Huge thanks to Janie and Evad for blogging the CrosSynergy crosswords for Diary of a Crossword Fiend! And big thanks, too, to Sam, who will bring his inimitable humor to the daily CrosSynergy offering. Those of you who might have responded to the new puzzle format for the CS puzzles by saying “aw, forget it” will have to keep doing these puzzles in order to fully appreciate Sam’s posts!
It’s a team effort to keep this special crossword community humming—and it takes a special kind of person to be enough of a crossword junkie to routinely solve so many different puzzles. Yes, I’m talking about you. You readers who come here for discussion of a multitude of puzzles? You are the smartest bunch of people on the internet. And you’re good-natured too, so the comments lounge is strikingly free of the sort of malarkey that makes some parts of the internet (hello, comments on newspaper articles!) unpleasant places to be. (I think I’ve deleted only two offensive comments in over a year at crosswordfiend.com—it’s remarkable.) I’m grateful to everyone who reads Crossword Fiend and supports this venture.
As life outside the blog gets busier, I find myself with less time to devote to the many good puzzles that come out each day. I am no longer crazy enough to solve them all and blog them all. I couldn’t keep this site going without the blogging team (or without Evad’s deft technical wizardry). Besides Janie, Sam, and Evad, we also benefit from Joon‘s learned discussions of Matt Gaffney’s Weekly Crossword Contest. And from Jeffrey‘s rotating blog responsibilities, currently the Merl Reagle puzzle each Sunday. Not to mention the two newest additions to the team, Neville (Tuesday and Thursday L.A. Times puzzles) and Matt G. (the Thursday BEQ crossword). And then there’s PuzzleGirl, who is busy with her own puzzle blog (L.A. Crossword Confidential) and yet she’s always game to help out at Fiend when I go on vacation. And SethG, who is a utility player—he covered for the entire Fiend team during ACPT weekend, and also guest-blogs for PuzzleGirl and Rex Parker. Plus there’s T Campbell, whose autumn series of posts about crossword types will conclude in the future. Everyone brings their own style, voice, and humor to the gig. Virtual group hug! Air kisses all around.
thanks, janie and evad—and best of luck, sam! i know you’ll be great.
if i may ask, who is going to blog the sunday BG?
Joon, are you volunteering?
It did sounds like Joon was expressing interest.
Yes, but I’m hoping he’s offering! Otherwise it falls to me, or maybe to no one.
Thanks to each and every one of you for your contributions. I always enjoy reading this whenever I can. If I had more time available than just enough to solve, catch up, and drop short inane comments, and also if I had any coherent writing ability, I’d help if I could. But I do appreciate it.
joon? Boston? Whoda thunk?
It’s great that you all can keep this blog up. I read it every day and do all the puzzles. I’ve learned a lot over these last couple of years. (For instance, I was one of those audience members, back then, who gasped when normal crossword symmetry was explained in _Wordplay_ — a nation-wide phenomenon, I have read.) And, Amy, you’re right, the tenor of the comments is wonderful.
it takes a village……
;-)
I’m the guy who made the two offensive comments.
er… no, i wasn’t volunteering. did it sound like i was? eek. sam is an impossible act to follow! except, forget i said that, because i don’t want to discourage anybody else from stepping up to the plate. but i’m begging off; i’m attempting to cut down my blog reading/writing time this year. i would love to see janie or evad (or both) pick up the BG, or any of the other fiendettes, or somebody new. or, of course, amy herself—but sheesh, isn’t she already working hard enough?
that said, although i do the BG puzzle every week, i get the sense that only the die-hards are really following along in 6-week delay. perhaps if the .puz came out the same week as the actual puzzle in the globe, we might get more of the boston types (who do the puzzle in the actual sunday magazine) to join in the conversation. as it is, i can’t make a convincing argument that the effort put into blogging the puzzle 6 weeks later is really well spent. i’ll certainly continue to do the puzzle, but other puzzles i do (notably the newsday on the 6 non-stumper days of the week, the NYT 2nd sundays, and some irregularly-published others) don’t get blogged anywhere. unless you count dan feyer posting his (preposterous) solving times on those puzzles as “blogging.”
And I certainly don’t consider it blogging…
Yes, thanks and kudos to all the Fiends! (Saw the headline and thought, “Wait, it’s not April 1 anymore… where’s Amy going??”)