The New York Times Strictly Medium Crossword Puzzles Volume 1: 200 Medium Puzzles Paperback – February 2, 2021

Love this crossword puzzle book! All the puzzles are medium toughness which would be about a Wednesday on the app/in the newspaper.

Good little book of puzzles. I like the size as I can slip it in my purse.

Minus one star for the puzzles where there is absolutely no chance in figuring out the theme, e.g. the answers have a figure 8 that can be in one answer interpreted as the number eight and in another answer as a double-O.

I love doing crosswords on the computer but wanted to try a paper version and this didn't disappoint. Difficulty is right at the expected level (medium). Good sized book and good quality. Would recommend.

Duplicates from the Wednesday books. Missing hints, clues, and italics that were probably included when puzzles first appeared in NYT. Some shading errors. Lacks the perforations that the take-it-with-you books have to numbers on the right get torn off if you're not super careful tearing out pages. (I do all my puzzles on a clipboard .) But they all have a theme and are fun to solve, even the 2nd time 'round.

Gof it as a gift for my crossword loving husband. He is enjoying it. Says it's good I didn't get easy one or difficult one. This one is in the middle and also challenging.

I have taken to doing a daily crossword puzzle to keep my mental acuity sharp and have gone through several other books and decided to try the NYT Medium puzzles. First, as others have pointed out, there are no titles on the puzzles, which often would lend a clue. Second, the answers are incredibly obtuse and under the guise of being 'clever' the authors create puzzles that are just ridiculous. For instance the puzzle that had no T's in it, but if you looked at the black spaces, they were shaped like a T and counted as either a leading or trailing (or both) T in your answers. Another puzzle had grey boxes with various iterations of the word DICE that were to be included in your answers. And finally the puzzle that made me throw the book in the trash, had the number 8 in boxes. Crossword puzzle where the answer required the number 8?! What the &*#& is that??? And when read horizontally, it was pronounced as "ate" as in On a D8 becomes On a Date. But read vertically the 8 is supposed to be a double O O like as in FOOL, UNCOOL, POOL, etc. Ridiculous. That's not a crossword puzzle with any chance of being solved. Will Shortz should be ashamed of himself for lending his name to such crappy puzzles.

I picked up The New York Times Strictly Medium Crossword Puzzles Volume 1 as part of my effort to reduce screen time and I remembered how much I prefer actually having a pencil in my hand (and no alerts going off) when doing puzzles. Just the right level of difficulty. If you’re looking to unplug and exercise your brain, this book is a fantastic choice.