The New York Times Ferocious Crosswords: 150 Hard Puzzles

By The New York Times

Book Overview

Are you tough enough? Find out with the hardest crossword puzzles from the New York Times

More and more crossword fans want to test their skills against the fiercest puzzles the Times has to offer.

* 150 challenging New York Times crosswords
* Fresh vocabulary and wordplay
* Edited by Will Shortz

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312541708
• ISBN13: 9780312541705
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Another great book from Shortz!

I purchased two of Will Shortz's books for my father and he absolutely loves them! He frequently laughed out loud at Shortz's off beat sense of humor in his clues. Great book. Buy it!

Ferocious - try impossible

I am on Crossword #49 and have fully completed only two so far. I will go back and try again before peeking at some of the answers. If you think you are good at crosswords like the Sunday New York Times puzzle, try this book. I consider myself in the excellent category in solving crosswords. This book makes me think again. But I love the challenge. I'm thinking if I complete 10 out of 150 I'm doing good but I'm not giving up until I try each one at least five times. I dare you to try it.

Definitely harder puzzles

It's been a long time since I've had any trouble doing a crossword puzzle, and I usually have to make rules for myself to slow myself down. These puzzles are refreshingly difficult. In part, for me, the difficulty lies in the pop culture references with which I am unfamiliar, but it's also due to the oddness and obscurity of both clues and answers. Not unfairly so, but unusual. I am very much enjoying these puzzles--I even make mistakes that I have to correct as I solve. What fun!

Tough xwords

Very tough crosswords--just what I like! If my head doesn't hurt, then they're not hard enough! New York Times needs to publish a hardness scale along with their crossword puzzle titles. Otherwise, super! Looking for more of the same.

Definitely the toughest of the tough

This book of 150 New York Times reprints seems like a selected group of the harder Friday and Saturday puzzles. My usual solving times are 20 minutes for Friday and 30 minutes for Saturday, but these are taking me longer, more like 45 minutes. (I'm no champion solver but I'm not bad either.) My only objection is that some of the puzzles use too many proper names and obscure trivia, at times grouped in a single area making success without reference books much harder (shades of Maleska, but these are all Shortz-era puzzles). Definitely well worth buying if you haven't been solving the Times every day for the last five years. (If you have been a regular solver then these puzzles will not be new to you.)