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Jun. 8th, 2019 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedantherI have been trying out the New York Times Crossword app on a week-long free trial. I don't think I'm going to be paying to keep using it once the trial is up. The app itself is very nice, and easy to use; it's the New York Times Crossword itself I'm not getting on with.
The themes and fiendish wordplay are all well and good, and got a proper laugh out of me on more than one occasion, but there are other clues that I find more difficult without the consolation of being either interesting or satisfying, like the ones relying on knowledge of American professional sports. And at the other end of the difficulty scale it seems to be standard for the compilers to fill in odd gaps with obvious clues to entries that are a couple of short words jammed together, like "up to" or "we are", which irritates my sense of how a crossword ought to behave and doesn't seem worthy of either the compilers or their audience. Not to mention that some of them get repetitive -- this past week has contained more "I do"s than I ever expected to encounter without becoming a professional marriage celebrant. I can also report that in the world of the NYT Crossword, the only kind of sword that exists is an "epee", and I'm enough of a pedant that the misspelling of épée grates more every time it comes up.
I liked having a lot of crosswords ready at hand, though, so I might keep looking to see if I can find another crossword app with crosswords that don't annoy me so much. I don't suppose anyone has any suggestions?
The themes and fiendish wordplay are all well and good, and got a proper laugh out of me on more than one occasion, but there are other clues that I find more difficult without the consolation of being either interesting or satisfying, like the ones relying on knowledge of American professional sports. And at the other end of the difficulty scale it seems to be standard for the compilers to fill in odd gaps with obvious clues to entries that are a couple of short words jammed together, like "up to" or "we are", which irritates my sense of how a crossword ought to behave and doesn't seem worthy of either the compilers or their audience. Not to mention that some of them get repetitive -- this past week has contained more "I do"s than I ever expected to encounter without becoming a professional marriage celebrant. I can also report that in the world of the NYT Crossword, the only kind of sword that exists is an "epee", and I'm enough of a pedant that the misspelling of épée grates more every time it comes up.
I liked having a lot of crosswords ready at hand, though, so I might keep looking to see if I can find another crossword app with crosswords that don't annoy me so much. I don't suppose anyone has any suggestions?
