Friday, 12/31/10

NYT 2:48 ... LAT 2:05 ... CS 2:00 ... ND 2:11 ... WSJ 7:25 ... MGWC 4:25

Happy new year!

Thursday, 12/30/10

NYT 2:55 ... LAT 2:37 ... CS 1:40 ... ND 1:57 ... BEQ 2:52 ... AR #8 (p) 19:20

Wednesday, 12/29/10

NYT 2:32 ... LAT 2:13 ... CS 2:22 ... ND 1:49

Tuesday, 12/28/10

NYT 1:42 ... LAT 1:47 ... CS 1:39 ... ND 1:10 ... BT 2:47 ... TO 2:55

Monday, 12/27/10

NYT 1:27 ... LAT 1:36 ... CS 1:50 ... ND 1:20 ... JON 1:59 ... BEQ 3:58

Sunday, 12/26/10

NYT 4:40 ... LAT 5:56 ... MR 4:15 ... BG 6:09 ... ND 3:31 ... LATB 3:56 ... CS 2:45 ... WP 4:55 ... Wry Tangles (p) 6:35 & 12:55

Saturday, 12/25/10

NYT 4:21 ... LAT 2:38 ... CS 1:58 ... ND 11:28

Friday, 12/24/10

NYT 3:25 ... LAT 2:12 ... CS 1:35 ... ND 2:15 ... WSJ 5:48 ... MGWC 4:00 ... AR #7 13:30

Thursday, 12/23/10

NYT 2:49 ... LAT 2:08 ... CS 1:49 ... ND 1:58 ... BEQ 2:14

Wednesday, 12/22/10

NYT 2:40 ... LAT 1:51 ... CS 1:48 ... ND 1:57

The last ~30 seconds of the NYT was finding my mistake - the last letter of 45D, where I initially had SPORTS, so that area was messy for a while...

Tuesday, 12/21/10

NYT 1:47 ... LAT 1:44 ... CS 1:43 ... ND 1:32 ... BT 2:49 ... TO 2:35

Monday, 12/20/10

NYT 1:55 ... LAT 1:51 ... CS 1:44 ... ND 1:20 ... JON 2:06 ... BEQ 3:26

I'm taking the day off. See you Tuesday afternoon...

Sunday, 12/19/10

NYT 7:18 ... LAT 4:25 ... MR 4:10 ... BG 3:51 ... ND 4:04 ... CS 2:03 ... WP 3:13 ... Acrostic 5:45

Saturday, 12/18/10

NYT 4:22 ... LAT 2:55 ... CS 1:58 ... ND 4:52 ... Hex Cryptic (p) 25:30

Friday, 12/17/10

NYT 2:57 ... LAT 2:02 ... CS 1:56 ... ND 2:07 ... CHE 2:53 ... WSJ 5:05 ... JH/BEQ 3:09 ... MGWC 3:31

Thursday, 12/16/10

NYT 2:25 ... LAT 2:33 ... CS 1:46 ... ND 2:19 ... BEQ 2:13

Wednesday, 12/15/10

NYT 2:12 ... LAT 2:14 ... CS 1:45 ... ND 1:20

Tuesday, 12/14/10

NYT (p) 2:05 ... LAT (p) 2:13 ... CS (p) 2:29 ... ND (p) 1:54 ... BT 2:27 ... TO 2:31 ... AR (#5) 15:30 ... AR (#6) 19:40

Solved the NYT, LAT, and ND on camera for a segment on LX New York, an NBC "lifestyle" show airing at 5pm.

Monday, 12/13/10

NYT 1:36 ... LAT 1:16 ... CS 1:34 ... ND 1:06 ... JON 1:54 ... BEQ 2:40

Hey, new record on the Newsday. And LAT. And should have been on the NYT, but I fumbled for a few seconds and had a typo when I finished around 1:18. I did do more puzzles than usual to warm up... or rather, to get my brain in gear for a phone interview with Irish radio.

Sunday, 12/12/10

NYT 5:06 ... LAT 4:21 ... MR 3:17* ... BG 4:25 ... ND 3:08 ... LATB 4:02 ... CS 3:53 ... WP 4:25

* I solved this puzzle a couple weeks ago; it was previously published on August 3, 2003. At least a third of this year's Merl Reagle puzzles have been reruns, as I've discovered while solving my way through the last decade. Of course, nobody remembers puzzles from seven or eight years ago, so that's fair to the solvers -- I was just a little disheartened to learn that Merl is only human, and isn't coming up with a clever new idea every single week!

Saturday, 12/11/10

NYT 4:15 ... LAT 2:28 ... CS 1:49 ... ND 4:52 ... Rows Garden (p) 30+ before googling ... TPP Spiral (p) 3:20

Friday, 12/10/10 and Links

NYT 4:35 ... LAT 2:19 ... CS 1:52 ... ND 2:00 ... CHE 1:39 ... WSJ 5:08 ... MGWC 2:08

Fifteen Minutes of Fame update:

Brief mention on NY1's "In the Papers" segment (starting around 3:30). Host Pat Kiernan is better known to puzzlers as the emcee of the awesome and defunct game show World Series of Pop Culture.

Slightly less brief mention on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" (starting around 24:00) ... transcript here

Link on Jason Kottke's uber-famous blog

ABA Journal piece about my lawyer parents

The NYT piece was the second-most-shared on Facebook for a while on Monday night, and as high as seventh on the most-emailed list on Tuesday. I'm scheduled to talk to an Irish radio programme on Monday, and maybe do a segment on Tuesday on a local NYC TV show.

