Yikes! I haven’t posted
We got caught up doing the NY Times daily crossword, which we’ve taken to doing together on these cold autumn nights. We aren’t very good at it.
That’s not entirely accurate. The crosswords start easy and get progressively harder through the week. We sail through Monday, jog through Tuesday and then we start to struggle. By Sunday, we are made to feel thoroughly subnormal.
Today’s puzzle was one with some cute clues and we did abysmally badly. We gave up a quarter of the way through. Even when we revealed the puzzle and saw the answers, we didn’t understand some of them. Here, give it a try.
Major storm coming tonight. They’re warning us of power outages. I’ve got my power banks charged and ready to go. See you on the other side.
Posted: October 22nd, 2026 under personal.
Comments: 7
Comments
Comment from Anonymous
Time: October 22, 2026, 7:41 pm
I love crossword puzzles almost as much as I hate Sudoku. Sadly I am asked to subscribe, or at least sign in to the NYT, and I ain’t doin’ dat.
Comment from MrKnowitall
Time: October 22, 2026, 8:43 pm
Have you, perchance, ever tried Clueless Crosswords? They are fun and challenging in a different way. Highly recommended! Just do a search and you’ll find printable puzzles.
Comment from QuasiModo
Time: October 22, 2026, 8:47 pm
Good luck, SWeasy and Uncle B…stay safe and warm 🙏
Comment from Subotai Bahadur
Time: October 22, 2026, 9:37 pm
Combining your previous thread on farts and the mention of the storm coming at you:
In the first Nor’easter that hit the US this year, the weather people in New England were having conniption fits over “We could have wind gusts of 50 mph.” Noting that in my mountain town we have had 80 mph gusts [which saved me the trouble of taking down a dead tree that was on my to-do list] this year. Anyway online I encountered the perfect response to the weather panickers. Someone said:
“Hell, I fart at more than 50 mph.”
Subotai Bahadur
Comment from Uncle AL
Time: October 22, 2026, 10:12 pm
I love crosswords, too, and work several every morning to get my brain warmed up. I’ve been doing the NYT for years but I’m with Anon above and refuse to give one thin dime to that stinkin’ former newspaper. The path I’m using is via this Seattle Times’ link:
https://www.seattletimes.com/games-nytimes-crossword/ which is a freebie.
But the way you, Stoaty, describe a progressively more difficult puzzle doesn’t seem to match my perception. Just to check if we’re working the same puzzles, is this the title line of the version you did today?
NY Times, Thu, Oct 22, 2026 Enrique Henestroza Anguiano / Will Shortz
It was noteworthy in that the first dozen Down clues were all literally “…” and it turned out they were related to all the Down clues at the bottom of the grid. It took a while for me to figure out the gimmick so my time today was a tortoise-like 17:13.
Are we on the same page?
Comment from ExpressoBold Pureblood
Time: October 22, 2026, 11:26 pm
Any Tom Skerritt fans?
He has passed on…
Thomas Roy Skerritt (August 25, 1933 – October 21, 2026) was an American actor
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: October 23, 2026, 5:48 pm
Doesn’t look like it, Uncle Al. The one we did was by By David J. Kahn (I think they’re all edited by Will Shortz). The gimmick in this one was that some of the clues had an asterisk in front of them. In those cases, you had to find the word the clue was pointing to and then make it a different word by inserting OM into it.
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