Jim right here, sitting in for Jeff Chen, who’s getting his weekly balayage therapy.

This puzzle is simply too arduous for a Friday and must run on a Saturday as an alternative. It is unbelievable how usually Shortz screws that up!

Wait a sec, let’s take into consideration this…

There are two methods a crossword turns into tough. The primary is trickery or wordplay that sends you off within the mistaken route. “Eats” in “Eats exterior” is a noun. “Making a lead balloon” requires you to pronounce it as LEED balloon. “Workplace binder” is not a paper holder. “Church tackle” is not a sermon, it is the way you may tackle the individual behind the pulpit. Cryptic crosswords are nothing however these sorts of twists, they usually’re enjoyable. The extra crosswords you do, the extra you educate your mind to flex, the much less seemingly you will be fooled by clues like “Alaska has the best one.”

The second method to enhance problem is extra controversial: obscurities. Understanding that leporids are rabbits or HARES, and {that a} feminine swan is a PEN, really feel like fundamental information. However possibly you do not have youngsters, so there isn’t any method to know Frozen’s realm, otherwise you hate basketball, so you do not know NBA analysts, otherwise you by no means do fast-paced posing or have your hair hand painted. Possibly you have by no means even heard of A Black Woman Sketch Present. Possibly you learn Emma so way back there isn’t any approach you’ll be able to dredge up the vicar’s identify. (Extra on “dredging up” in a future publish.)

These are all obscurities if you do not know them, and when two obscurities cross, it seems like a failure. For example it feels just like the puzzle is a failure, not you, after all.

The issue is that obscurities are within the mind of the be-solver. Completely different life experiences vastly have an effect on what defines frequent information or information value realizing. What’s obscure to you’ll delight others and (I wish to assume) encourage them to hitch the fold.

Erik Agard and Brooke Husic are sensible constructors, they each wish to make extra various crosswords themselves, they usually each wish to push the NYT and different venues towards extra variety by crashing by way of the long-standing canon of acceptable information. That is a problem more durable than a weekend themeless as a result of the established order has a lot inertia. There’s even a perceived monetary danger for the Occasions in the event that they delight a smaller new viewers however annoy their bigger conventional solvers.

This rigidity occurs with all artwork kinds. We should not be shocked that crosswords aren’t any completely different.