The appearance of Zeno makes me think of some lesser known corollaries to his famous paradox: Zeno’s paradox of the Mochi Donut: since you always have to eat half of what remains, do you ever finish it? Zeno’s Slomo paradox: you still never get there, but now five times slower. Zeno’s Free Advice paradox: the harder you try to give it, the less the recipient hears.
"I can't find the thin metal strip on my guitar!" "Fret not!" ("Great, this is just my pluck!")
@Mike hey. I wanted to tell you in going back through the archives, I came upon the comment you left around Thanksgiving of 2020 during Covid. It moved me although I was reading it almost 5 1/2 years after you wrote it. Thanks.
@Mike The necked truth? Another case of a bridge too far.
@Mike I’ve heard of the police fingering a suspect, but in this case i suspect your fingering
@Mike I believe you have strung us along for an embarrassingly lengthy period....if you were in the mafia, you'd be a capo.
It’s on me for solving without my glasses, but, boy, did I tie myself in knots wondering how an autopsy could stave off a LATEFEE.
@dcy I would hope that if you told the creditor that their customer had passed on that they would waive the LATE FEE.
OK for all the -" it's too easy for a Friday " folks . I am a veteran solver - my current streak is over 6 years ( crazy I know ) . I am not young . I have never had a MOCHI DONUT , was unfamiliar with ROC nation , and I thought some of the cueing in this one was terrific - Bands together for AMFM ? Awesome . I am not obsessed at all with level of difficulty but this one made me think a bit and I love that . Enjoy the ride team and harken back to the archive if you need more !
For months I’ve been playing the Friday “easy mode” puzzle first to build my crossword vocabulary and solving skills… and today I solved the regular puzzle without it! (I can see from the comments that several folks think today’s was too easy for a Friday, but I’m gonna take the W. Sometimes I get stuck on a Tuesday and fly through a Thursday — and I don’t think I’ve ever finished a Friday completely unaided before. Here’s to learning! 🥂 Happy solving to all!)
@sarahgrin, I've stopped (if indeed I ever did) caring about what others think of as easy/hard/appropriate day of the week for puzzles. It's all so very individual and experience based, and I don't mean just solving experience. Life experience matters too! I've been solving NYT and other major papers' crosswords for about 45 years. When even younger, I solved TV Guide and lesser newspapers' puzzles, plus the ubiquitous Penny Press found at supermarket checkouts. In other words, I've been a crossword fanatic and word nerd nearly all of my life. I'm a skilled solver by any standard. And guess what? I still get stumped. Themes escape me. Pop culture is hit or miss. I often find easy a puzzle others have labeled hard, and vice versa. There's no rhyme or reason sometimes, and I've decided I simply don't care if someone else feels it's hard or easy or should be somehow different. It's a hobby that I enjoy immensely, and I read and enjoy the comments while doing my best not to get riled up by the! Congrats on your first independent "hard" solve! Keep enjoying the puzzle in your own way.
@sarahgrin I'm with you and today I didn't even open easy mode - which was a first. Nice job!
@sarahgrin — (Constructor here) Congrats!!! It made me smile to hear this!!! Keep up the good work. :)
Sam Good Luck on your book, I can't wait for your return. I was afraid you were following Deb outside the fold. Thanks for staying on board, I think I can speak for a few thousand peeps and say we've grown accustomed to your face, your humor and your FAMILIAR expressions we all have when solving zany Cross words. I also enjoy your endeavors into strands. I think that is you I've noticed. Good to see you ladies moving throughout the gamesphere what a fabulous job it must be. Congrats on the book.
My FREE ADVICE: eschew the susHI DONUT and go with the MOCHI DONUT.
@Mike R Sushi donut. I’m intrigued. Tell me more. Circle shaped rice, with raw fish assembled in a fun pattern? Soy sauce flavored confection ‘sugar’ sprinkled on top?
@Mike R We have a coffee shop here that serves sausage/egg/cheese on a sliced donut. Hard to beat. The other version has bacon. Oh yeah, they specialize in fried chicken too. It's called Zippy Lube (used to be an oil change joint).
@Mike R Well, with ___HIDONUT on the board, susHIDONUT functioned as an unconvincing place holder for a while. But here’s some more FREE ADVICE: DONUT EVER try to visualize a susHI DONUT, just DONUT DO it!
