The LA Times Crossword is exactly right for someone getting into doing Crosswords. Here’s how to get better at doing them.
5 min read · Dec 22, 2022
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A bit of background
The LA Times crossword is published seven days a week here.
The toughest puzzles appear on Saturday. Mondays are the easiest. Sundays are roughly as difficult as the average Thursday puzzle but twice the size.
The LA Times Crossword is American style meaning black squares make up a much smaller proportion of the available squares than in UK style Crosswords.
The extra clues are both a blessing and a curse — a blessing because once you get the hang of it, it is easier to suss out the answers to certain clues based on the presence of available letters. Conversely, it is a curse because you have to really race against the clock to answer all the clues
A few tips to set you up to actually enjoy doing Crosswords instead of hating the doing of the Crossword and thinking that you don’t like Crosswords themselves.
I know the above sentence got a little verbose.
I mean to say that if you have tried doing a Crossword before and didn’t enjoy it, it may be because your Crossword tools weren’t helping you.