Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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

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.

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.

It's all my fault, I guess, because I didn't inspect what I was buying closely enough. Other crossword puzzle books I have seen were in spiral bound books that lie flat easily with a fairly good paper stock. This looks like a telephone directory -- not easy to handle when you are doing a puzzle, which takes a little time. The paper is of the poorest quality. I do not enjoy doing puzzles under these circumstances, so have not finished even one in this book.

For anyone who enjoys the Sunday New York Times Crosswords, this it the ultimate. The size if the book creates a bit of a challenge if you do the crosswords anywhere but a table top - so I simply cut out several pages at a time providing the opportunity to do them anywhere.

With the size of this book, I may just order a second later on and start all over - by that time I will have forgotten the clues and answers.

This is a great deal on a good amount of puzzles that will last you a long time. The only thing I don't like is that the puzzles are originally from 1983 to 1998, so some of the clues are somewhat outdated and since you don't know exactly when in that 15-year time frame the puzzle appeared some pop culture/political references are hard to figure out.

Although this crossword book has 500 puzzles in it, it is amazingly easy touse in that the binding is such that it lies flat when you are working the puzzles.

What an outstanding buy! You get (500) pgs. of crosswords; with approx. (100) across & (100) down ea. for $5.99... Even if you are not that good with crosswords, never fear, at the very least, you will greatly improve your vocabulary and learn some slang from other countries all while having fun. You just can't beat this bargin; get one ! Crosswords are NOT about solving them; they are about improving vocabulary; their best asset.

This supersized book of crossword puzzles is great for us people that find it hard to read small print.

I have been a fan of the NYT Sunday puzzles for a few decades.This volume looked like the proverbial candy store to me!!!
When I bought this, there was one review and the reviewer said this would be good for someone bedridden. ME! Broke my leg, crushed my knee. 6 months and a total knee replacement later.... I enjoyed several puzzles a day. I thought they were quite good to solve and I rarely had to look up more than a word or two. The construction of this book for the size of it is excellent. The binding is tight and the paper is top notch. I thought it might be unwieldy while lying in bed, but it was fine. My biggest issue would be on the size of type used for clues. The print could have been larger. And the beginning of the book has grids in all sizes before settling on a nice size grid at last. Big grids seem like such an ink buster to me, then there's the teeny cramped one that you can hardly get your answers in- not to mention that the numbers are impossible to see....
I am going to get another copy of this book. This time I will use pencil, then erase, so I can use it over and over. My favorite medium is a Cross Selectip pen with gel ink. I got an average of 100 puzzles per refill and the Cross people love me for all my ink orders!