Help! Anyone got a clue?

[kenny]

Today's NYT mini crossword puzzle has me stumped.

How would you go about solving this?

 

[jaysonsmom]

Pest. I just did the whole puzzle in my head.

 

[Mazlou]

Insert a “T” for the asterisk in all the clues and go fro there

 

[kenny]

Insert a “T” for the asterisk in all the clues and go fro there

Thank you.

This is why I love doing NYT CW puzzles; they force you to think in new and unexpected ways.
The brain gets stuck, in a rut, or lazy thinking in its usual way, which I suspect gets worse as we age.

From Monday to the weekend each day's CW gradually gets harder.
A full-sized CW take me forever to finish, so I've put myself on a training plan to work up to them.

In NYT's CW Archive we can access every CW back to NOV 21, 1993.
I've been doing every Monday mini CW starting in Jan 2018 through today.
When I finished 5 years of the Monday's, I went back to Jan 2018 and and started all the Tuesday's minis

I'm getting better; Some I finish in under a minute.
When I've competed, every daily mini CW since 2018 I'll start on the full-sized Monday's CWs.

The main areas that stump me are sports and anything that is current popular culture like music, films, TV, social media, etc.

I'm not a teenager (THANK GLOB!)
When it expects me to be cool or with it when it comes to stuff that appeals to a young demographic I just look up those answers.

IMO CWS are an excellent way to battle the natural decline of an aging brain.
I also love spending my time learning new stuff.

 

[Lookinagain]

I've been doing the mini's everyday too for a while. Haven't tackled the big one as I'm still working and assume that will take a fair amount of time. I also do the spelling bee thing and wordle. But haven't paid for an account so those go pretty fast. I enjoy them.

 

[pearlsngems]

pest?

 

[monarch64]

First I noticed this puzzle had all the Ts missing in the clues. I looked at the across in question. Then I looked at 6 down and that one was easy for me (SPF), so after that I had the P and the T and “pest” was easier to deduce.

 

[jaysonsmom]

Word games are fun, and I love all of them: scrabble, words with friends, wordle, and crosswords…..I do them all, and whenever I’m on a flight, I HAVE to complete the in flight magazine crossword before resorting to watching a movie.

Unfortunately in my case, all those word games have not kept me from losing my marbles! Sometimes I worry about early onset Alzheimer’s because I can’t remember what I was talking about or what I was doing just 5 minutes ago.

 

[kenny]

...

Unfortunately in my case, all those word games have not kept me from losing my marbles! Sometimes I worry about early onset Alzheimer’s because I can’t remember what I was talking about or what I was doing just 5 minutes ago.

I hear ya.
I've also lost a marble, or 2, or 3+.

But perhaps your glass is half full.
Maybe if you had not been doing those brain-exercising word games you'd be worse off today.

 

[LilAlex]

I use a lot of asterisks when I do these puzzles -- it really speeds things up.

 

[stracci2000]

I use a lot of asterisks when I do these puzzles -- it really speeds things up.

My mother called me on the phone once to help her answer come clues on a crossword.
I said, "What other letters do you have? Do you have any other letters from the down answers?"
She answered "I only do the across ones."
Whaaa???????

 

[VRBeauty]

I used to do the NYT crossword puzzle daily - to the extent that I could. In my experience you definitely do get better as you do the puzzles regularly. I also thought that the Wednesday puzzles were often disproportionately hard as compared to the rest of the weekly sequence - but then again, it’s entirely possible that I developed some sort of a mental block when Wednesday came around!

One reason I don’t do the puzzle as regularly anymore is that I prefer to work it out on paper, and “real” newspapers are becoming harder and more expensive to come by. I did treat myself to a NYTCP page-a-day calendar this year though (in March. On sale - LOL) which is almost as good as doing the puzzle in the daily paper.