Mark

With this puzzle I hit my first 1000-day streak. I’m choosing to think of these 1000 days retrospectively as small acts of anti-fascism. Here’s to the pursuit of knowledge, truth, and community. And the joy of crosswords!

A puzzle for the ages! I loved it! My one teeny tiny nit to pick: AETNA doesn’t have a diphthong in it. It has two consecutive vowels, but not two consecutive vowel sounds (within a syllable). Unless I’m just pronouncing it wrong?

Loved the puzzle. Seeing FIFTYCENT immediately brought me back to my high school days, where saying “fifty” was just plain wrong. It had to be “fiddy.” Turns out it came about from Sharon Osborne, who famously pronounced his name that way at the 2003 MTV Music Awards. I found this humorous tidbit from an article (Elite Daily): Basically, 50 Cent said you can refer to him as both "Fifty" and "Fiddy," depending on what type of person you are. For example, if you call a $100 bill a "$100 bill," you should call him "Fifty." But, if you call a $100 bill a "Benjamin," then you should call him "Fiddy."

Forgive me if this has been said before (I’m sure I’m not the first to think this!), but I was just musing that it would be really great to have stats showing how your average times for each day of the week have changed over time. A basic graph would do. I did my first crossword ever early on during the pandemic, and it’s been really exciting to see the natural improvement just from day-after-day cumulative progress. Putting in my vote for this feature, NYT!!