Personally I found this hard but doable - my solve time was exactly my Friday average. My across run yielded almost nothing. The down pass was more fruitful, yet I needed many more passes to fill the grid. Dozens of guesses were involved, and I encountered very few gimmes. Apparently being Polish is one of the solutions to finding some recent NYT crossword puzzles too easy. Had this run on a Wednesday, as suggested below, I'd have been annoyed, personally. The crossing of R_C Nation and GETSL_SHED was the perfect example of the sort of difficulties I face, and which Americans might not even notice. Slang crossing with a proper name is just cruel for a solver like me.
@Andrzej half my average time but I’m generally quite a slow solver so when it falls into place it really appears to be super fast by my standards. I found the challenges were just things I didn’t know. Crossword factoids aren’t really my thing. I forget them promptly. What’s a CHIA pet? It keeps appearing but I’ve never bothered to find out nor to recall it. Rap artists, pretty much anything from current movies etc is all new to me every time it appears.
@Andrzej Slang word for drunk. Not a particularly nice one at that. The cross I had no idea about either.
Andrzej, ROC Nation is an American entertainment company founded by Jay-Z in 2008. Headquartered in New York City, the company is a successor to his previous Roc-A-Fella Records label, with additional offices in Los Angeles and London. wiki
@Andrzej To paraphrase Jack Nicholson in "As Good As It Gets", "You make me want to be Polish." <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A75AgrH5eqc" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A75AgrH5eqc</a>
Highlights: • FRET NOT – I’ve never used this before, but it has such a lovely aura of kindness, that I’m going to try. • MOCHI – Don’t know about the donut version, but I find mochi melt-in-your-mouth addictive, and it’s fun to pan fry because of how it balloons up. Very worth a try. • Pop in the grid today, with seven answers never seen in the Times puzzle before, including the entire triple stack in the middle, and my favorite answer, OH, NO REASON. • I like how DOWNER goes from north to south. • Semordnilap heaven! Not only the rare-in-crosswords five-letter semordnilap SERIF, but IN OT right under TONI. • I love getting misdirected as I did with NASAL clued as a noun, and BROWN clued as a verb. That’s a lotta like in a little box – thank you for this, Carolyn and Brian!
@Lewis FRET NOT sounds Shakespearean to my ear. Perhaps I'm thinking of "Fear no more the heat of the sun..." I have nothing against a nice Shakespearean phrasing, but the clue should match it in some way.
@Lewis and @X-Phile See my Comment (above) in re FRET NOT... I don't recall its ever being in the Shakespeare plays I am familiar with, but the phrase was indelibly printed in my memory by a book I read in...oh, the early 70's.
@Lewis — (Constructor here) Thank you for your delightful puzzle appreciation post, as always! I don’t know you, but whenever I’ve had a puzzle run in the NYT, I’ve thought to myself “I wonder what Lewis will like about this one!” :)
Sam, Baltic and Mediterranean are AVES in Atlantic City, as are all the locations found on a standard American Monopoly board.
I ran into trouble in several places. I felt like I was putting out little fires in every quadrant. Eventually, it came down to correctly parsing AMFM to get the job done. Many will likely say it could have been harder, but, it was hard enough for me.
OK. That one was fast and not really fun. That was a Wednesday just like yesterday. Not even a hard Wednesday.
Love the shout-out to my favorite Sino-Spanglish rockers, The Las Tofus!
Great clue [Rush delivery?] for INDUCE . I had to look at the comments to figure it out though, which is odd because I'm a doula and I've been to many many inductions. Inductions are rushed in the sense of starting labour early, but they tend to be long affairs, when measured as time spent in the hospital. They have also become very very common. The reasons for that are varied, and not always health-related.
@Esmerelda I think getting to the golf course as previously planned enters into that calculation occasionally.
@Esmerelda the clue we got was much worse! Not a fan of the editors taking something clever and making it boring and easy. Love the quiet protest putting it back in the constructor notes
My only complaint: 41A - EAT IN Having a meal at a restaurant is eating out, not eating in. Eating in means to dine at home. Just because someone eats "in" the restaurant doesn't mean they are eating in.
@Dave K. I think it is “eat in” vs “take out,” from the restaurant’s perspective. Often also called “dining in.”
