Administrivial Puzzle Contest Alert! All the puzzles this week, from Monday to Saturday, have been created by one person, Patrick Blindauer. Keep your solutions handy, because the Saturday puzzle conceals a meta-challenge involving the solution grids of all six. When you have the answer to the meta-challenge, send it to crossword@nytimes.com. (Please do not post them here on the blog; they will not be counted as submissions.) Twenty correct solvers, chosen at random, whose entries are received by 6:00 p.m. E.T. Sunday, Oct. 26, 2014, will win one-year online subscriptions to the New York Times crossword. Only one entry per person, please. The answer and winners’ names will appear on Friday, Oct. 31, at www.nytimes.com/wordplay. Good luck to all who enter!
Administrivial Links Alert! As many of you have noticed, the box that contains the links to the puzzle and the syndicated Wordplay posts is not working. I am removing it from posts until it gets fixed, so until then, please download your copy of the puzzle from the main puzzle page. Thank you for your patience.
FRIDAY PUZZLE – This whole solving week has felt weird, hasn’t it? We know that the Monday through Saturday puzzles are a suite that must be solved as part of the crossword contest, yet even though the Monday through Friday puzzles are “normal” puzzles, many people have debated as to whether the puzzles “feel” like they belonged on the days they were run. I’m not so much a believer in expecting a Friday puzzle to “feel” exactly like a Friday puzzle, but I can understand other people’s expectations.
And yet, today’s puzzle did feel remarkably easy to me, what with the fill-in-the-blanks and other eased-up clues. Could Patrick Blindauer and Will Shortz be throwing us a bone before the Saturday met- challenge? That central diagonal of black squares in today’s grid sure looks like a bone, but my SPIDEY sense tells me it’s more of a red herring than anything else. Your mileage may vary, of course.
There’s no theme to decipher here, but we have a clean grid and lots of longish entries on which to crunch. I liked ORAL EXAMS, RED CARPET, ZIP UP, TURN LOOSE, GIN JOINTS, PAMPLONA, ORG CHART and IT’S A BLAST.
Clue(s) of the Day for me were “Groups with play dates?” for TROUPES and “Times for speaking one’s mind?” for ORAL EXAMS.
Do you have all of your solutions from this week? Keep them handy, because the Saturday puzzle will give you instructions for solving the meta-challenge. I will be discussing the Saturday puzzle on its own without any guesses as to the meta answer, and I would like to remind you to please avoid doing so on that blog post. When you have the answer to the meta-challenge, please email your contest submission to the address above. Do not post them in the blog comments, as we cannot include them as legitimate submissions.
In the meantime, let’s hear from our constructor:
Constructor’s Notes
My first Friday New York Times puzzle! As of tomorrow I will have “hit for the cycle” (had a puzzle on every day of the week), but it took a weeklong contest to make it happen since I don’t generally write themeless puzzles. And now I remember why … they’re really hard to make well. This one went through lots and lots of versions before settling on this grid; hope y’all have some time to enjoy it.
Congratulations on hitting for the cycle, Mr. Blindauer! If you’d like to see how many constructors have done the same, click here.
Of all the crossword puzzle venues in all the towns in all the world, Patrick Blindauer had to walk into ours. Tomorrow we get the final piece of the puzzle, and then it’s up to you to figure out where Mr. Blindauer wants you to go with it.
Your thoughts?