Day Sixteen- 1/16/11 Attempt the New York Times Sunday Crossword

Day Sixteen: 1/16/11
New Thing:  Attempt the New York Times Sunday Crossword
Inspiration: Sophisticated NY Types
Cost: $6.00 (no wonder everyone get’s their news free on the internet!)
Time: About 45 mins
Bottom Line: What is a four letter word for, “I really hate this?”

Reflection: For one semester in college, I decided to take advantage of the college bookstore’s discounted rate on the NYTimes for the student body. Every day, I would pick up my copy of the Times and feel very sophisticated. It would have been obvious to anyone, so I thought, that I had become a woman of the world having grown far to cosmopolitan for the “Tunkhannock Weekly Shopper” (which once ran a story on the FRONT PAGE which had the headline “First Snowman of the Season!”) or even the “Wilkes-Bare Times Leader.” Secretly, however, I would always be more then a little disappointed that they never ran any Funnies. 

            Yet, I never bought one of the weekend additions of the Times because they were always full price. Even if I had, I would NEVER have attempted to do the legendary crossword puzzle and there is one very simple reason for that—I do not like games that involve spelling. Of any kind. Period. As I am sure you have noticed from this blog, (if you didn’t already know this about me) I am a very poor speller. This is not for lack of trying. I would spend countless hours of tear-inducing study trying to learn even the easiest spelling lists. I would have to make up little songs, puns, acrostics, limericks, anything that would help me remember how to spell a single word since phonetics have always failed me. For example, to this day, the only way I can remember to spell Pennsylvania is through an acrostic I made to help recall it (Peter Eats Nuts Near Scranton Yesterday Like Vampires Ate Nuts In Australia). And when you play a crossword puzzle, it does not matter how fine a vocabulary you may have. If you cannot spell the word, you are out of luck. But, I decided that I should at least give this a shot. After all, I am an adult now. How bad could it be? 

It was utterly macabre. I only solved about 37 clues and who knows if those are actually correct? Let that be a lesson to me: never spend $6.00 on a newspaper that does not even have comics.