Customer Reviews

The New York Times Ultimate Crossword Omnibus: 1,001 Puzzles from The New York Times

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was buying the NY Times everyday just so I could do the puzzle at lunchtime at the office. In the area I lived, it was $1 a day! Do the math. This collection saved me a bundle.

As a habitual crossword puzzler, I switched from habitually buying the paper each morning to habitually zeroxing the next puzzle in this book. I found it much easier to copy the puzzles than to hold this rather bulky tome. And copying allowed me to enlarge them to a full letter size page if I so desired (though it was not necessary -- the puzzles are their normal dimensions and fit two-to-a-page in this collection).

Working off a copy also discouraged me from turning the page and starting a different puzzle when I got stuck on the really tough Friday and Saturday puzzles.

If you're a habitual puzzler, this book is a god send.

Bottom line(s): The price is obviously fantastic. The collection is obviously HUGE! The puzzles are just like the daily paper -- from Monday-easy to Saturday-nearly-impossible. I never ran into a puzzle I remembered doing in the paper.

No cons, but some advice... It's not the kind of book you'll want to carry around since it is, of course, large. And if you're not a habitual puzzler, it might end up on a shelf unused since it is a daunting number of puzzles.

Also, in case you're a novice puzzler, the NY Times puzzles can get pretty hard. If you're used to clues like, "Wheel OF Fortune's Sajak" for p-a-t, you're in for a challenge. Instead, you'll be getting "foie gras" for p-a-t-e. (Frequent foreign language clues, people you've never heard of, obscure island names, etc.)

The good news is that your vocabulary will expand and you'll learn a lot more than you would from the TV guide puzzle. I know I've learned a lot from the NY Times puzzles. Thank you, Will Shortz.

And, in case you haven't figured it out, the "Search inside this book" link above will get you the first 12 puzzles! If you like them, there are 989 more to go!

If you have tried and liked the crossword puzzles in the New York Times, but do not subscribe to the newspaper, this book is for you. It is certainly more cost effective than subscribing just for the puzzles. There is also a crossword only online subscription option, incidentally, but this book probably packs more bang for the buck. If you have not previously solved New York Times puzzles, it's worth trying a few before you buy the book.

A few things to be aware of: The daily puzzles in the paper increase in difficulty from Monday to Friday. As far as I can tell, the ones in the book are not arranged in any particular order. Also this is a compilation of puzzles that appeared over the past decade. In so far as a few questions deal with ongoing events, they are now harder than back when the events were in the news. Non-New Yorkers may be stumped by allusions to local personalities.

On the whole the book should provide many hours of entertainment.

I love crossword puzzles! This book is too awkward to use though for two reasons. One is that it's heavy and hard to hold open anywhere except at a table (my favorite spot is the recliner or lawn chair!). The second reason is that the puzzle is on the wrong part of the page. It should be near the binding or even in the middle with the clues surrounding it. Again, it wouldn't be as bad at the table, but that's not where I do them.
The puzzles are great though!!

One of my defining personality traits is cheapness. When looking for a crossword book, I wanted the most crosswords for my money, which this definitely is. If you did 3 a day it would still take you most of a year to finish the book. I expect to own the book for 3 or 4 years at the rate I'm going. I would have given it five stars, because of the great array of puzzles included, but it may be too much of a good thing...Maybe I don't really need 1001 crosswords...

This is a massive, fun book, but it's not very condusive for travel. It's also frustrating that they don't tell you which puzzles are "Mondays" vs. "Saturdays." I like to do crosswords while I travel, so I ended up ripping out some pages and carrying them with me. It may be better to get a smaller book.

This is a great book for the person who wants ONLY crossword
puzzles. I do not care about word searches or anagrams. Just
give me crossword puzzles and I am happy. If this describes
you then you will find this gigantic volume of crosswords
well worth the money. An absolutely huge collection of quality
crossword puzzles for the fair to well proficient word-slinger.
These are not for a beginner puzzler--it helps to have been
around the block a few times! I am really glad I bought it.
My only complaint is that is a little too big to keep as "the
bathroom book."

This is a motherlode of crosswords for the crossword lover. For the majority of the book, the hardness of the puzzles are randomly distributed. It is my understanding that the last 150 puzzles, they are distributed from easy to hard.

I highly recommend this collections of crosswords, especially because The Puzzle Master (of NPR and New York Times fame), Will Shortz edited the collection. For me the most challenging part of the puzzles is remembering the simple words, rather than banging my head against the wall over more difficult words. As with all of Shortz's puzzles, he is not pleonastic. This will give your brain that will help it to beat Alzheimers and dimensia due to the universal inevitability of aging.

I think this is an excellent compilation of crosswords and a good value however there are a couple of things keeping it from being great. The first, though it doesn't bother me so much, is that each crossword is only half a page. This is probably equivalent to their actual size in the paper but I know some people prefer larger print in their crossword books. Next up, the solutions are crammed into the back, something like nine per page, and I find that their small size makes it a little harder to find a particular word that I cannot solve in the puzzle without seeing scanning others by accident. These are minor complaints, what gets this book 3-stars are the following two items. I cannot yet tell and the author doesn't make note of whether the puzzles are in weekday order (and thus difficulty) and all mixed up. He explains how they are mixed up over larger date periods, so a puzzle may be next to one run two years later, but not whether they are in the weekday order most people would expect. Finally my largest problem with the book: each puzzle is not accompanied by its title so you do not know the theme of the harder clues with the long solutions, which makes it very difficult to get some puzzles going.

This volume collects the first 1,001 daily puzzles from Will Shortz's editorship of the New York Times crossword (the puzzles were originally published from 11/22/93 to 11/28/97). Two puzzles appear on each page and all answers are in the back. Unfortunately, the first 900 of these puzzles appear in random order instead of the normal Monday to Saturday progression of difficulty. 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.

Well, I was warned about the size of this monster, but did I heed the advice? No. So, I have to razor out the pages and pretend I am doing a much reduced in size puzzle from the paper. I'm glad I bought it because it will last longer than I will. The bad news is that none of my heirs do crosswords. More's the pity.