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51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Boy, What a Bargain!, October 16, 2007
This review is from: The New York Times Supersized Book of Sunday Crosswords: 500 Puzzles (New York Times Crossword Puzzles) (Paperback)
This huge book contains 500 Sunday Times crossword puzzles from the Shortz and Maleska eras, but most of them are from the wittier Shortz group. And think of it: this contains ten years worth of Sunday New York Times crossword puzzles! Ought to take you at least a couple of weeks to finish, right?
The book is well-made, with good quality paper -- much better than the slick glossy Times Sunday magazine paper that doesn't take pencil or ink marks very well -- and for those like me who tear the pages out and then use a clipboard, they tear out easily with no ragged edges.
As for the puzzles, well -- is there anyone, anywhere who makes better big Sunday-style puzzles? I've done puzzles from papers all over the USA and the Times are easily the most fun and most challenging to work.
Consider the price: less than three cents per puzzle. Can't beat that.
Heartily recommended to puzzle fanatics and casual solvers alike.
Scott Morrison
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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
500 NYT Sunday crosswords - 1983-1998, September 24, 2007
This review is from: The New York Times Supersized Book of Sunday Crosswords: 500 Puzzles (New York Times Crossword Puzzles) (Paperback)
This volume collects 500 New York Times Sunday crossword puzzles that were originally published between 1983 and 1998. This span covers the editorships of the late Eugena Maleska and his successor Will Shortz. This book collects about two-thirds of the Sunday crosswords originally published in those 15 years. One puzzle appears on each page and all answers are in the back. I can't determine if the puzzles are presented in chronological order.
Travelers will probably want a smaller book for a plane ride but there are already numerous crossword collections for such purposes. This book is strongly recommended for anyone who enjoys doing puzzles at home, offering a tremendous number of good puzzles for the price. It seems that a solver must be either bedridden or incarcerated to complete all 500 puzzles anytime soon.
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52 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Changing size of grid was a dirty trick, August 22, 2009
This review is from: The New York Times Supersized Book of Sunday Crosswords: 500 Puzzles (New York Times Crossword Puzzles) (Paperback)
As other have noted, many of these puzzles are difficult because there is no time/date reference. When they ask things about a 'new tv show' or 'latest world series', etc. it is quite a challenge as the dates of these puzzles could be anywhere from 1983 to 1998. The date of publication listed on each page for the crossword would be very helpful.
However I was going along OK even with the lack of time frame of the puzzles until I got to puzzle #56. All of a sudden the grid got very small. For the first 55 puzzles, the grid was 5" x 5". That was fine as there was plenty of room for all the questions and the crossword squares were a good size to write in the answers.
Starting with #56, the grid shrunk to 4" x 4". At first I thought it was just a mistake made on this one puzzle, but upon checking out the rest of the book I saw that all remaining crossword grids were only the small 4 X 4 size. Why in the world did they do this? When the grid was 5 X 5, there was plenty of room for the grid and questions all on the same page. After they made the grid smaller, there was a large amount of blank spaces on the pages as the questions did not take up all the room.
The size of the type of the questions did not get any larger when the grid size was reduced. All that happened was that there were inches and inches of blank spaces on each page. There was no reason for them to make the grid so small when they had plenty of room.
It is not only a strange thing to change the grid size in the middle of this book, but it is not playing fair with the reader/puzzle solver. When you open a book and check it out, you assume the size of the type, size of grid, etc. will remain the same for the entire book.
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