The New York Times Supersized Book of Sunday Crosswords: 500 Puzzles (New York Times Crossword Puzzles)

Very good challenge. The puzzles are terrific. Thank you

This will be a multi-part review since there is a bit to say.The basics: This is not a book of LARGE print puzzles, this is a LARGE book of HARD puzzles. It is hard because (a) the puzzles are old - they range from 1981 to 2006 with 90% from 1988 to 1998 - so "current" events are 20 to 30 years old. If you are under 30, don't even try this book and (b) they are from a time when the NYTimes puzzle was harder than it is today. Some are even 23x23 - an extra-large size.Our story: We are avid Sunday NY Times puzzlers, generally finishing in one hour or so. No cheating allowed, we are strict like that. We generally get it right or perhaps 1 or 2 errors. After trying the first three puzzles in the book, we thought "this is ridiculous, these are impossible" and we decided to get rid of the book. Three steps from the recycle bin one of our children said "you are just going to GIVE UP". And, well, you know - the game was afoot.Eighteen months later, we finished - my wife and me, sometimes with the help from our children help, and with huge contributions from several folks from work (I bought quite a few of these books). Yes, all 500 are done (it was our major Covid activity), with an average score of -3.3 and a median of -2. And somehow, 112 done correctly.Update 1: The Toughest Puzzle/Years/Constructors...First, the disclaimer - obviously we got better at solving puzzles as we went along and we did not do them in chronological order, nor even "book order", so this data isn't great, but it's what we have.Looking at the 102 puzzles where we did poorly (somewhat arbitrarily chosen as more than 5 wrong), we find that the distribution of those "hard" puzzles is not uniform across the 20 years from which the puzzles are drawn. On the other hand, 65% of the "hard" puzzles are in just three years (1989-1991) and if we add 1988, we get to 78% for that four year period. All of those puzzles were Maleska-edited, not Shortz-edited (Shortz took over in 1993).We had some pretty awful scores. Twelve of the puzzles came in at -15 or worse and our absolute nadir was MEOW, MIAOW, MIAOU, MEAOW (#393) and 1990 puzzle where we got 25 wrong. But I think that the hardest puzzle is #316 - SOUND OFF. We worked on this one for a long long time and it was the last one that we finished. Not only is the theme super impossible (find a synonym for a "sound word" and then remove that word from some seemingly random phrase) but the fill was full of obscurity. A lot of lucky guesses got us to a -9.My choice for the hardest constructors, based on what percentage of their puzzles were in our "hard" list would be (in no particular order):Jack R. Harnes - 2 of 3 puzzles, including our worst puzzle MEOW, MIAOW, MIAOU, MEAOW (#393)Edward Marchese - 4 of 7 puzzles, although one of those was a duplicateKenneth Haxton - 2 of 3June A. Boggs - 5 of 9, including the impossible SOUND OFF (#316)Update #2: The Editing Analyzed and Critiqued.....I hate to be harsh here, but this is not a book of 500 puzzles. This is a book of 492 puzzles with 8 repeats. Sorry, but that is inexcusable. For those that are curious the duplicate pairs are: 202/363, 207/449, 211/404, 241/428, 236/426, 216/372, 371/442, 212/420. OK, 'nuff said.Next question - how much "selection" went into this book. Well, over the roughly 20 year span that this book covers, that's roughly 1000 puzzles, so it's roughly a coin flip as to whether a puzzle makes it into the book. That doesn't mean we won't have long spans (e.g. 10 Sundays in a row are all included) or long droughts (10 missing Sundays). But here, just looking at the counts of puzzles per year, we can see that really not much editing was done.* The early years - 1981 to 1987: About 5 puzzles chosen per year. Definitely seems like a selection is going on for these 28 puzzles.* Take 'em all - round 1 - 1988 to 1991. Starting on May 8th 1988, essentially ALL the puzzles were chosen through March 1992.* The big drought - From March 1992 to November 1993 - nothing, nada, zilch, nil (after 500 puzzles I could go on for a while).* Take 'em all - round 2 - Starting on November 21st 1993, we go on another run all the way until October 4th 1998 where essentially ever puzzle is taken. And sometimes, these are also sequential in the book! Puzzles 6 through 99 walk you backward in time from October 4th 1998 back to December 22nd 1996.* The random ending - 14 puzzles chosen from 2000, 2003, and 2006So, all in all, this selection criteria does not pass the "coin flip" test. That is to say, it does not feel like each puzzle was evaluated. Instead, it seems that broad chunks of time were either included or ignored. I have no idea why. I can say that the first "take em all" was a selection of puzzles that were much harder than the second "take em all" group.Finally, there were a set of typos in the title names (Siena became Sienna) and there were some errors in the answer clues (e.g. repeated words or other things that were obviously wrong). I can't be too picky about that because, well, I am just not that picky.Curing Anomia...As I mentioned at the beginning, doing these puzzles started as a challenge from our kids. The challenge was along the lines of "won't you feel good when you are done". And yes, it does feel good - because these puzzles were HARD - as in stare at them for a long time hard. As in come back day after day hard. As in make a guess, make another guess, see a word, confirm a guess, fill in three squares, grind it out hard. You can get a long theme expecting it to break the puzzle open and get absolutely nothing because the fill is crazily obscure.But it is precisely that type of intellectual strain that changes ones brain. At 60 years of age (wow, it hurts to type that), I had suffered anomia (the last word you should hang onto - it means the inability to bring a word to mind) for at least 10 years and it was slowly getting worse. Like it does for all people, particularly after 50. Not only did solving these puzzles stop that anomia dead in its tracks, but it reversed it at least 15 years. I no longer fumble for the right word and my brain has reconnected my synapses to all those words SAT words I studied in 1976 (sadly, I only got through the As - but give me an acerbic arroyo anyday).Now, did doing all these puzzles restore any other brain function? Not that I can tell and not that I would expect. Doing these puzzles rebuilt/strengthened the parts of the brain it utilized. It did not restore my ability to multiply two digit numbers quickly in my head or anything like that.But it feels really good to have words back at my command.The Pencil....Finally, the Pencil....Doing this book in pen would be, IMHO, very very sloppy. Doing today's Sunday NYTimes in pen is fine. We did this in pencil. But in particular, just one pencil. That was only used for this book and nothing else ever. And, as you can see by the picture, it barely made it. It would no longer fit in a pencil sharpener - and of course I had to buy a pencil extender just to hold it. The next sharpening was going to have to be whittling, but we barely avoided it. Of course we went through many many erasers. But ONE PENCIL can handle this book. (As shown in the photo)

