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Any Cruciverbalists Here?
Hub:
Cruciverbalists enjoy solving and/or writing crossword puzzles. With me, it’s almost a disease and I’ll waste several hours a day trying to drag arcane bits out of my brain to plug into some grid, the harder the better.
My favorite puzzles are those published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and several other newspapers. My least favorite are the “new” ones that are computer generated (and thus don’t require a royalty to the author) often found in compilations from Dell Publishing and other vendors on newsstands. They have no “soul”.
I started solving (and occasionally authoring) over twenty years ago using daily newspaper puzzles that were graduated – easy puzzles published on Monday, leading to progressively harder ones with Saturday and Sunday being the toughies. Nowadays I can often work the hard ones with no help, but not always. I learn something new all the time (and correspondingly forget something useful because my brain is getting full) and hope mental exercise is as useful as it is fun.
Much of the skill required to do crosswords well is just knowing the tricks and a few obtuse words that often crop up. The early-week newspaper crosswords will teach those. Crossword “dictionaries” are so-so. They’re full of synonyms but not much help on the tricks and, of course, no help at all if the solution isn’t a word, but instead a quote, person, or place. Often, I’ll “park” a particularly hard puzzle and go back to it a week later and the answer will pop into my brain. Magic!
Now, let's see. What's an eight letter word for good food cooked outside?
Hub
HighOnSmoke:
I enjoy them once in awhile Hub. My favorite one to puzzle over (pun intended) is the Sunday New York Times one. Really gets the brain to thinking. I do believe you are correct that working these keeps your mental facilities active and god knows I need that the older I get. ;)
8 letter word comes to mind: Barbecue! 8)
Pappymn:
This post hurts my brain. I am way too stupid to do crossword puzzles
IR2dum:
IR2dum to do crosswords.
Roget:
--- Quote from: IR2dum on July 25, 2017, 11:29:17 AM ---IR2dum to do crosswords.
--- End quote ---
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