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Comment by mft_ | Hacker News Reader

Nice concept, but US-centric short/slang sports teams' names is a bit misjudged as the very first puzzle when introducing your new game to an international audience. I solved them because they're (mostly) words rather than them having meaning to me.

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I wish there was a more internationally friendly version of NYT Games, they're so fun and I play them daily but a lot US cultural knowledge is required at times

It cuts both ways.

Cryptic Crosswords are almost impenetrable from the US as they're so deep in UK specific words, spellings, and trivia.

there are some good american and canadian cryptics but i agree, it's a largely uk-centred pastime.

Interesting. Any suggestions?

I've looked in the past and didn't have much luck.

lots of suggestions here: https://old.reddit.com/r/crosswords/comments/kqkbrq/what_are...

the new yorker archives are a great place to start https://www.newyorker.com/tag/cryptic-crossword

https://www.minutecryptic.com/

I love cryptic crossword, but there's so many "inside rules" that make them hard to approach for newcomers. It doesn't help that there really aren't a lot of good easy cryptics.

Yeah but that's like saying that there are so many "openings" in chess, it makes it hard for newcomers.

That's the game! The 'inside rules' for a cryptic are what makes it cryptic. Without them you just have a word puzzle.

The thing with chess, even if you don't know the rules, you can still play and (potentially) lose the game. If you don't know some random american trivia, you're stuck forever.

Yep, didn't even notice they were supposed to be sports teams. I wondered why there were so many plural words.

Same complaint. Also, not to poke fun at us too hard but there's probably less sports fans here than the average population :)

Really like the idea though.

For those of you who are put off from trying the game by the category for today’s puzzle being sports, note there are other puzzles from prior days with more general topics.

Click the calendar icon at top of page for the archive.

What the hell is “Planta” though. ;)

These are short little words that are not uncommon even if you are not familiar with sportsball teams. If you struggled unscrambling these words, I'd suggest your vocab is just in dire need of expansion.

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