Guin: If it makes you feel any better, my crossword-constructor friend (who has been in the puzzle-making biz for quite a few years) says that the only real demographic skew in crossworders (and indeed, in ALL paper-puzzle doers) is that they tend to be majority female. There is no obvious age trend.
So you’re not an old lady… You’re just a lady! 
I generally use pencil, preferably mechanical (.5 mm). Erases easily, even on newsprint. I’d rather erase than scribble.
My mother has trouble with tearing the paper when erasing on her sudoku, so she copies the puzzle by hand onto a piece of graph paper!
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a bit off topic, and if this is an inappropriate plug, I apologize in advance. There is a guy in my town who creates crosswords for a living. I am not sure who he contributes to, but he makes a living at it!
He does custom crosswords - I just got one for my wife for her birthday, since she is a bit of a puzzle nut. I supplied a bunch of words - kids’ info, the name of her hometown, where we met, etc… - and he plugged them in and built a full puzzle out of it at the degree of difficulty I asked for. Then I went through and, for the words I supplied, updated the clues with my insider knowledge so they are a bit more fun for my wife. Under $100.
Is this common? Did I stumble across a service that is readily available in crossword puzzle circles? Or is this uncommon and as cool as I am hoping my wife thinks it is?
I can provide contact info if it makes sense - but if this service is super easy to come by in crossword circles, then no worries…
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I’m a fiend. I’ve been doing them since I was about 15.
I’ve done most NYT’s almost every day for years. I time myself.
If anyone is interested, I’m “baltimark” at the New York Times page. I did todays in 8:14, and when I finished, I was 41st out of 251. I’m usually in the top 20% M-W. Thursday and Friday, I’m further back than that, but there are fewer people completing them. Also, there are a lot of cheaters with the fastest times.
I mean it. People clearly finish the crossword offline, and then fill it in online just to get to the head of the list. They do like 50 second solves. Impossible. You get to know who the real solvers are.
Todays was a good puzzle, with a nice theme.
I’m getting better at the NYT crosswords. Hopefully, one of these days, I’ll be able to finish one.
I just HATE it when I enter something I THINK is the answer, and it’s wrong, and I have to write over the first answer. Grrrrr…
I used to write puzzles myself, so I can attest that if you make your living that way, there are only three possibilities:
You’re absolutely brilliant and can churn out numerous high quality puzzles in a day (if so, my hat’s off to you!).
You’ve found a lucrative niche market (lucky you!)
You’re still living in your Mom’s basement and subsisting on water and saltine crackers.
I’m being semi-facetious, but when I used to write puzzles, the New York Times was the top paying publication for puzzles. They only paid $75 for a daily puzzle (it could be a little higher now). And even if Will Shortz accepted one of my puzzles, it could be months from the time I submitted one until I heard back from him (and then another few months unti la check arrived in the mail).
So, unless you crank out several top-notch puzzles every day, you’re not likely to get rich as a puzzle constructor. I am in awe of the few folks who can do it.
we all hate that.
There’s a ton of on-line crossword. . .either through java apps, or you can down load desktop apps, and then download daily puzzles.
You’ll finish an NYT. The Monday and Tuesday ones aren’t really any harder than any other typical publication (maybe harder than one in a TV guide). It took me years of doing them before being able to finish a friday or saturday, though.
I’ve always wondered, are authors typically fast solvers? Or is it two different skill sets?
Well, fast is a relative term. Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, I reached a point where I could do standard daily NY Times puzzles in about 3 minutes, and the Saturday puzzle in 9-11 minutes. That’s good enough to impress casual puzzle solvers, but I went to the Stamford tournament a few times and quickly learned I was a piker! There were some people who were SCARY good. I finished 19th overall the first year I competed, but I kept dropping a few notches each year I returned.
Point being, the really elite players (the Trip Paynes, the Douglas Hoylmans, the Jon Delfins) are simply on another plane from the rest of us, no matter how good we think we are!
Do solving and creating skills go hand in hand? Sometimes. Trip Payne is both a champion solver AND a very good constructor (he’s one of those rare guys who makes a living writing puzzles and games- for me, it was a hobby that occasionally brought me some pizza and movie money). Stanley Newman (who’s now one of the leading constructors and editors in America) WAS a champion solver back in the early 80s. But there are some great constructors who’d never dare enter a tournament, and there are some fantastic solvers who couldn’t write a puzzle to save their lives.
What makes a REAL champion? More than anything else, it’s the ability to read and solve multiple clues simultaneously. If you watch the champs at work on a puzzle, you’ll see that their pens NEVER stop moving. From start to finish their brains are processing and solving a bunch of clues at once. Even as they write, they’re reading and solving more clues.
If you find yourself reading a clue, thinking about it, writing in the answer and then reading a new clue… well, that’s how most normal people do a puzzle! But even if you do that as quickly as possible, you’re at a huge disadvantage compared to the people whose brains are multitasking.