The pleasures of the New York Times crossword do not in fact rival the raptures described by Thomas De Quincey, and they are consequently much less dangerous, but they are considerable, nonetheless, and I fear I spend too much time with them. Besides that, the chief of my confessions is that I routinely turn on autocheck if a puzzle is more than a day old. I also use Google freely. I am strict, however, in doing real searches for the information I need. Any result that includes the word “crossword” is off limits. I have become skilled at rephrasing the clue in such a way that I get few of such results. It’s obvious that there are a lot of people Googling the clues verbatim. Of course, I enjoy it when I can complete a puzzle without help, as I usually can on Monday and Tuesday, when the puzzles are easiest, but the real pleasure for me is in cracking the thematic codes that the puzzles’ authors devise, most explicitly on Sunday. Their ingenuity is remarkable. I have tried my hand, with some success, at writing puzzles myself. It is not easy, and the effort has taught me to forgive the Times authors for resorting regularly to arcana like obsolete spellings, transcriptions of vocalizations that are not words, the tiresome obscurities of sports abbreviations, and the infuriating use of punning in the clues. All part of the game, and unavoidable in a big puzzle. So thank you, Mr. Shortz, and your several colleagues, for many hours of happy mental exercise.

For $2 or $3, you get access to the archive of the daily puzzle in addition to all the Monday through Sunday puzzles as they come out. A gold star is availablefor each new puzzle that you complete on the day of its issue. It’s an addictive feature that has kept me completing the puzzles each day now for the past two months and counting. Other collections of themed puzzles are available for nominal fees. The included archive alone looks to be enough to keep me occupied for several years to come, at least. These are fun puzzles to experiment with, since the technology allows for rapid, easy letter replacement. I frequently go with my gut on difficult and obscure answers, sometimes finding them surprisingly correct, sometimes transforming entire puzzle quadrants from one set of answers to a largely different set. The letter replacement feature makes this app a clear favorite over the old pen and paper technique. I use the app each day and highly recommend it.

Well, the nature of crossword puzzles is definitely fun but it is definitely frustrating too! I enjoy this app a lot and my only comments are that there are times when there are errors, or maybe they’re built in traps to make you think harder, however I can’t really be sure about that, only the puzzle creator actually knows. When you know you have the right words in the right spaces and some of the words just don’t compute correctly in a way that simply cannot be reconciled, something is going on. Maybe the puzzle masters have time constraints and are rushed, maybe they think these irreconcilable differences make players think harder, etc - I mean who knows?? But those glitches are definitely in these puzzles and they make the puzzles all the more puzzling-right?!? So, isn’t that the real point??Ok, so the other word thing is that players beware! Do not ever allow yourself to be pulled off your game page for any reason because everything you’ve been working on or have finished disappears in a nano second it you blink away from your page! You can be working along thinking everything is fine and maybe you look away for a moment or you rub your eyes and the next time you look down you’re on a new page and all your work has escaped into the ether, the black hole where all your concrete synapses for the past hour live have suddenly moved on to a new home never to be seen again - Boom!! And you’re done. . .So, protect your work and don’t let the fluidity of any frequency snatch your puzzle away when you’re almost done, or worst yet when you’ve just finished.

I used to subscribe to the NYT, I enjoyed playing all of the games they offered. No doubt that the quality of the game app is great. I have a problem with transparency in the sales of the app. I reviewed all the qualifiers which appear in the App Store, I dug deeper into the NYT developer qualifiers as well. They mentioned no amount to download and play the app. In fact they go so far as to state that should they decide to charge for the app they will give notice of any pricing changes in advance. They sure make you feel like you’re getting an app which you can play for free. Having read everything that was up front as well as the purchase agreement I felt that it wasn’t a pay to play app. As soon as I downloaded the app the first screen I got was an invitation to a one week free trial and then a monthly payment for subscription.I don’t have a problem with the app being a payment subscription.This is the NYT and if you’re going to charge me to use the app then say it before the download. I get how some sites lead you along then you see get the money message, normally I would just roll my eyes and say “fool me once” and bailout. This seems like a breach of good faith by a trusted institution. Practices like these as misleading. If you’re selling something for money, then say so upfront. It’s the NYT, I have lost track of what they have become.