Thursday, 12/9/10

NYT 2:53 ... LAT 2:11 ... CS 2:07 ... ND 1:50 ... BEQ 2:24 ... FB 5:27

Wednesday, 12/8/10

NYT 2:17 ... LAT 1:54 ... CS 1:42 ... ND 1:44

Tuesday, 12/7/10

NYT 1:59 ... LAT 1:50 ... CS 1:50 ... ND 1:35 ... BT 2:14 ... TO 2:05 ... Science Times 2:03

Welcome, people who clicked on the NYT's link! As the title says, this isn't really a blog. Most of the actual content here can be found under the tags ACPT and MISCELLANY. See below for discussion of the NYT article...

Read Anything Interesting Today?

My fifteen minutes have arrived! I'll comment more about the article later...

...It's later. So how cool is that video? I came into the studio to find three still cameras mounted at different angles. They were planning to have me solve in the actual newspaper, which looks better, but I didn't think that would work because I only use pencil -- a fortunate decision because of all the erasing I had to do. By the way, that's not me playing the public-domain music over the video. They asked if I wanted to record some of my own music to use, but I had to decline because I don't have any music.

As for the article -- a much longer piece than I was expecting -- it's remarkably well-written and accurate. I guess that's not so remarkable, because Denise Grady is one of the top writers at the Times (865 articles!). What surprised me was how much she mined out of a single hour-long lunch (sans tape recorder), a few minutes at the photo session, and a couple of short phone conversations.

I can't really quibble with any of the content, except the implication that I actually knew "the name of Gorbachev's wife (Raisa), a synonym for no-good (dadblasted), the Rangers coach in 1994 (Keenan), a platinum-group element (iridium) and the meaning of objurgation (rant)?" Yes, RAISA was a Tuesday-level gimme, I'm aware of an element called IRIDIUM, and I knew I'd heard of Mike KEENAN but couldn't pull out the name without a bunch of letters. But the others came mostly from crosses -- you'll note that I had a single empty box in the NE corner for a while, because I hadn't a clue what "objurgation" might mean! As you are no doubt aware, crossword skill isn't necessarily about knowing everything, but about making some good guesses that form legitimate answers in both directions.

One other little "correction" in the chronology of my puzzle addiction: I had bought a few NYT crossword books and solved them non-obsessively for about a year before seeing Wordplay, and it was discovering the online community (and plethora of puzzles) that kicked me into high gear. There are two demonstrable factual errors in the piece, and they're both my fault! I finished 45th at my first tournament, not "50-somethingth," as I misremembered; and the sudoku champion's prize is $10,000, not $20,000, which makes it a little harder to complain about the purse at the ACPT.

Also, I feel like I should have my musical-theater-nerd card revoked, because that answer that stumped me in a Saturday puzzle last month? I was reminded a few days ago that it's in a Sondheim lyric. "WIRE-SPOKE wheel in America!"

Finally, how's this for irony? (Seriously... does this qualify as irony? So little actually does.) This afternoon, mere minutes before an email arrived from Ms. Grady telling me the story was posted online, I received another message from the Times. It was an automated message from the billing department, notifying me that my credit-card information was out of date, and my Premium Crosswords subscription couldn't be renewed automatically.

Monday, 12/6/10

NYT 1:32 ... LAT 1:27 ... CS 1:56 ... ND 1:24 ... JON 1:48 ... BEQ 4:14

Sunday, 12/5/10

NYT 4:51 ... LAT 4:09 ... MR 5:20 ... BG 4:39 ... ND 3:24 ... CS 2:40 ... WP 4:50 ... Acrostic 14:40

Saturday, 12/4/10

NYT 4:14 ... LAT 2:33 ... CS 2:01 ... ND 7:32 ... Acrostic 6:25

Inspired by Trip's monthly rundowns, discussion of my solving habits on other blogs, and the likelihood that I'll get a traffic spike this Tuesday (playin' it coy!) and want to have some content here, I decided to count how many puzzles I solved this week (11/28-12/4). I wasn't working much, so I spent more time than usual at home doing crosswords. (Saturday I'll be busy and not solving, so I can count now, on Friday night.) So:

42 - current puzzles with times posted here
82 - NYT from 1996
18 - WSJ from 2003-4
14 - LAT from 2007
21 - CS from 1997 [Downs only. I've found this a fun way to solve these puzzles in Across Lite (usually while watching Conan) - drag the Across/Down divider bar all the way up, and voila, it's Downs only. Every third puzzle or so, I need some help from "Check All" or Acrosses to finish.]
14 - in books that I'm trying to move from the "half done" shelf to the "done" shelf: Pop Culture Crosswords (done!), 10-Minute Crosswords, and Baseball Crosswords
9 - variety cryptics: 2 by Kegler, 2 by Hex, 5 by Maltby

...for a total of... holy crap, I swear I didn't rig this... exactly 200 in six days. Yeah, my goal is to do all the crosswords. All of them! (Well, not the ones edited by Timothy Parker.)

Friday, 12/3/10

NYT 3:30 ... LAT 2:05 ... CS 1:38 ... ND 2:30 ... CHE 2:15 ... WSJ 4:47 ... MGWC 2:35

Thursday, 12/2/10

NYT 2:25 ... LAT 2:05 ... CS 1:38 ... ND 2:05 ... BEQ 4:28 ... FB 4:03

Wednesday, 12/1/10

NYT 2:39 ... LAT 1:50 ... CS 2:14 ... ND 1:47 ... PB2 2:18 ... AR (p) 22:30