@Dave K. I wondered about that, too. I guess the distinction the clue is making is "eat in" or "dine in" vs. "takeout" or "to go."
Uh oh. The Too easy crew is gonna come out in full force. N_SAL made no sense to me. But fortunately the blank had to be a vowel. -Shoutout. MOCHIDONUTS. A bit played out on the left coast. But if it haven’t tried, you’re welcome. -FREEADVICE clue was funny. -Very creative with the Baltic and Mediterranean clues. Man. There is no more mind numbing game than monopoly. I might argue too many proper nouns, but the crosses were gentle enough. Okay. Time to hit 2014 archives
@Weak NASAL was tough for me, too. I finally reconciled because both letters seem to direct air through the nose, because the mouth is closed for those sounds.
@Weak try making the m or n sound with your nose plugged. They're called nasals because you need your nasal passage to say them
@Weak I'm not a fan of the "Hooked on Phonics" school of reading acquisition, but English has three nasal consonants.
2020 wants its Wednesday back.
Unusual solve today. Our hotel is basically in the North Sea. On the North Sea..? The walls are glass and (other than our private porch) our entire view is water. So, getting out of bed is tough, because the view is heaven and utterly breathtaking. So- hubby sat next to me as I solved. That. Doesn’t. Happen. But travel is essentially romantic, and this ridiculous view… He was even interested, and my old historian loved TORE for [ Rent ]. He’s not hooked, but he peeked through a little window into this word world and I got to enjoy my puzzle with him! Huzzah! (Don’t know the Dutch word because after learning how to say “Thank you very much” we gave up. Even the response to “thank you” has 27 syllables and requires a bit of spitting.) Happy Friday all!
@CCNY I'm so glad for you, but, Quit making me so jealous! As for the Dutch language, It always seemed to me Like German spoken with An American accent... ...and extra gutturals. Wear your rain jacket when you ask a local for directions to Schiphol Airport.
[Rush delivery?] has my vote. The editors get a disappointed shake of my head for rejecting it.
@Jac Mine too! That would have been a debut and a Friday level clue. Instead, they gave us a definition straight from the dictionary. C'mon, NYT, trust us!
Corn dogs, bangers, donuts and Taco Bell - I'm headed to Statin Island. To be counseled by my concerned relative Auntie Oxidant. Who will push the chia and tilapia. And forbid the sloshing.
I feel like they published the Easy Mode by mistake. This might have made for a nice themeless Wednesday (or Tuesday), but, c'mon, it ain't no Friday. No teeth whatsoever. A smooth and easy solve. That's not what I come for on a Friday. I might share some of the clues I found amusing, but I'm not in the mood. Instead I'll share the one that would have been nice on a Wednesday, but not on a Friday: "International fast-food chain without a location in Mexico, interestingly". Essentially this clue says "Mexican chain that's not truly Mexican". Hmmm, let me think. "Ticks of a ticker" is nicely stated, but also a gimme. I could go on, but I'm beginning to bore myself. C'mon, NYT puzzle editors, do better!
@The X-Phile Yeah those were all gimmes. I do remember an interesting trivium about Taco Bell—it was a Who Want to Be a Millionaire question and it had four fast food restaurants and asked which shared a name with its founder. That was Taco BELL named for Glen Bell.
I would have enjoyed the food and drink references in this one (TASTETESTER, PANSEAR, MOCHIDONUT, EATIN, TACOBELL, BANGER, TILAPIA, CORNDOGS, GETSLOSHED) much more if wasn’t on day two of a diet that involves no food between meals and limited sweets. Bands together? for AMFM was clever.
@Marshall Walthew I hate it when my doctor says I’m pre-diabetic again and I’m really curious to try a mochidonot.
@Jeanne You live in SF and haven’t tried a mochi donut yet? It was such a craze a couple years ago. Kind like Beard Papa’s or avocado toast. Everything in moderation. The good thing about them is that they are made like a string of pearls. So you could just eat one or two ‘pearls’.
