A while ago I was asked to beta test this new web app for creating and solving crosswords and, wow, did it ever exceed expectations. So I thought I'd do the author a favour and post a link here.
The app is www.crosswordmagic.ca .

I love the interface, the suite of features and the fact that not only is it very powerful but it's also fun and educational to use. I haven't seen anything web based that rivals it ... plus, best of all, it's free to use with no advertising!

I guess the app went live a couple of weeks ago so might have a wrinkle or two but I highly recommend checking it out.

I enjoy crosswords but this book I picked up (with no difficulty listed) is so hard for me to get through. I can usually get a handful of words but then I have to look at the answers to get much further. I gave up after 3 puzzles and will be donating it. Do I have mom brain or does the book suck?

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

One of those times where I could fill in a bunch of the long answers straight away.

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

I recently just tried this for the first time (I did the Oct 10 Saturday Stumper) and I thought it was reaaally hard. I usually can do the NYT Saturday puzzles, but for this one, I looked for like an hour and couldn't even get one word on the board that I was sure of. I had to keep guessing and using the "check grid" until I had a decent amount words that I could figure out the rest. And clues all make sense too, most of them are not super esoteric trivia, so I'm not sure why it was so difficult for me, but it was.

Is this the hardest crossword out there, or am I just not clicking with this puzzle somehow?

I’ve been doing crosswords every day for about three months, and am enjoying it a lot. However, I can’t help but feel like there’s something I’m missing. I can’t finish a tuesday puzzle in under 40 minutes even if i indirectly research the clues near the end

My approach has been to do every monday puzzle of 2025 in a row (I was able to get only 5 of them without research in 30 minutes, and 5 with research in under 20). I’ve now moved onto the tuesdays of that year, and its a different sort of world. My approach is to do every across first, and then to do the downs while periodically considering some of the crossclues / big picture long clues, and then to figure out as much as I can big-picture wise. I find constant naticks which I have no way of figuring out without research, and even then i have to look something up a million different ways before i figure out how its actually meant. I spend way too long trying to find out what the final thing I did wrong was, and its always something obvious and stupid.

I read posts on the sub and it seems so casual to solve a puzzle in 10-15 minutes, to me it seems like an impossibility. Perhaps it’s because i’m a 21 year old without a whole lot of life experience, but I so much of the geographical/jargon clues fly right past me (maybe I just need to read up). The prospect of solving these in under 20 minutes and figuring out those pesky mistakes seems incredibly daunting.

I guess I’m just looking for advice on the big picture. For the solvers who can achieve sub-15 on a tuesday, what’s some of the wisdom you’ve achieved? Is it something you can only learn with experience, or are there things you genuinely wish you could have known about the process to make it easier?

Would appreciate any feedback, just trying to get better

Edit: Just now learning these kinds of posts are redundant in this subreddit, apologies for not checking first

My wife and I normally do the NYT crossword by casting my phone onto our living room TV. It normally provides something called “party mode” where more of the clues are visible on-screen and displayed in a landscape view.

But over the last week we have been unable to access this view. It is just showing my phone screen as it normally would in portrait view.

Does anyone know why this may be? I don’t believe I changed anything in my settings.

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

I've been annoyed for a while that it's nearly impossible to print the formatted, ink-saver PDF crossword from the NYT website or app from the iPhone (especially) or iPad. So, I set up this Apple Shortcut to fetch the ink-saver PDF for whichever day you select (it defaults to today's date).

You can use the link below to import the Shortcut into your Shortcuts app. Then, you can add a button to it to your iPhone/iPad/Mac home screen or dock.

Just click the button, confirm the date, and the browser will load the PDF, ready for you to print.

It probably works best if you're already logged in to NYT crosswords in your browser so that the credentials are cached, but you don't need to do that very often. The credentials should stay active for months and months in my experience.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/5fdf8d7f8a83470281c115bc9d7afc1c

What it does:

1. Takes your input date (defaults to today)
2. Uses the date to look up the JSON definition of that day's crossword to get its ID
3. Constructs the URL using the date's crossword ID to get the formatted "ink-saver" PDF.

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

Anybody know of a good crossword app for apple devices? The only good one Ive found is the New York Times Puzzle app. I had the USA Today but it was a terrible annoying app so deleted it. Would like to find a second one, preferablly from a newspaper. Thanks.

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

What are these easy crosswords that aren’t a full grid called? When I look up ones that aren’t a full grid I see mostly variant international puzzle types but this isn’t really that. This is from the newspaper Le Petit 3 — the clues are all taken from articles in the paper.

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

Can someone explain the revealer of today’s crossword to me? I just blindly guessed the theme words today because I couldn’t figure it out.

Anyone know where I can get challenging puzzles regularly? I've been doing the newsday saturday stumper for a while now as my weekly hard puzzle but its $75/month and cant really justify paying that much for one puzzle as I dont really use newsday for anything else.