If you enjoy the NYT games but want something new too, check out The Daily Baffle at https://dailybaffle.com. There's a range of word and logic puzzles that NYT lovers should appreciate.
It's a combination of 2D Wordle, crosswords and Sudoku. Been running for over 4 years :)
I do Wordle, Pips, Strands, Connections & Sudoku. Of all of them, I find Connections definitely the hardest, even without the occasional US cultural references that I miss.
I still think the ultimate puzzle is the Sunday crossword (followed closely by Thur-Sat), though Connections is great. And definitely difficult (but never feels unfair).
I cancelled my subscription a few years back due to the way NYT was covering the current administration. At the time, I believed they'd never offer a "puzzles only" subscription because then they'd lose a large part of their subs. But, I was wrong. And now they offer a puzzle-only subscription.
There's a great documentary about the Crossword with Will Shortz that came out about a decade ago that's interesting.
Spelling bee is also pretty consistent.
For clarification, these results mean the problems are difficult when some aspect of the problem size grows (e.g. dictionary size, alphabet size, ...). For example for letter boxed, the size of the square can vary, so can the alphabet size and dictionary of words. See Table 1.
It is not really meaningful to talk about the computational complexity of most problems exactly as they are published in NYT, or they end up trivially in P, since the problem description length is bounded by finite English letters, fixed board size, finite English dictionary etc.
There is a theory that for a puzzle game to interesting it has to be NP-hard. Something about how otherwise your brain is too good a latching onto the "trick" and the game is boring.
I do wordle, strands and, when available (once a week) I do the midi.
Wordle and strands together usually take less than 5m. The midi ranges from 3m30 (my best time) to ~12m (my worst).
Not done Letterbox, Pips and Tiles, but I figured that all their puzzles are at the same level of difficulty.
It's interesting, to me, that (from my reading of the paper, which was very quick) they they consider it hard/easy based on a sort of brute-force attempt to find all the answers.
What's the midi? Or do you mean the Mini (Crossword)?
> What's the midi? Or do you mean the Mini (Crossword)?
There's 3x sizeof of crosswords
1. Large Standard New York Times one (subscriber only)
2. Mini (subscriber only)
3. Midi - which is in-between the large and the mini.
Once a week, the Midi is available to non-subcribers for free. A link comes in via email if you are signed up for their games.
> consider four of them not previously studied: Letter Boxed, Pips, Strands and Tiles.
Statistically, approximately zero people play Letter Boxed and Tiles.
They are difficult. As I'm not a native English speaker, I didn't know many of the obscure words or usages, so I actually played these games from a purely computational perspective. I discovered early on that there were a lot of at least NPC problems in them. As my English improved (partially thanks to these games), intuitions began to help me take shortcuts, as if I had become a nondeterministic Turing machine.
> They are difficult. As I'm not a native English speaker
Kudos to you. That would be insanely difficult. There is a lot of American-based pop culture, knowledge, and slang that makes it even difficult if you are a native, English American speaker.
If you enjoy the NYT games but want something new too, check out The Daily Baffle at https://dailybaffle.com. There's a range of word and logic puzzles that NYT lovers should appreciate.
If someone wants a challenging Wordle variant, I've made this: https://squareword.org
It's a combination of 2D Wordle, crosswords and Sudoku. Been running for over 4 years :)
I do Wordle, Pips, Strands, Connections & Sudoku. Of all of them, I find Connections definitely the hardest, even without the occasional US cultural references that I miss.
I still think the ultimate puzzle is the Sunday crossword (followed closely by Thur-Sat), though Connections is great. And definitely difficult (but never feels unfair).
I cancelled my subscription a few years back due to the way NYT was covering the current administration. At the time, I believed they'd never offer a "puzzles only" subscription because then they'd lose a large part of their subs. But, I was wrong. And now they offer a puzzle-only subscription.
There's a great documentary about the Crossword with Will Shortz that came out about a decade ago that's interesting.
Spelling bee is also pretty consistent.
For clarification, these results mean the problems are difficult when some aspect of the problem size grows (e.g. dictionary size, alphabet size, ...). For example for letter boxed, the size of the square can vary, so can the alphabet size and dictionary of words. See Table 1.
It is not really meaningful to talk about the computational complexity of most problems exactly as they are published in NYT, or they end up trivially in P, since the problem description length is bounded by finite English letters, fixed board size, finite English dictionary etc.
There is a theory that for a puzzle game to interesting it has to be NP-hard. Something about how otherwise your brain is too good a latching onto the "trick" and the game is boring.
I do wordle, strands and, when available (once a week) I do the midi.
Wordle and strands together usually take less than 5m. The midi ranges from 3m30 (my best time) to ~12m (my worst).
Not done Letterbox, Pips and Tiles, but I figured that all their puzzles are at the same level of difficulty.
It's interesting, to me, that (from my reading of the paper, which was very quick) they they consider it hard/easy based on a sort of brute-force attempt to find all the answers.
What's the midi? Or do you mean the Mini (Crossword)?
> What's the midi? Or do you mean the Mini (Crossword)?
There's 3x sizeof of crosswords
1. Large Standard New York Times one (subscriber only) 2. Mini (subscriber only) 3. Midi - which is in-between the large and the mini.
Once a week, the Midi is available to non-subcribers for free. A link comes in via email if you are signed up for their games.
> consider four of them not previously studied: Letter Boxed, Pips, Strands and Tiles.
Statistically, approximately zero people play Letter Boxed and Tiles.
They are difficult. As I'm not a native English speaker, I didn't know many of the obscure words or usages, so I actually played these games from a purely computational perspective. I discovered early on that there were a lot of at least NPC problems in them. As my English improved (partially thanks to these games), intuitions began to help me take shortcuts, as if I had become a nondeterministic Turing machine.
> They are difficult. As I'm not a native English speaker
Kudos to you. That would be insanely difficult. There is a lot of American-based pop culture, knowledge, and slang that makes it even difficult if you are a native, English American speaker.