Sunday, 1/1/12

Happy New Year! Add your times here.



I think I'm taking a couple of days off, but the spreadsheets are scheduled to post...

Monday, 12/26/11

Add your times here!



So if BEQ is now publishing at 6pm, probably his puzzles should move back a day on the blog schedule... Never mind, his schedule isn't changing after all.

Sunday, 12/25/11

Merry Christmas! Add your times here. Or take the day off! I won't be offended. Hope everybody had a lovely holiday weekend.

Tuesday, 12/20/11



Click to add your times!

I'm flying to San Francisco early this morning, so I'll be a little late with the solving.

Wednesday, 12/14/11

Click here to add your times!



I did some updating of the blogroll. Next up, the FAQ. Maybe a redesign? Nah, everybody loves the color scheme.

Monday, 12/12/11

Click to add your times!

Housekeeping bits: I will include Jonesin' on Tuesdays, and AV Club/Inkwell on Wednesdays, because I think that's when people are likelier to solve them. Let me know if you have a preference. For next weekend (and tomorrow with Andrew's Rows Garden), I think we can dispense with the "p" for "paper" when there's no other way to solve it -- like diagramless and other variety puzzles, except for acrostics of course...

Friday, 12/9/11

Thanks for chiming in yesterday!  This format should keep me interested for the foreseeable future.

I'll plan to auto-post each day at 10pm (6pm on weekends), so you don't have to wait until I've solved.  I'll leave a column on the right in case there's something I've missed - feel free to add a heading. (By the way, now that Peter Gordon's The Week crossword is available in Across Lite, I'm adding it to the rotation... as soon as I find out what day it publishes.)

Link to today's Google doc.


MORNING ADDENDUM: Don't miss the BEQ guest puzzle today! I don't know how to make the embedded spreadsheet scrollable... I can see the rightmost column by click-dragging inside. Sometime I'll look at re-formatting the blog so the main column here is wider.

Thursday, 12/8/11

Here's the spreadsheet idea I mentioned yesterday. Click here to add your times if you want to play. There's no registration or anything, just enter a name and some numbers, and the embedded spreadsheet updates automatically (it will say "All changes saved" at the top of the screen).



Wednesday, 12/7/11

NYT 1:36 ... LAT 2:02 ... CS 1:51 ... ND 1:22

It's been almost three years since I started posting my times every day, and I don't think I want to continue indefinitely.  What's the point?  My solving isn't accelerating anymore, and there's enough data here for... I don't know what, but 6,000 data points should be statistically sufficient for it.

Would anybody be disappointed if I only updated this site on the rare occasions when I have something useful to share?  You can email me directly or comment.  The other idea I had is to make this interactive -- if a half-dozen of you were willing to enter your times into a Google doc, through a handy link here that I'd update daily, we would have a more robust (and permanent) version of the Crossword Fiend leaderboard.  I've tried that out and will include it on tomorrow's post so you can see what I mean.

Tuesday, 12/6/11

NYT 1:36 ... LAT 1:36 ... CS 1:44 ... ND 1:21 ... BT 2:37 ... TO 2:07

Kinda funny - two straight days with identical NYT and LAT times.

Monday, 12/5/11

NYT 1:23 ... LAT 1:23 ... CS 1:51 ... ND 1:16 ... JON 2:11 ... BEQ 4:17

Sunday, 12/4/11

NYT 5:32 ... LAT 3:53 ... MR 3:57 ... BG 3:51 ... ND 3:39 ... CS 3:05 ... WP 2:50 ... Acrostic 5:15

Saturday, 12/3/11

NYT 2:42 ... LAT 2:24 ... CS 1:34 ... ND 4:04 ... Hex Cryptic (p) 12:45

Friday, 12/2/11

NYT (p) 3:28 ... LAT (p) 2:45 ... CS (p) 1:54 ... ND (p) 2:17 ... CHE (p) 3:31 ... WSJ (p) 6:11 ... BEQ/IL (p) 2:45 ... MWGC 1:47 ... PB2 (p) 5:52

Thursday, 12/1/11

NYT (p) 3:05 ... LAT (p) 3:04 ... CS (p) 2:58 ... ND (p) 2:12 ... BEQ (p) 5:06 ... TPP (p) 5:54

I had three 19x19 website puzzles in the queue (Jangler's latest, Blindauer's December), but I picked Trip's to print out today in honor of his Across Lite aversion...