Was well on my way to a Friday personal best (and probably by a significant margin) until I got modestly bogged down in the middle south of the puzzle. Never had a MOCHIDONUT and never heard of one either. AMFM, CEL and the “sloshed” of GETSLOSHED crossing that darned donut didn’t help. But ultimately it all came together and still at less than half my average time. While my personal best streak continues, my satisfaction with the accomplishment diminishes with every “too easy” puzzle that is published. I know, be careful what you wish for but, with the odd exception, there has been a very notable decline in the difficulty of these puzzles starting maybe 5 or 6 months ago (not coincidentally around the same time that my current streak began) and I, for one, would prefer stricter tests. My current streak is 66% better than my previous best from about two years ago, but I don’t think I’ve gotten 66% better. It’s a close call, but my previous streak may have been more fulfilling. I know that “Games” have become a major revenue driver for the NYT, and I suppose the thinking is that participation/revenue can be grown further via more “accessible” puzzles. But at some point the brand is diminished, and I fear that tipping point may soon be at hand.
@Nick If you want some real head-scratchers, dig into the archived puzzles that go back into the early 1990s. Some of them really boggle, especially when one considers they were constructed the old-fashioned way, without programs and easy internet sourcing of obscure fill, and solved with pen or pencil and little to no option for easy answer searches. It was a different crossword world back then.
@Nick Agreed. I get that games are a major revenue driver for the times, but there are 7 puzzles per week—why only cater to the new players? (eggs -> basket) By keeping the Friday and Saturday old-school challenging the paper could cater to a much wider market. And it would help keep subscribers longer. It was the crossword that first got me to subscribe (though I do value the rest of the paper as well) but I've been feeling that tipping point you speak of, and have begun looking elsewhere for puzzles that challenge me.
I still wish we had the progressive difficulty through the week that we used to get. Maybe I’m grumpy from lack of sleep. My daughter had her wisdom teeth extracted this week and my sleep has been wackadoodle like the newborn days… I liked the duplicate clues of Baltic/Mediterranean. I think Rushed Delivery was a far superior clue for a Friday. Overall I enjoyed the solve, I just would have enjoyed it more with some elevated clueing. And now off for our very late spring break 🎉
@Jacqui J for those international solvers that have never heard of a CHIA PET 🎶Ch-ch-ch-CHIA🎶 <a href="https://youtu.be/tzY7qQFij_M?si=Sssg0no9X0Sp6ONl" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/tzY7qQFij_M?si=Sssg0no9X0Sp6ONl</a>
@Jacqui J When I had my wisdom teeth out, I spent the next three days having horrible thoughts about the surgeon
READY, SET, GO and I'm off to the races, A couple of HEARTBEATS; I've filled all the spaces. THE LAST OF US finished in lickety-split. Look forward to Fridays, but this wasn't it.
@Nancy Oh, what I'd give for a little Friday frustration!
Carolyn and Brian, I love your clue [Rush delivery?] for INDUCE. Ha! Been there, done that! Thanks for the fun puzzle!
@MaxKnish — (Constructor here) Thank you, and thanks for solving!
This seemed very "gettable" except where it wasn't! A lot of "Not My Area" clues (especially 37A, for example) and 31D's GET SL????ED. SLAMMED? The crosses of 47A and 53A were zero help. Just learned about MOCHI very recently (Jeopardy! And maybe a cooking show)... My favorite clue/answer was 29D! It reminded me of a biography of Margery of Kemp, a medieval woman who made a pilgrimmage to The Holy Land. She could read and write (quite unusual for the times!) and described many personal conversations with Christ, who often said to her, "FRET thee NOT, Dowter." Okay, I guess that's my divergent comment for the day.
@Mean Old Lady It's interesting how many phrases we have for getting drunk. SLammED is as good as SLOSHED, and there are many others. Sex, inebriation, excretion. What other areas have so many words and phrases. And what does that say about us human beings???
Everybody seems to be assuming "Rush Delivery" was intended for INDUCE. My vote is for ACID. Somebody please tell me I'm wrong.
@twoberry - I agree! This is what the constructor was getting at.
Even though I had a lot of trouble with the bottom middle, the top led me to believe that this was probably fairly easy for the elite solver. So, sorry. I enjoyed 31D, even though it reminded me I'm cutting back on the stuff that gets one well lubricated. Most surprising answer for my money? 40A. I had NASAL in mind long before I figured out why it worked.
