A New Feature

It should come as no surprise to those of you who know me (and I assume that everyone reading this does) that I love crossword puzzles. On last count, I do five of them a day: New York Times, LA Times, Yahoo Daily, New York Sun, and Houston Chronicle. The NY Times is obviously cream of the crop. Their puzzles are just more fun; it seems like the creators really care about making the puzzles an art form. Bravo, Will Shortz. LA Times isn't bad, but I don't find myself loving it. I just started doing the Sun last week- challenging and well-crafted. Yahoo's crossword is usually pretty basic and the theme clues are often cheap and silly. Finally, the Houston Chronicle, which actually runs a puzzle called CrossSynergy which is syndicated over many MANY papers across the country. It's not as bad as the Yahoo puzzles, but it's certainly not on the level of the New York papers or even the LA Times.

So, why do I mention all of this? I've been trying to force myself to update the blog on a more regular basis (daily, ideally). What better way than to have something substantive to publish every day? Why not crossword times? Why not, indeed, sir.

So, I will be posting my crossword times at the bottom of my blog entries. Please do not laugh at me, I'm no champion solver. Monday through Wednesday my times are respectable (usually around 5-7 minutes), but Thursday and Friday can be brutal. Hopefully I can see some improvement as I work.

I fully intended to start this today, but apparently my timer didn't start when I clicked on it for the NY Times (I'm using a photocopied version until I can afford to subscribe to their online puzzle service, which times it automatically). I didn't notice until I had finished the puzzle, which is a shame because I FLEW through it today. I would be surprised if I was done in 4 minutes today. Oh well, tune in tomorrow to see how it goes.

Cheers,
Eli