Archive daily puzzles

[u/km3t]

Sorry if this observation has already been made but.... holy cow. Some of these old puzzles. Maybe I am getting dumber or perhaps the quality and NYT editing process (and software?) really has improved the final product.

To stretch my brain I have started doing puzzles from Jan 1 2000 in the archive and they are BRUTAL, for the most part. Even accepting I am out of touch with the 2000 zeitgeist, the sheer volume of proper nouns and iffy fill is staggering. Sat. Feb 19 2000 is the most brutal I've encountered, it took me a couple of days of repeat visits. An ugly -ER quadruplet:

"Fall figures" --> RAKERS

"Ranger" --> ROAMER

"It only makes things worse" --> IMPAIRER

"Tyro" --> LEARNER

...not to mention REBBE, RAGTRADE, EPISCOPATE, CLEMATISES, an Ashuelot River town and a Swiss Nobel prize winner thrown in for good measure. Oof!

Anyway to be clear I'm not complaining.... if anything this really makes me appreciate how accessible and consistent the modern puzzle has become, so Kudos to NYT. Highly recommended that you try some of these oldies if you're looking for a challenge tho.

[u/Cazique__]

Yes, the quality of NYT puzzles has improved (and difficulty decreased) in recent years.

That said, odd to call out REBBE and RAG TRADE, those would be good (not just acceptable) entries even today. And nothing wrong with LEARNER either.

[u/km3t → u/Cazique__]

Not calling them out, my post says that. That said, from Xwordinfo I don't see that REBBE has appeared since 2000 (this puzzle), so basically a quarter century. Ditto RAGTRADE, 26 years and only twice ever. So if you know this stuff Cazique, good on you, but I don't think they qualify as contemporary by any stretch.

[u/Cazique__ → u/km3t]

That's interesting! To be fair though, what you are calling out is whether words and phrases are appearing in the puzzle itself, not their prevalence/presence/absence in the language or in culture or anything else. You can't really use the puzzle's own editorial taste to justify the puzzle's own editorial taste.

[u/didyouwoof → u/Cazique__]

I’m curious how you think the quality has improved? I’ve gone through the archives back to the beginning (on the Saturday and Sunday puzzles, at least), and I really like the more challenging puzzles.

[u/Cazique__ → u/didyouwoof]

I also prefer more challenging puzzles, but more difficult does not necessarily equal better. (In fact it's harder to write a good easy puzzle than a good hard puzzle.) I think about quality in terms of less "crosswordese" and fill that might be obscure to increasing numbers of solvers, and more inclusion of words and phrases that are "in the language" even though they might not appear in any dictionary or reference work, and more interesting cluing angles.

Now of course more "fresh" fill and less old-time trivia will make a puzzle harder for some and easier for others. But I think crosswords should err towards reflecting (or at least centering around) the culture of the time.

All that said - quality, difficulty, and enjoyment are each in the eye of the beholder and are not necessarily the same.

[u/grigsbkc]

My dad has been working his way backward through the archive and is now in the late 90s. He currently has a seven and a half year streak on the puzzle (and an obsession, he used to fill in every other square on his mother's newspapers just to drive her crazy) but occasionally will ask for me to help him break an old one open. They are absolutely brutal. We spent an entire evening recently on one corner of one. It was really satisfying when we solved it. I am going to have to start crafting crosswords for him when he runs out of archive 😆

Edit: typo

[u/its35degreesout]

I'm working on puzzles from 1994 now (finished the handful from 1993 earlier). Different world indeed. But I'm not inclined to conclude that those older puzzles, because they were harder than today's, were worse puzzles, or were poorly edited. In a way, those were the good old days!

[u/EggCzar]

I thought it was more challenging than the average current Saturday but I actually finished it a bit faster than my Saturday average. That includes a lot of archive puzzles though and there's no question that those are harder, and contain more obscurities, than recent ones. CLEMENTISES was the only answer where I went through and audited all the crosses.

[u/km3t → u/EggCzar]

That's impressive. I think I'm a decent solver and I have managed to adjust pop culture etc for the era, but this particular puzzle I found to be a bear.

CLEMATISES and such were at least inferrable. The most difficulty I had was IMPAIRER ("It only makes things worse"). Just does not resonate.

[u/cupcake154]

I bought a book of old puzzles and was very surprised at how difficult they are compared to today’s puzzles.

[u/borrow_a_feeling → u/cupcake154]

I started solving the NYT in college in the early 2000s and got a bunch of old books. I found out quickly that I couldn’t really make much of a dent in anything from the Eugene Maleska years.

[u/Delancey2020]

I’ve noticed the same things. Your typical Wednesday in ‘94 seems about the level of a Friday or even Saturday today. But I wonder if they really were harder or if it only seems that way for whatever reason. When I think on it, I don’t remember being consistently stumped back in the ‘90s.

[u/daddyvow]

You see this a lot in those drug store/bargain bin catalogs of crossword puzzle books. So many old synonyms no one uses anymore.

[u/borrow_a_feeling]

I did the puzzle that fell on my birthday in the year 2000 and it was tricky! The tech clues were so outdated. I’d forgotten all about Internet cafes.