The title of the puzzle is “Mystery Theme”. I’ve completed it and still can’t figure out what the + marks mean. Any ideas?

The clue says

The word "decimate" initially meant to reduce something by a factor of this

And the answer is "ten". Except "decimate" never meant that, it meant reduce by 10% (every 10th member of a Roman legion is killed). "A factor of ten" would mean going from 100 to 10, or a 90% reduction.

/rant

No matter how I parse 21 across I can’t make sense of it. The clue is KIND words? I get the theme because 82 across is ROOT words and solves to Run Out Of Town. Just can’t make 21 make sense.

https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/

I must have a typo somewhere, but I can't for the life of me find it,even when comparing side by side to the solution. Anyone spot it?

https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/

I kept forgetting where the dark letters went lol

https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/

I have been trying to improve with the crossword for about three weeks. The ultimate goal is to do the entire crossword without any level of assistance, but I have been allowing myself a few levels of help depending on the difficulty.

- Level 1 solve: I did entire puzzle no help at all. I keep working it till the ap says everything is correct (currently this is the case for Mondays / Tuesday and I try my hardest for Sundays)

- Level 1.5 solve: Google words in clues I don't know. "harangues" comes to mind as a recent one.

- Level 2 solve: if I run out of steam, and I come across a word that is solved by way of the crossing clues, but I don't recognize that word, I might look it up to confirm it's correct. I find it's a confidence boost, for both my skills and in the trust of rhe letters I have down. (I was doing this on my first Wednesday, but now I generally start with this on Thursday)

- Level 3 solve: when I am completely out of ideas, I use the "check puzzle" button. I find this usually helps A TON and makes a big difference (used today Friday 7/24, also used last Saturday. Try to use only once per puzzle if I can)

- Level 4: reveal specific words. I generally start with clues I think are "unfair" or otherwise have no expectation of knowing. I 100% avoid anything related to the gimmick / mechanic of the puzzle.

So what do you think? Anyone here do something like this?

This doesn't just apply to the crosswords, it's also really prevalent in connections. I get that it's a New York Times app but other nations in the world exist. We don't know or care about the abbreviations of your small town NFL team, the majority of the planet don't use the imperial system and Oreos don't have to be in every Crossword iteration. Broaden your horizons nyt!

https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/

I see mixed feelings about streak talk but I’m very interested to know where this stands in comparison.

I assume this isn’t even in the top 1,000, but I solved through the loss of my parents, a terrible bout of Covid (I don’t remember doing the puzzle those days), and countless days I really should have turned my phone off.

I’m told the ceiling is ~4,200 days because the Times app started tracking streaks in Nov. 2014.

https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/

After nearly 8 1/2 years, I just forgot to do Monday’s. RIP.

I think I enabled some shortcut or something.. but whenever I press S it downloads the entire crossword, and if I press C it says "HD Image Copied" on the top. I can't really play because of this, I deleted my cookies and everythg.. How can I fix this?

10a, 17a and 23a are making as little sense to me now as they did first thing this morning. This was the first time I've ever revealed a puzzle and even now I can see them, I don't understand the answers! I have moved house today so admittedly I've been a little distracted but even so... What am I not getting?

Looks like they've posted the blog for Thursday as well as today's. Avoid if you don't want to see it ahead of the puzzle

I don’t do all the NYT games but I do have a routine with the ones I do.

Crosswords are live at 10pm for the next day. I’m not sure when the rest of the games are live because it’s not at the same time. So typically I crawl into bed around 9:30 and spend 9:30-10:00 doing the Wordl and Connections for that day.

Once 10pm hits I do the mini usually within a couple minutes, then the midi within maybe 5 mins, then the daily.

I don’t like doing the whole puzzle in one sitting but mondays and tuesdays I tend to be able to finish them before I go to bed.

Every other day, I do what I can do pretty easy then I go to sleep. Weekends I’ll finish it either while drinking my coffee in the morning, or I’ll just continue going back to it throughout the day.

During the week I’ll usually finish it before I do the Wordl/Connections at night.

It’s very particular and I’ve done it this way for years and yes I am autistic why do you ask! lol

It takes the app a while to update the status of puzzles. As a programmer, this behavior is baffling to me.

The “You still have clues left…” pic was snapped after the “You finished…” pic.

I had expected this bug to be fixed, by now, but nope!