The New York Times Tough Crossword Puzzles Volume 11: 100 of the Most Challenging Puzzles from the Pages of The New York Times

Rating:
Summary: The Best and Toughest American Crosswords
Review: Ever since Will Shortz took over the New York Times Crossword puzzles they have gotten harder, mostly because he and his constructors have an almost inhuman ability to come up with wickedly misleading (and often funny) clues. And the themes they come up with for their puzzles are often the sort that stump you until you finally make a breakthrough and then you chortle in delight (or groan loudly if it involves a pun). But that's OK. I'm at an age that I figure if I can continue to do the toughest Times puzzles I'm holding Alzheimer's at bay.

Times puzzles get harder as you progress from Monday through Saturday. In this book are the tough Friday and Saturday puzzles. A lot of people think the Sunday puzzle would be the hardest, but it's not. It's simply larger than the daily puzzles.

The pages are about 8.5 X 11 inches. What I tend to do is tear a page out (with a puzzle both front and back) and affix it to a clipboard so I can do them with a sharp pencil and not have the underlying pages make it too soft for a crisp pencil mark. But one can simply do them in the book.

These are definitely the best classic American-style crossword puzzles available.

Scott Morrison