The Crossword is for everyone
“I always feel like I am not the target demographic for understanding the clues/answers for the daily crossword (I’m 21 years old and in college). I was wondering if there is a specific age that the puzzle is created for?” — Ashley Elkins, Albuquerque From Christina: There’s not exactly a specific demographic that the Crossword is created for, but we generally try to make it accessible for a broad range of ages. The editors of the Crossword range in age from 30 to 72. Our constructors have an even wider age range. Our youngest ever contributor, Harrison Walden, had his solo debut at age 13. Five years earlier, he was published at age 8 with his father as a collaborator. Our oldest contributor, Bernice Gordon, was 100 years old when her final puzzle was published. That puzzle was a collaboration between herself and David Steinberg, who was 17 at the time. It’s hard to imagine anyone beating the record they set, of collaborators with an 83-year age gap! It’s natural for constructors to put references from their own generation in a puzzle. A puzzle made by a 13-year-old will have a different flavor than one made by a 100-year-old. While we want to preserve the voices of our constructors, we also want puzzles to feel like New York Times puzzles. If a teenage constructor writes five clues about a favorite Instagram influencer, we’ll probably change them to have more varied references. On the other hand, we have the philosophy that not every puzzle has to appeal to every single solver. There’s always another puzzle tomorrow, so if today’s puzzle wasn’t to your taste (or targeted at your generation), we hope that we’ll soon publish another that is more up your alley. Besides the daily crossword, we also publish a monthly Bonus crossword, which is pop culture-based and targets a younger audience. Our puzzle packs also have crosswords that have themes based on pop culture. The targeted audience for the Mini is also younger than that of the daily.
Solve Friday’s Crossword on Easy Mode!
In today’s Wordplay column, Deb Amlen writes about the stack of three entries in the center of this grid. For expert hints on today’s puzzle, read her column here. Were you able to solve the Friday puzzle with Easy Mode? We want your input! Share your experience with us on the X platform, on Threads or by email. A Quick Cool-DownHow fast can you solve today’s Mini?
Get a ClueMy favorite clue from last week is 50-Across from Saturday, July 5. If this had been on an earlier day of the week, we would probably have used a question mark here. 50-Across: Alley oops
How are we doing? Thanks for playing! Subscribe to New York Times Games. If you were forwarded this newsletter, you can sign up to receive it regularly here. P.S. The answer to Get a Clue is GUTTER BALL.
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