Friday, 9/27/19

Add your times here.


Dear "Not a Blog" "readers":
I've decided to quit speed-solving for the foreseeable future. The time I have to spend on crosswords has been dwindling this year, and my personal and work lives are going to keep getting busier. For the last 11 years, I've tried to be in peak form when I'm solving the daily crosswords, so I can post the fastest possible times. If it's too early in the day, too late in the day, I'm not sober enough, not in the right mood, I put off solving until I have time to do it "right".

This isn't sustainable if I want to continue enjoying this hobby. This summer I took a six-week "sabbatical" when I was working on two musicals at once, and didn't do any crosswords at all except the ones I'm paid to test-solve. I had to force myself to collect the .puz files and get back into regular solving, and I've still got a huge backlog. I want to keep solving as many quality puzzles as I can, and keep competing in the ACPT, but I'm releasing myself from the self-imposed pressure of sharing my solving times here.

I'm happy to continue hosting daily spreadsheets, but won't spend the time to set up the daily docs and blog posts. This has always been a manual process - it only takes 30-60 seconds per day, but that adds up. Yes, I have typed out "Add your times here." more than 2,500 times. If any of you friendly folks who enjoy the spreadsheet are interested in taking over (either on this site or your own), please get in touch. I've got posts scheduled for the next few weeks.

Now I need to figure out how I'm going to catch up with the 75+ Rows Garden puzzles that have been piling up on my desk...