Not going to harp about the difficulty of this puzzle per se; finally gave me a bit of chewiness in the SE, and pleasant enough I suppose. I appreciated the SEAS/AVES double clue, and enjoyed the clues for MOCHIDONUT, FREEADVICE, and GETSLOSHED. I will give a more general comment about difficulty level though. I mentioned yesterday that I doubt all the editors are happy with the new normal. As another example, I just finished a brilliant Sunday puzzle from May 1st 2016 by Joel Fagliano (one of the editors) and Byron Walden. Try this one out and tell me with a straight face that this level of challenge and sophistication in theme, grid, and clueing would be replicated in a Sunday puzzle today.
@SP The constructor names and your description of their creation struck terror into my heart and soul 🤣 I wouldn't touch that puzzle with a ten foot American!
@SP Matches the intellectual rigor of the OpEd pages these days.
@SP Thanks for the recommendation. As you may have noticed, I tried to defend the editors on Wednesday, but couldn't keep up my good intentions today.
@SP may 1st 2016 was excellent. I started it thanks to your prompt and realised quite quickly that I had solved it in the paper days. Indeed a clever puzzle. Redid it in the app for fun.
@SP I too attempted the puzzle on your recommendation. Indeed, that was a challenging “solve”, although I was unable to solve it without a puzzle check which revealed three incorrect squares. I had misspelled 13D as SERiPH; had no clue about 18D but felt the last “e” in SPEE could not be correct given the close proximity of SMEE at 16D; and also didn’t know “FAROESE” (though it rings a bell now that I know the answer). Since I solve with a strict no lookup, hint or cheat policy, this would not have been a gold star for me… although I’m proud of myself for coming somewhat close. I enjoyed the challenge and would like to see more puzzles of this calibre (+/-) in the future. My current personal best streak of 105 gold stars has been devalued by the easier puzzles of recent vintage.
How do I get the puzzle app to go back to opening the column in the regular nyt app the way it used to? When I read the comments I often want to go look at the puzzle but now I can't without losing my place!
@Lars (I know I can open it directly in the app but I'm lazy and that requires more taps and a search.)
@Lars <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/daily-crossword-column" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/daily-crossword-column</a>
@Lars I had a similar issue. The tech advice was to de-install then re-install the app. Turn off and on whatever device you’re using. I had to repeat all that twice, but eventually it did revert to the usual layout. Good luck.
A nice chewy Friday. For those of you who thought it too easy, may I stick up for us International solvers, who will always be flummoxed by the standard US only names, companies, foodstuffs etc etc. Fighting my way through those quagmires can be interesting. Got into 37A tv show quite late, but thoroughly, um, is ?enjoyed the right word? 42D is the reason I can’t drink wine of any hue. Plays havoc with my system. Fortunately tea isn’t an issue otherwise I’d have to hand in my passport.
That was interesting because at first go it felt like a Wednesday but there were tricky spots in there that were definitely a Friday.
@Mu I noticed this too. The problem I have with this is that the easiness of the rest of the clues dulls my brain, which leaves me unable to handle the harder clues when they pop up. I legit just lost my patience with the NE corner and had to look up the actor. Fridays should be uniformly difficult. Easy clues should be the exception.
That was a really speedy Friday. The only thing that slowed me down was a MOCHI DONUT, had me in a sticky situation.
"What city are these so-called avenues in?" @Sam Corbin, SRSLY? All the properties in Monopoly are streets in Atlantic City, where the game's creator liked to vacation. I thought that was common knowledge. Spoiler alert: Short Line is actually a bus company, not a RR, but it's a fine way to get from NYC to AC. I did like the dual-use clue for AVES and SEAS, BTW. Those always get a "what the?" from me.
Grant, The Short Line (in Atlantic City) was rail: a trolley line.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_City_and_Shore_Railroad" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_City_and_Shore_Railroad</a>
@Barry Interesting. I have no frame of reference for trolleys on the East Coast, but I know they existed. There's a Trolley Square in Wilmington, for example...noted for bar-hopping.
Grant, You might have assumed the creators of Monopoly would have used four railroads for the four railroads. In addition to the Short (AC&S) Line, the Pennsylvania and the Reading served Atlantic City, and the B&O controlled the Reading.
