Do you do crossword puzzles?

After I had chemo, my brain fell out ew…what a mess! so I took up doing crosswords as a way to kind of kick-start mentation. It really helped me get back on track with my thought processes, and exercising those little neurons. I find it both challenging and relaxing, but rarely frustrating, as I enjoy trying to find answers.

I do. Best tip I have is to go through the puzzle once and fill in the words you know for sure. If you have time, go through it again. Then let it sit for at least an hour. In that time, your brain will have been working and you will have more words you know or are pretty sure are correct.
If the puzzle is just too hard for you, toss it. Then it isn’t fun any more. I seldom look up words and in the end, I don’t check if I’m right or wrong. It’s the process I enjoy, not the satisfaction that I’m correct. My favorite? The New York Times Sunday puzzle. I’m not always able to complete them, but when I do, I feel quite self satisfied.

I don’t have the time. When I did have the time, however, I could hardly get through the simplest of crossword puzzles. I’m not sure what that says about me.

5 across: “The clear liquid that comes out of the tap at the kitchen sink.”

W __ T __ R

me: “I give up!”

I’m rubbish at crosswords and I only do them when sudoku is not available.

I’m a crossword freak—totally addicted. I’ve moved to cryptic crosswords recently, and those challenge the brain in new ways. I find them immensely relaxing, as I can take my entire focus to the puzzle and shut out the other noise. It’s one of my life goals to author one of the New York Times themed crosswords for their weekend magazine.

As far as tips—I’d say stay with it. I can remember trying to work my first NY Times puzzle, and it was very frustrating. But over time, you learn the lingo of the puzzle crafters. The more complex puzzles allow you to really exercise your linguistic skills and view possible responses as options if the clue is seeking a verb, a noun, a slang term, etc. See how many solutions you can develop for alternate scenarios and pencil those in.

As with any skill, practice makes perfect.

Crossword puzzles on line, I like better than the ones in the paper. I play a crossword puzzle on pogo.com. If you get the answer right, it locks it in for you. I like Sudoku much more.

I quite like the easier ones but my time is take up with Minesweeper just now.

@tom_g Don’t fret. Different people have different skills. I can’t do the ones that are like anagrams. My daughter says the answers just pop out at her. I don’t have that talent or skill or whatever you want to call it.

I realized that I only like Maura Jacobson’s crossword puzzles. She just retired in April of this year. She did the puzzles for New York magazine. I liked that she had cultural things in the puzzles, art, music, fashion. And they are solvable. Not too easy. Not too difficult. I never realized that she purposely made them to be solvable and not to stump you until I just read this article. Maura is the best!!!
http://www.mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a11240.asp?pntvs=1&