Why is three weeks recommended to adjust the humidity, and whatever else, to where it should be when the newly arrived cigars have been placed in a properly maintained (rH) humidor. That seems awfully long.

Maybe there is some other factor in play.
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:-) Never taken me more than a couple/3 days.
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Well I learned my lesson the hard way about the rule of 3s (there is none). There is no set time. You should just put your new sticks in the humi and when they have have adjusted to your liking you may take one out and smoke it.
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Some cigars arrive extremely wet, if so its best to let them acclimate slowly. This could take several weeks if you keep your cigars in the 60-62% range. If you just want to try one you can dry box it for a day and try it out. I've often given in to temptation and smoked right off the truck(ROTT). :-)
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Bob is wise. Just depends where you like to smoke them. I prefer 62% or so as well.
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If I were putting a bunch of wet sticks (70%RH) in a desktop that had been maintained at 60ish RH, I'd definately want to bring the humidor back down slowly, slow being a month or so. I find that if I dry them real quick that they get rigor mortis, then they are super hard to bring back to the land of the living.
If they're the same RH as your humi, I'd say "smoke away".

If you want to check your sticks that just arrived, you can put them in a gallon ziplock with your hygrometer overnight (or longer) to check at what RH they were stored. Try to squeeze out as much air from the bag as possible so that there is airflow, but not a lot of air. That'd just make the test take longer.
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