Saw ABBIE Hoffman speak when he visited my campus senior year. Later that evening, I was already tucked in when I heard a seeming crowd rush in, and my somewhat kooky roommate knocked on my door and announced that Mr. H was among the group. I had committed to my bedtime and decided to eschew the gathering (partly because roommate was not the most reliable source of information). The visit was confirmed the next day , however, and I’ve regretted missing that pretty unique opportunity. TLDR: shoulda, coulda, woulda!
@Kate We did too, at Hunter College in our cafeteria. Made a rousing speech and I wanted to go Steal This Book and join the Revolution, ASAP.
What city are Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues in? Why, Atlantic City NJ of course. That's where most of the property names in Monopoly come from. (I was just lucky I thought of avenues first and seas second.)
I wondered if I was on the constructor's wavelength, which is why I solved this in Wednesday time, or if it was just that easy. The comments to date tell me that it was indeed too easy. To any NYT staff reading this comment, if this trend continues, I will not be renewing my subscription.
@DocP Better to contact them directly than to make threats in the Wordplay comments.
If I were to be fussy (ok, I'm going to be fussy), I'd say that there's nothing more "natural" about green energy than there is about crude oil. Oil is an organic substance for goodness sake! Other organic things: - Plastic Other natural things: - Murder Hey, if you can't get fussy about words in a crossword comments section, where can you?!
@Tim Fossil Fuels fits but doesn’t work for the down clues. The answers aren’t required to be exclusive 😀
@Tim The part that bothers me is the "green" or "clean" appended to so-called renewable energy. It tends to elide the real environmental devastation these "green" energy sources can create: strip mines and slave labor to produce batteries for electric vehicles; destruction of ecosystems for hydroelectric power; the postapocalyptic nightmare that is nuclear energy. Here's an idea: why don't we all just use less energy? Let's start with no new data centers.
Not in all the millennia since Zeno would it have dawned on me that there was such a thing as a chia pet or what it was.
Solved this without help, but not easily. Felt like a Friday puzzle to me, and took more than thirty minutes to complete. Most of my time was spent in the center of the grid. BAGIT didn't connect with its clue for me, the HBO series was an unknown, as was ROC as clued. "One offering biting critiques?" for TASTETESTER also slowed me down, and even with the question mark seems a bit dopey. Having GETSMASHED instead of GETSLOSHED didn't help either. The rest of the puzzle went pretty smoothly, and, overall, this seemed like a solid and appropriately challenging Friday puzzle.
Mochi donuts are a thing?! 🤯 That just made my day. New side quest unlocked. I must find a mochi donut. Thank you for a fun puzzle! The NE corner was tough for me, until CORNDOGS finally came to me (but I will not be having one with my mochi donut).
Rush delivery is a perfect clue for induce! At least for my generation of mothers, the only salient meaning of “induce” is the one related to “delivery” as in, L&D. What percentage of solvers- and editors- have given birth? 🤔 Mochi donuts are delicious- Third Culture Bakery in Berkeley is the original as far as I’m concerned- and interestingly, gluten free! Fun puzzle :)
@DH — (Constructor here) — yes, Third Culture made the mochi muffins sold at my local boba shop years ago, and I developed quite an addiction! Sooo tasty. And they were at the center of the mochi muffin trademark war we mentioned in the constructor notes. And glad you liked our clue! :)
Easy breezy Friday. Had a minor detour in the center but still under half my average Friday time…
Given the U.S.-specific crossing answers, I'd say international solvers comprise much of the 7% noted below in the xwstats.com summary. Global Stats Difficulty Easy Median Solve Time 10:31 Median Solver 30% faster ⚡93% of users solved faster than their Friday average. 72% solved much faster (>20%) than their Friday average. 🐢7% of users solved slower than their Friday average. 3% solved much slower (>20%) than their Friday average.
@Barry Ancona, et al. Just wondering, have people tried addressing these issues within the feedback function?(Settings>Support>Feedback) Seems that the Wordplay forum may not get the attention needed. I’m a relatively new “regular” solver (daily for about 4 months now) whereas before I was occasional. Even I can now do a Friday without lookup much of the time. But maybe sending formal “Feedback” to the powers that be is just wishful thinking.
*SIGHS* Completed in less than half my Friday average, even though I at one point walked away from the computer with the timer running. Listen. I am not rich. I am a single woman supporting myself on a lower-middle-class budget. I cannot afford to be paying for this crossword if I'm not enjoying it.