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EASY PUZZLES |
Conquer the NYT Crosswords (4) |
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The easiest Times puzzles are printed on Monday and Tuesday. We can break down the basic approach to an easy crossword into the following steps.
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Check the clues for long theme entries and see if you can figure out what sort of theme is involved. If the puzzle has a title (the weekday New York Times crosswords run without titles, though titles may be added when the puzzles appear in book collections), that’s another hint about the theme. But don t spend much time musing on the theme—move on to the rest of the clues.
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Look for easy clues to break into the puzzle: fill-in-the-blank clues(e.g., [Krazy ___ of the comics] for KAT), completion clues, such as [Lennons Yoko] for ONO and short answers.
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Look for superlatives (most _ ) and comparatives (more __, bigger); the answers usually end with EST or ER. Look for plurals and verb endings (S, ED, ING). Caveat: Some nonstandard plurals may be used (e.g., MEN, ULNAE). Some verbs will be two- word phrases (e.g., SET AT, HIT ON), and some verb tenses are obscured (e.g., put and let can be either past or present)—though easy puzzles tend to have more straightforward clues.
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Scan the list of clues for ones you know—if sports or film/TV is your area, for example, start with clues in that category.
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Recognize the tags for abbreviations and common foreign words. Easier puzzles generally signal abbreviations in the following ways: an “Abbr.” or “briefly” tag or an abbreviated word in the clue ([Assn.] for ORG, [Basic util] for ELEC, [Worker safety grp.] for OSHA). Foreign language entries may be signaled by explicitly mentioning the country or language (e.g., [German crowd?] is DREI, German for “three”) or by including another word in that language/locale in the clue (e.g., ETE, French for “summer,” may be clued [Summer on the Seine], and TRE, Italian for “three,” may be [Amount past due?]).
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Read the clues for the entries that intersect with answers you’ve filled in. Any uncommon letters (e.g., Z, X, Q, K, J) will have fewer possibilities for crossing answer words, so look at those first; in general, consonants help you more with crossing answers than vowels do. If you get stuck in one area, move on to a fresh section. Also, keep in mind that a clue and the corresponding answer are always in the same part of speech (e.g., same verb tense, both plural nouns, both adjectives), and you can usually substitute one for the other in a sentence without changing the meaning.
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Fill in everything you feel fairly confident about. Go ahead and guess answers you’re not sure of. If an entry doesn’t seem to work with the crossing answers, erase it.
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When you’ve figured out one of the theme entries, reread the other theme clues and see if you can guess them. If not, keep working through the shorter answers.
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If you hit a wall and can’t finish the crossword, put it aside and come back to it later. The passage of time often lets your mind interpret the clues differently, and seemingly impossible answers may become obvious to you.
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You can also check a reference book or crossword dictionary, ask a friend or use the Internet. In addition to using a search engine such as Google (www.google.com), bookmark a dictionary site such as OneLook (www.onelook.com) or Merriam-Webster (www.m-w.com). Wikipedia (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) isn’t perfect, but has a tremendous breadth of topics. The Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) has a wealth of information on movie and TV titles and performers. There are also sites like the New York Times “Today’s Puzzle” forum (http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/crosswordsgames/todayspuzzle/index.html) and crossword blogs (such as crosswordfiend.blogspot.com) where the Times puzzle is discussed daily. You can learn a lot by looking things up, expanding your knowledge base and thus your ability to tackle harder crosswords.