Crossword Puzzle Digression

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

When I was a kid, my father introduced me to the New York Times Crossword Puzzle. Dad commuted from our house to New York City every weekday, and often rode the Long Island RailRoad. He took the puzzle every day. He solved it in pen. He also solved the cryptograms in pen. I was impressed.

He taught me some basic logic for the solution of both puzzles. I did the cryptograms for awhile, but didn’t get into the crossword puzzle until a few years ago. My wife and I try to do it every Thursday through Sunday.

You may not know this (I didn’t, until my dad tipped me off a few years ago)….

…but the NYT puzzle gets progressively harder from Mon. to Sat. then gets a little easier on Sunday. Friday and Saturday puzzles tend to be brutal. Sunday is challenging, but not so hard that you can’t relax with it.

My team-mate (my wife) and I had been stumped by a corner of the puzzle from last Friday. It was driving us nuts (who the heck is Al Leitner?). Anyway, we usually get ‘em all within a day or two, but this one was tough, so I hit the web and googled some clues. I don’t like to cheat (OK, I do, but my wife has a little more backbone than I, and she usually won’t let me look up an answer until we’ve given it a few days).

When I googled the clue “boho-chic footwear” (something I feel a certain amount of pride in not knowing), the first site listed was “Rex Parker does the NYT Crossword Puzzle.”

Rex is a puzzle-meister, who keeps a blog of exactly how he solved each clue of each NYT puzzle, a day after the puzzle comes out.

What’s cool about it, is even when you normally “cheat” and look up answers, you often don’t know why the answer is the answer (”Ugg boots?” sheesh!) But Rex gives you his reasoning behind how he came up with the answers, along with plenty of general insights into the puzzle, and some witty banter. So instead of simply cheating (googling, looking up the answers the next day in the paper, etc.), and just “getting the answer,” with Rex, you actually learn something (imagine that!)

From now on, Rex’s site will be my “go-to” site when we’re stumped. I’ll try to resist as much as I can, although it’ll be tempting to go there often.

He’s also got a noir/cool site about Vintage Paperbacks and Other Cultural Detritus at Pop Sensation

Here’s a hint about the NYT puzzle. Although it’s fun to do in the paper, we live in a rural area of NY where there’s no home-delivery of the the paper. I got tired of going into the local truckstop (three miles away) four times a week (especially on winter days) just to pay an inflated, upstate price for the Times. So we subscribe to it online now. Not the whole paper, just the puzzle. It’s only $39.95 a year.

Here’s a cool benefit of subscribing. Not only does your subscription come with Across Lite (a program you use to do the puzzle with on your computer) but you can print it out, too. We print it out on two pages, effectively making the puzzle about four to eight times larger than the one in the paper. At my age (born circa 400 a.c.e.) that is easier on the eyes, and easier to do with a partner (even if she is much younger).

If you have children, the Monday through Wednesday New York Times crossword puzzle is a good way to get them started on a life-long, fun mind-exercise.

’nuff said,

Professor Homunculus


Tags: