Left Handed Ledger Entry Crossword (2024)

FAQs

What is the hardest day New York Times crossword puzzle clue? ›

The crosswords are designed to increase in difficulty throughout the week, with the easiest on Monday and the most difficult on Saturday. The larger Sunday crossword, which appears in The New York Times Magazine, is an icon in American culture; it is typically intended to be as difficult as a Thursday puzzle.

Clues should reflect the difficulty of the puzzle. Our difficulty scale increases through the week, with the easiest puzzles on Monday and hardest on Saturday. Sunday puzzles should reflect midweek difficulty levels. Clues should be fresh, colorful and precise.

In case you didn't know, the daily New York Times Crossword has a difficulty curve as the week goes on. Monday is the easiest puzzle, and then Tuesday is a little harder, climbing up to Saturday, which is the hardest day of the week.

Perhaps the most famous is the November 5, 1996, puzzle by Jeremiah Farrell, published on the day of the U.S. presidential election, which has been featured in the movie Wordplay and the book The Crossword Obsession by Coral Amende, as well as discussed by Peter Jennings on ABC News, featured on CNN, and elsewhere.

Fill in the blanks first

Every puzzle usually has a small handful of fill-in-the-blanks, so if you're looking to get an early confidence boost, scan the list of clues for fill-in-the-blanks and knock them out early.

Practice daily so you can keep improving your solving skills. It takes a bit of time and practice to catch on to all the little quirks in crossword puzzles, so make puzzling a part of your routine. Take a few minutes in the morning or at night to sit down and work through a crossword puzzle.

Literal Clues: In a special type of clue called an &lit the clue's definition and cryptic halves are the same (“and literally so”). You may also see the term all-in-one for these types of clues. This is usually indicated by an exclamation point at the end of the clue. An &lit clue does not have a division.

According to The New York Times crosswords editor, Will Shortz, “A 'rebus' in a crossword is anything that gets entered in a square that's not a single letter of the alphabet.” That can mean you have to jam more than one letter into a square or use digits.

I got rejected probably 15, 16-plus times — it's about a 3 percent acceptance rate to get published there. They get 200 submissions a week for seven spots. Eventually, last year, they accepted the Monday puzzle, which ran in August. And then, in October, they wrote back, and we worked on this Sunday puzzle together.

The Saturday crossword is actually the hardest puzzle of the week. Mondays have the most straightforward clues and Saturday clues are the hardest, or involve the most wordplay. Contrary to popular belief, the Sunday puzzles are midweek difficulty, not the hardest.

How to understand crossword clues? ›

Take Note of Parts of Speech

Crossword clues often challenge players by using words with multiple meanings or changing a word's part of speech. If a crossword clue hints at a person, place, or thing, the answer will be a noun. If it hints at an action word, the answer will be a verb.

Mondays have the most straightforward clues and Saturday clues are the hardest, or involve the most wordplay. Contrary to popular belief, the Sunday puzzles are midweek difficulty, not the hardest. They're just bigger.

The daily puzzles are arranged in graded difficulty from Monday (easiest) through Saturday (hardest). The Sunday puzzle, which is larger—typically 21x21, vs 15x15 for the daily—is said to have a difficulty equivalent to about Thursday.

Monday is the easiest and Saturday is the hardest, with Sunday puzzles being larger and having the difficulty of about a Thursday puzzle. The biggest jump in difficulty is from Tuesday and Wednesday as the words get longer and longer and the clues get trickier. Hope this helps.

The New York Times Crossword increases in difficulty from Monday to Saturday. The Sunday puzzle is approximately on the same difficulty level as the Wednesday or Thursday puzzle, and is larger than other daily puzzles.