It’s All Outside World Today, Games Edition

Today’s topic – puzzles and choices.

NYT, 23 March 2025. Some clues are easier than others.

How The Sausage Is Made

These were supposed to be spread over three Outside World introductions this week. Between the dog & my foot, Monday ended up being a long day. I did not have the brain space to start this for the Tuesday post. The dog post was not compatible with Look! Games! So I moved the dog post from Thursday to Wednesday & lumped all of this together today. [Foot, Dog]

Horses are fine, albeit underreported.

Enjoy.

Day One

Awareness of the outside world. Small candle. I am not pleased with how the mainstream media is addressing the current moment. Therefore, I have canceled my NY Times account. I deliberately took their exit survey and told them why, repeatedly. The cancellation includes the crossword puzzle. (Gasp!) It’s not as much of a hardship as it would have been in the past, see below.

Since I was blathering on at length, this section would have run after the body of the post.

As of last Sunday, I am not doing the NY Times crossword any more. I had stopped for a while recently due to a problem with my account. I restarted my subscription in order to practice for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, for which I had already signed up. It was last weekend. More on this at some point.

I discovered that I have hit a plateau with the crossword. I can do the puzzles with relative ease. Interesting but not challenging.

I have no interest in going for speed. [Let The Boxes Begin, American Crossword Puzzle Tournament 2021] explanation

I’m not perfect, but I get my gold star. [Pondering The Rules Of Play, The 44th Annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament] 2022, explanation

I’ve been doing these daily, or close to, since 2010. [Totally Off Topic Brag] 2019

Maybe it’s time for a change. But mostly the current moment. If & when that changes, I would go back.

Day Two

Awareness of the outside world. In solidarity with no longer doing the NYT crossword, I have also stopped solving the associated free puzzles: Strands, Connections, & Wordle. Spelling Bee went away with my subscription. I do kinda miss that one. I could get to genius but it took a while. I gave up on Queen Bee due to an excessive amount of weird words. The smallest of candles, but one fewer set of eyeballs on the ads. [Six-Letter Word For Repeat Performance, 2021, I discuss Spelling Bee]

Day Three

Awareness of the outside world. I talked about puzzles I am not doing. Here are some I am doing. Waffle. Align. Boston Globe. Free. Other puzzles require a subscription. Squaredle. Shares the family name but is more a word search than a Wordle clone. Speaking clone-dles: Squardle, (note similarity of name), Quordle by Merriam-Webster, Octordle by Britannica. I’ll do Quordle, if I do any of these, and one is enough. Plus, it’s weird to do the knock-off without doing the original. There are other crosswords available online, but am giving the entire genre a miss, for reasons stated. Besides, NYT is the gold standard.

Coda

Answer: BIG GREEN

Onwards!
Katherine