Customer Reviews

The New York Times Monday Through Friday Easy to Tough Crossword Puzzles (New York Times Crossword Puzzles)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the past, most of the NY Times Crossword books were either themed collections or just general collections. There are the Sunday Crossword Books, as well as Will Shortz's Most Difficult Puzzle Books, but this book has a great advantage: You can tell immediately by the day of the week how difficult the puzzle is going to be. Want a quickie? Do a Monday! Want a toughie? Do a Friday. I often like the Wednesday or Thursday puzzles because they have fun gimmicks, but aren't too difficult. This book makes it easy to find them!

For those that don't know: the answers are int he back, six to a page. Some may have trouble with this and feel the desire to glance at the other answers on the page. If you are doing the puzzles in order, you may glance and remember an answer.

The book is spiral bound, so it lays nice and flat, unlike those that are cheap and glue-bound like a magazine.

Printed on newsprint-like paper, which makes it even lighter and packable. This book is much better than those cheap $1 crossword puzzles you find in the store.

Hooray! A crossword book that has easy AND hard puzzles, each clearly labeled, so you can work your way up as you get smarter (sadly, I'm still a Tuesday girl).

If you're tired of Dell/Penny Press crossword books which are full of repeating, unimaginative clues, the NY Times crosswords will definitely bend your brain in a new way.

AND, if you love crosswords, be sure to check out the film Wordplay, featuring Will Shortz!

This is how I started out with Crosswords. Monday and Tuesday were fine but Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were beyond me. I assumed because I was someone with BA and JD degrees, that crosswords would not be that difficult for me to solve. Wrong. There is an acquired way of thinking and analyzing needed to solve these puzzles. Today, several years later, I can do Wednesday and Thursday. Friday remains hopeless. Where I began to get lots better on solving these crosswords was to subscribe to the New York Times Crossword online site at forty dollars a year. This gives me access to every single puzzle, plus archived puzzles. The crossword software also alerts me when I choose a wrong letter so that I don't get too far astray from the solution. This correcting device really taught me a lot very fast. You can also turn this feature off if you want more of a challenge. I can't stress enough what a great thing this is to do, to subscribe to the online service. I am also able to play online but for free the following puzzles: USA Today, Universal, Washington Post, LA Times, Stanley Newman and Jonesin'. They also have correcting interactive devices with their puzzles. However, the New York Times remains the King of Crossword Puzzles. This book is a good place to start but the online puzzles will totally obsess you!

This was a great buy and a great gift. My Grandma loved this book! I would recommend to anyone that loves puzzles.

30 Jan 2007

TGIM - Standing for "Thank God it's Monday" would be an appropriate exclamation every five (5) pages.

I must confess that I have to ask for a little help with a word here or there on Fridays. The rest of the week is manageable.

Great brain buster, I don't know how can one finish even an easy NY times crossword without an encyclopedia...as in Wikipedia...

This is exactly what it promises - a collection of 10 weeks of M-F NYT crossword puzzles. It's spiral bound so that you can work on it flat and the puzzles are fun and challenging (more so as the week goes on), without the doozies of the Sunday puzzles.

NYTimes -- so you know they're good puzzles. Clever, fair, and with difficulty as advertised. The Monday-Friday assortment let me stretch on some puzzles, coast on others. A good time was had by all (me)!

I've been doing crosswords for awhile and really like the Monday-Wednesday New York Times puzzles (the easiest ones) but this book also contains the rest of the week and I find them just too difficult. I find no joy in trying to solve a word in another language or trying to figure out a variation of a common word (seems they couldn't fit the correct word in the spaces so they shortened it). But when they start by spelling "genie" (the type that comes out of the oil lamp to grant wishes) "genii", well, that's too frustrating for me. If you are a beginner or an average player, skip this because a large chunk of the book will be too hard.