I’m a crossword fanatic, and at any point when I have some spare time I whip out my phone and immediately tune into the New York Times Crossword app. I’m an American in New York City, so it’s pretty common practice here.
Obviously crosswords are big worldwide, but I know a significant cultural difference is your guys’ partiality towards the cryptic crossword, which I must admit is very different and seems much tougher to my untrained American brain :’)
What’s crossword etiquette like over there? Will I be outed as an American immediately if I just pull out the NYT Crossword app on the Tube?
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We have the ones from our own newspapers- esp The Times.
As to being outed, no-one will actually look at what you are doing on your phone.
Same size as they are in the US.
Most of ours are written by a guy called the sphinx. The BBC did a show about him on their seminal documentary inside number 9.
So I’ve started doing the NYT crossword for the last little while – I think in particular every square being checked, along with having themes, is a big appeal to me – but I’d say it’s not particularly popular in the UK (partly down to access, partly down to Americanisms making it a bit harder to translate – also the requirement of having no unchecked squares can lead to a bunch of crosswordese).
[Also on the topic of cryptic crosswords – I wouldn’t say they’re harder per se, more so that every answer both encodes a standard definition, along with a “trick” to obtain the answer, and as you do more and more cryptic crosswords you learn the lingo, you know what terms tend to indicate things like anagrams and whatnot, and in general you get a feel on what to expect. Just like you get tricks in NYT crosswords like the tenses matching, plurals matching, misdirection with the first letter being capitalised and whatnot, along with your common crosswordese].
The NYT is geofenced, every time I try to read it, it blocks me. So nuts to their crosswords….
There’s a Crossword and a Sudoku in most daily circulation newspapers.
Keep in mind though, that [US and UK crosswords are different](https://www.wealthwords.com/blog/know-difference-american-british-crosswords/).
My partner and I do the NYT crossword together every night; it’s our little ritual after dinner. Been doing it for years now. Some parts can be challenging due to missing cultural knowledge but it’s often fun to learn new things.
The shops the sell magazines struggle but cross word and puzzle magazines to keep selling.