Do you do the NY Times Mini Crossword puzzle daily?

Until now, I hadn’t been familiar with the mini-crossword. For some years, though, I’ve done several daily KenKen puzzles from the New York Times: https://www.kenkenpuzzle.com/nydaily

@Love_my_doggie The mini crossword is very quick It only takes a couple of minutes or so – just enough time for a cup of coffee. I’ll check out Kenken.

I usually do, yes, and make an effort to keep my time under one minute. Sports, TV show, and celebrity references slow me down, though. I don’t know most of them.

Last November I paid the subscription fee and started doing the full daily crossword, until I tried Spelling Bee. That’s my favorite now. Most days I stay with it until I reach the top score. I have a backlog of crossword puzzles, plus the whole NYT online archive, for when I really, really need distraction. I also found a 20-year trove of biweekly Cox-Rathvon acrostics.

It’s my belief that word games like these help us keep our minds sharp, as well as absorbing attention from unpleasant things for a little while.

I’ve been an admirer of Will Shortz’s work for decades and think he does an amazing job of keeping the puzzles to a high standard. I’ll bet he’s a hard guy to have an ordinary conversation with, though.

@LuckyGuy If you’ve never done a KenKen, you might want to begin with 4X4. My personal choice is 6X6 in medium or hard. The truth is, I do about 6 or more puzzles per day! Maybe I really do need to mix it up with some crosswords.