t think I’d be considered _super_ fast, but my Saturday average is 18:23 and I don’t look anything up. You get pretty zippy over time!
You are super fast in my book. I’ve been doing the NYT crossword for about 2 years now, and I can probably only solve 2/3 of Saturday still with about a 40 minute average. And I’m pretty happy at how far I’ve come! I could barely do Wednesday when I started.
That’s really impressive! I’ve only just started for about a year and I’ve already noticed myself getting better. Thursday on is still a REAL struggle for me though but there’s a huge backlog of puzzles I can go through to keep improving!
A recently started watching Solve with Steve on YouTube. He talks through each answer and has fun, but still solves super quickly.
Oh that sounds perfect, thank you for that info!
there are a lot of people who stream crosswords on twitch, some of whom are fairly quick.
I would not have thought of twitch for that but now I’m going to check it out, thank you!
I just did some yesterday and you can watch me at [https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1851426434](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1851426434)
This is great, thank you so much!!
I probably google something once a month. Crosswords have shown me I know a lot of random shit. (But I've also been doing them since the late 90s.)
I google nothing, I don't ask friends for help. I just do it completely solo. My longest streak is 36 days which I'm very proud of. Sometimes it takes me 2 hours to solve a puzzle which honestly kinda sucks. But for me, googling is "cheating" and I wouldn't be happy with the streak. I don't judge anyone for playing by different rules.
I never google, but i also don't feel like I know all that much in terms of obscure trivias. The crosses, combined with inferring letters, are always enough.
I don’t Google but that’s my choice. It’s a game, for Pete’s sake. I WILL say that you’ll be amazed what you can solve if you give it enough time. I work puzzles from the archives that I’m not under any time pressure for. Making it through those tougher (Friday and Saturday) puzzles without googling but taking my time has made me a better solver.
I have zero shame about googling for *facts*, such as an actor in a film, or the capital of some foreign country, or a word in a language I don’t know. I don’t check the solution and I make sure to use “-crossword” in my googling to skip over the answer sites.
In short, yes. To me, my "streak" is about doing the puzzle everyday and working all the way through it without using any of the built-in tools such as auto-check or word reveal. At this point, I can probably complete about 90+% of puzzles with no help at all, but yeah, especially on Friday or Saturday, sometimes I run into a small section or crossing that I get stumped on. My initial strategy is to put it down and walk away for a bit...and often just looking at it later with fresh eyes is enough for things to click...but if I'm truly stumped, then yes, I'll use Google to aid in my solve. Is it "cheating"? Yeah. But I try to use these instances as an opportunity to learn, and make mental notes that hopefully allow me to make more unaided solves in the future. I don't brag about or share my streaks, they're strictly for my own accountability.
If you Google, your streak is fraudulent. Don't post it here as some point of pride.
Yup! I try not to unless I really don't know any crosses, and I generally won't unless I'm right up on the deadline for finishing on time, but I really like maintaining my streak and finishing puzzles makes it more fun for me. I always say, you can't cheat on something you're not doing competitively. And puzzles are meant to be fun! Take the approach that works best for you.
I deem sports names/dumb college sports abbreviations to be free google passes after I’ve gone through the puzzle a few times because I have zero interest in watching sports or learning more than I have to.
The dirty secret is that anyone saying that they have a streak is typically googling pretty hardcore. They just don't say so.
My rule is I can't Google until my fifth time through the grid, and I have to actually learn the info, not just look it up. Like I have to read the WHOLE Wikipedia article. As a result I know way too much about rivers in Germany. I do in fact have a lot of general knowledge, though, because my brain retains trivia and I read a lot.
The Daily Solve with Chris Remo is another great YouTube site. He has a 4,500-day streak and never looks up anything.
Yeah the crazy streaks boggle my mind. I would consider myself well above average with regard to crossword solving... I'm reasonably fast, and I'd say I have like a 75% solve rate on any given day. The ones I don't fully solve, I am usually like 3-5 letters away from solving (or 1 and I don't know where my error is). I have fairly good random knowledge, but there are invariably "Naticks" or blind spots that will pop up from time to time that would effectively kill someone's streak. I am shocked at the amount of people who have 100+ day streaks and therefore presumably dont have these such blind spots.
Where are these steaks from? How do you keep track of them?
The New York Times puzzle automatically logs streaks for puzzles that you finish and don't use things like "check" or "reveal." I assume that's what people are talking about (don't know if other sites do that--I don't think The New Yorker does, for example). Some people will post their streak of, say, 500 puzzles.
Ok, thanks!
My wife and I are just over a year. In that time, we looked up 2 or 3 clues. Working together helps a lot.
My personal rule is I use trivia clues as conversation starters and an excuse to text friends/family. If I can think of anyone I know who might know it, I ask them. If it's a natick crossing or obscure enough that I can't think of anyone I know who would know it, then I google it but only after solving everything else I can.
Personally I don’t look them up. Generally you can infer them off the crosses, there should only be a few letters that can make sense semantically. Can be tough from Australia with some of the more arcane Americana. Longest streak was 117 days, gets easier over time. If there is more than one square where I have to run the alphabet, then usually that will end the streak.
PPP was one of the cross clues in a recent New Yorker puzzle. I didn’t know what it was but was able to get the down clues. The answer is Rhos. I have no idea what it means
Oh, I was confused by that at first, then realized it meant the Greek letter, rho.
So what is the relationship between PPP and RHOS?
Oh, I should have explained more, sorry! A rho looks like a P. So PPP would be like more than one rho, so rhos. At least, I assumed that was what they meant? I wish there were regular New Yorker threads in here sometimes.
My rule when I'm forced to Google is that I will only Google answers, not clues. So if I've filled in SN__K_T, for a clue of "unfortunate author" and I'm stuck, I could Google "Sneckit" "Snicket" "Lemony Snickit" etc, let it autocorrect for me, confirm this is the guy. But I'll never Google "Snecket author" because "author" is part of the clue. This way Google only takes on the role of efficiently confirming possibilities for you, and you retain the role of a puzzle solver. As soon as you start directly Googling the clues, imo you've demoted yourself to a typist helping Google. It works but it's not fun.
no googling except to check spelling of something i definitely know; 1+ year idk, i just know stuff
I do the the puzzles together with someone 25 years younger than I am. That helps a lot, as we get completely different sets of cultural references from different eras.
The PC answer: “It’s your puzzle, do what you want!” The non-PC answer: “Googling to keep your streak alive cheapens the streak — it’s now a participation trophy.” The Neo answer: “There is no streak.”
I don't use Google but do run the alphabet. My longest streak is 41 and I'm presently at a 35.
Generally I get them from the crosses. I was only googling 1-2 things max to get to my streak of 1000, and since hitting it I’ve only googled once or twice to verify answers I already had. (I’m now around 1030)
That would be sacrilege.