The New York Times Will Shortz Picks His Favorite Puzzles: 101 of the Top Crosswords from The New York Times by Will Shortz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The puzzles Shortz has chosen are indeed quality puzzles with clever clues and a very unique twist or theme. We expect this much from the NYT. However, I’m a little disappointed that they are mostly chosen for the art of the puzzlemaker rather than the enjoyment of the solver. It’s like a musician who chooses music based on the technical brilliance of the performer or the original nature of the composition rather than whether or not it sounds good. I create crosswords, too, and really appreciate the difficulty in making some of these work, such as having all the clues form a sentence with their first letters. Clever, but the solver doesn’t know this while solving and the cleverness is largely lost on those of us who work the puzzles. There also aren’t very many in the book. It’s so thin it isn’t even stout enough to serve as a surface to work the puzzles on. You have to work on a table or brace the book against your knee if in bed or a recliner. Notwithstanding these shortcomings, I am enjoying it a great deal.