How to Solve the New York Times Crossword Puzzle

For crossword puzzle enthusiasts, completing the "New York Times" oversized Sunday puzzle (which appears every week in the magazine section) can be as addictive as sex, and often more rewarding. But even if you're a novice puzzler, there's no need to be intimidated by their fiendishly clever wordsmiths-you can make valuable headway by following these steps.

Things You'll Need

• New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle

Instructions

1. Don't jump in right away. Before you plunge in and start filling in squares, look at the puzzle as a whole, especially at its title (which will usually be an obscure pun harboring a useful clue). You should also match up the longer-than-usual rows and columns in the puzzle with their corresponding clues, which will often be followed by a question mark (meaning these are the answers where some form of wordplay will be involved).

2. Get out your pencil. Only veteran "New York Times" Sunday puzzle enthusiasts are entitled to fill in their letters in ink (in fact, some competitive puzzlers like to show off their letter-perfect, uncrossed-out, inked-in puzzles to envious spouses). As a beginner, though, you'll probably wind up making some mistakes, and it's easier to erase a penciled-in goof than smudge out an inked-in error.

3. Start small. Even an especially difficult Sunday "Times" puzzle will usually be seeded with fairly easy entries, like "Lennon's survivor" (Ono) or "famous author Stephen ____" (King). This is the time to pull out all the usual crossword puzzle tricks, such as filling out all the "s" s in plural entries or "ed" in past-tense entries (though be careful, as the "Times" is notorious for throwing curveballs, like using the Latin suffix "i" for a plural).

4. Try to attack one of the themed entries. The key to solving the Sunday puzzle is figuring out the theme-for example, the long entries may be common expressions with a 2-letter segment either inserted or deleted (the clue to which, as noted above, you'll find in the puzzle's title). Sometimes, if you can figure out the trick to one of the long rows or columns, you can solve the others without even having to fill in the adjacent squares.

5. Don't be ashamed of cheating. Even veteran crossworders sometimes resort to googling clues on the Internet (if you're not a TV buff, say, the clue "Desperate Housewife Eva _____" will be completely unsolvable if you don't look it up). The "Times" also prints a 900 number that you can call for the answers to especially inscrutable clues, but this will cost you about $1.50 per minute.