About five years ago I switched from NYT crosswords to The New Yorker’s. They seem to have attracted the best of the NYT’s puzzlers, notably Liz Gorski, and they have a much better gender and ethnic minority balance than the NYT ever managed. They also have much more fanciful and imaginative clues than the rigid NYT allows, and more entries from current and minority cultures, while mostly avoiding too much “pop” culture (especially rap and EDM group names that eschew proper spelling, and vowels, respectively).
I no longer subscribe to the New Yorker (or the NYT for that matter) due to the ferocious anti-Russian, anti-Islamic, and anti-Chinese xenophobia they have exhibited in recent years, especially since the start of the NATO/Russia proxy war in Ukraine and the American/Israeli genocide in Palestine. I had expected better from them. But I can still do the New Yorker crosswords free (at least for now) and I still sometimes buy NYT crossword books.
Here are some more of the clever clues they’ve had in some of their recent puzzles (or in the case of the NYT, puzzles republished in recent books). I’ve included only the vowels for the answers to each clue, in case readers want to take a stab at guessing the answers when partially filled in. Some of the clues had, or should have had, a wry “?” at the end of the clue to indicate a play on words.
If you just want to see the answers, I’ll include them in a comment to this post:
One of the newest trends in crossword puzzles is considerably longer clues, just to enable even cleverer clues. You can see that in some of the clues above, but here are some recent clues that are even longer:
- Never attribute to _____ what is adequately explained by stupidity (Hanlon’s Razor): Answer: MALICE
- The “handsaw” in Hamlet’s “I know a hawk from a handsaw”: Answer: HERON
- System in which “Deaf Power” is indicated by an open palm over one ear and a raised closed fist with the other: Answer: ASL
Now you know.