My wife is on the third book of these. Great for her keeplng busy.

There are so many crosswords in this book which makes it a great buy. The only downfall is that the print is TINY!!! It is difficult to do the puzzles if you have a hard time reading small print. They are also difficult puzzles so are perfect for those that do a lot of Crosswords and can handle the difficulty.

This is the one! Enough puzzles, good puzzles, to last a long time. Many are by the master Eugene Maleska so the clues are intriguing. I tear out a few pages of puzzles and the accompanying answers and use in a clipboard. The book itself would be too unwieldy. They do not seem especially difficult but beginners might have problems. I recommend jumping right in anyway. You'd be off to a good start.

I don’t have to worry about running out of puzzles now. Answer key in the back.

The book is exactly what it says it is. I'm sure I just didn't notice the publication date when I ordered it. So the puzzles are really hard because they were written for people who were my age... 20 years ago. It's challenging to remember current events that long ago, and lots of clues refer to culture from before my time.With that said, there are lots of puzzles, so if one's too hard for those reasons, you can just move to the next one. I'm enjoying plenty of them, even though they're really tough.

-- The puzzles are punny. It helps to know that.-- Around #50, the puzzles shrink to a size that is unreadable unless you use cheaters.-- Some of the clues are just unfathomable, which is a little frustrating at times. But it's fun to look up the meanings of these obscure words.-- I bought a clipboard and tear out about 12 sheets at a time to fill these out. Otherwise, it is a constant struggle to manhandle the book.-- I am up to #409 and have only pitched about 10 puzzles. The theme, the clues, the purpose of those puzzles were just foreign to me. I do crosswords to relax before bed, and those 10 were making me consider murder in my heart.-- They are definitely a different flavor from the Dell Expert-Challenger Crosswords. It's like reading Shakespeare; once you finally get the cadence, it all starts making sense.I am an investigator at heart. I love the difficult puzzles as I, before google, would get out dictionaries, and even encyclopedias, to discover the answers. The investigating was relaxing for me. Now I just use google. On the "quote" puzzles, which are my least favorite, I just cheat! I get a couple of words, look it up, fill it in, then have fun with the rest of the puzzle. No apologies!If you like challenging puzzles, you will like 90% of these puzzles. 10% will be a little too difficult or just so irritating you throw them away. If you are wanting to do puzzles with just the knowledge in your head, I'd pass this book by. These authors love obscure!

All good

My Ma loves the Times Sunday crosswords which are published in the Sun paper here each weekend and she's done them for ages. I wanted to find something from several years back that she either hasn't completed before or had clues that are obscure enough it wouldn't matter if she had. This hit the nail on the head in both regards. She said most if not all she's never seen before but clarified there were themes that seem familiar but no clues or pathways have been recognized. These are extremely difficult however and I specifically hunted this down for that purpose. Only complaint is the text is smaller than anticipated and I hoped the BIG would apply to the clues too but the text is small

..für unseren Opa. :-) Er liebt Kreuzworträtsel (und kann auch sehr gut Englisch). Mit dieser Sammlung ist er eine Weile beschäftigt. Gerade in div. Lockdowns ist das sehr hilfreich!

I bought this huge compilation 18 months ago and lost it when my checked baggage was stolen. Forget my clothes! First thing I did upon returning home was order another one! I warn you that it's heavy and bulky, but when I can't get the NYT, I need a plan B.

This is perfect for crossword lovers. Puzzles are quite difficult so probably not great for beginners.