NOT A FAQ

What's all this, then?

I started using this "blog" in late 2008 to keep track of my daily crossword solving times, because Microsoft Excel is too difficult. If you're not interested in that, or in sporadic crossword-related notes and digressions, you won't want to check in often!

What are those letters and numbers?

The letters are the crossword's publisher, the numbers are the minutes and seconds it took me to solve it.

NYT (daily) - New York Times, edited by Will Shortz
LAT (daily) - Los Angeles Times, edited by Rich Norris
CS (daily) - CrosSynergy syndicate, peer-edited by about 20 contributing constructors
ND (daily) - Newsday, edited by Stanley Newman
BEQ (Mon/Thu) - Brendan Emmett Quigley's self-published puzzles
JON (Monday) - Jonesin', syndicated alt-weekly by Matt Jones, edited by Matt Gaffney
BT (Tuesday) - Ink Well, syndicated alt-weekly by Ben Tausig
TO (Tuesday) - The Onion, by a rotating cast of 8, edited by Ben Tausig
FB (Thursday) - Fireball Crosswords, available by subscription, edited by Peter Gordon
MGWC (Friday) - Matt Gaffney's Weekly Crossword Contest
CHE (Friday) - Chronicle of Higher Education, edited by Patrick Berry
WSJ (Friday, 21x21) - Wall Street Journal, edited by Mike Shenk
MR (Sunday, 21x21) - syndicated puzzle by Merl Reagle
BG (Sunday, 21x21) - Boston Globe, by Henry Hook alternating with Emily Cox & Henry Rathvon
WP (Sunday) - Washington Post Puzzler, by a rotating cast of 5, edited by Peter Gordon
Acrostic, Diagramless, Cryptic, etc. (Saturday/Sunday) - Variety puzzles from the Wall Street Journal (Saturday, ed. Mike Shenk) and New York Times (Sunday, ed. Will Shortz)
AR - Aries Puzzles, Rows Garden variety puzzles by Andrew Ries

SUN (weekdays) - New York Sun, edited by Peter Gordon, until February 2009
LATB - LA Times Sunday Calendar puzzle by Sylvia Bursztyn, until January 2011

(p) - indicates solving with pencil/paper, as opposed to Across Lite. For me, the computer is significantly faster.
* - indicates that the time "doesn't count" due to errors, cheating, computer snafu, or other circumstance.