Ok, so this is where I vent my bile. Bile, be gone with you…
I enjoy doing crosswords, and I like the Sun Times because it’s right there next to Roger Ebert’s movie reviews, and I usually like the movies he goes for, and it’s pretty easy so it makes me feel smrt.
BUT.
Recently, I know not exactly when, they got a new javascript app to run the damn things, and it has all these incredibly annoying features which don’t seem to be turn off able, though they are slightly awful. These features include:
[list=1]
[li]The clue you are currently working on is thoughtfully marked to the right (where the clues are) by putting a grey bar over it, while the clue that runs across the one you are working on is written in bright, eye-catching blue. Brilliant! (The off clue and the idea.) This way, the more obvious place to look is exactly wrong. Fuck those people who just want to do the puzzle. Or so I must assume the programmers were thinking.[/li][li]You navigate by using the arrow keys (or the mouse, but that requires you to take your hands off the keyboard and mouse over and is basically a huge pain in the bleeding hemmoroids you’ve managed to pop out because of thing 2, which I shall return to post haste…) Where was I? You navigate using the arrow keys, and the direction of the word you’re keying in is in the direction of the last direction you moved. If you went left/right, you’re typing horizontally. If you went up.down, vertically. Very straightforward. But let’s say that you’re are the top left corner, and you realize that you know the answer for 1 down. If you start typing now, you’ll be typing across, so you press the down key so you’ll be typing down, then begin to type. This is how the Sun Times used to work, and last time I checked also NYT and LAT. But at the glorious Chicago paper (we know they must be bad because they don’t host this board after all…), when you press the down arrow, you are taken to the SECOND letter of clue 1 down. That’s right. In order to switch the direction of the text and then type you need to either press down THEN up, or use some hot key I don’t know about. Or you could aggravate them bleeding pustlues poking past your anal sphincter and reach over and grab the mouse. This is a bother.[/li][li]Numero three-o. If you already have letters in a clue and start typing in more letters, the damn thing skips you ahead to the blanks. Example: 17 across: Newspaper with a piss poor appelet (2 wds). You have -UNT-M-S and are at the start of the word. You type ‘S’. Now your cursor is between the T and the M. You type ‘I’ and now… you get the idea. Why does this labor saving device make my brain leak out my ears? Two reasons. Reason the first: I think to myself “Aha! They must be talking about the dreaded Sun Times. I shall type Sun Times!” I do not think to myself “Aha! They must be talking about the dreaded SIE!” Reason the Younger: Say that I make a mistake, and instead of typing SIE I type AIE. Now, I usually feel when I make a typo, and just naturally go back and fix it. So I quickly type AIE, realize that I have screwed up, and backspace thrice and correct the error, typing in AIE. Now my answer looks like AUNTISIE. Ah… that fucking Auntsie, always running around making my dose of Scrabblesque word puzzling difficult.I mean, Jesus.[/li][li]Ah, reason 4. This is possibly the pettiest of all of my complaints. But, the fact remains that the new interface is just butt ass ugly. Why didn’t they just continue using the old one, which people were used to and didn’t, you know, lead to hair loss among 23 year old males. Fuck. Er… anyway, I feel better now.[/li][/list=1]
It’s possible that last bit oughtn’t have been in the list, but that’s ok. I think it lends it a bit of fuckitude. And also denoument.
So, Chicago Sun Times, I cordially invite you to tounge my bung and other, more personal acts in the privacy of an hourly hotel room. After which I shall probably kill you and get my money back.
Tenebras
(What do you mean GTA makes you a bad person? 
)