My streak is over, but did it matter?
668 straight crosswords and I didn't even get a lousy t-shirt
Last week, while I galivanted around the Low Countries (two of them, Netherlands and Belgium. No Luxembourg for me. I’ve been there once before, which is good for most of you) I tried to keep my streak of completing the New York Times crossword puzzle the same day its published.
The time frame for this has been fuzzy during the streak. On the West Coast, new puzzles appear at 7 pm Monday through Friday. On the weekend, the new ones appear at 2 pm. For a while, you got credit only if you finished before the new one came online, but the New York Times made the deadline more generous recently and you effectively get 48 hours to finish.
I was preparing to start Saturday’s puzzle, 1 I noticed that the counter on my streak was at 5 and not in the high 600s where I remembered it being. As it turned out, I never finished last Sunday’s (4/2) puzzle. I had filled in every square, but I had one typo, so I was not credited it with being correct.
The mistake was not on a very tricky clue. 111-Across was “ “Cute” vowel sound.” It’s not a tricky clue. It’s five letters and it’s a description of the vowel sound in the word “cute” which is a LONGU. But I typed LONGO. I didn’t notice that the corresponding 89-Down “Hmm.. I never thought about it” should have been OHIDUNNO but I had OHIDONNO.
But I was solving this in the middle of the night suffering from jet lag in a hotel room in Amsterdam and just didn’t fix it. I actually knew that was a mistake, but I just never fixed it.
And I didn’t notice it on Monday and with that the streak ended. I still have solved all 1462 puzzles I’ve attempted ever since I got hooked again on crossword puzzles by a coworker.
I’m not sure what such a long streak means other than it means you ddin’t get so busy in the morning that you forgot to finish the puzzle. I’m not an expert solver and never competed in a tournament, but I can finish most puzzles from Monday through Wednesday in fewer than 10 minutes. Thursday and Friday run around 15 minutes. Saturdays are 35 minutes. Sundays are around 40 minutes. Some times my solving speed is longer than normal because I’m up too late and fall asleep while trying to finish. I sometimes wake up and find that I have dozed off with the letter A depressed and the whole grid is AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
Will I still be beholden to the pointlessness of this streak or will I just feel liberated enough to skip the puzzle somedays? Probably not. The NY Times Games section is the only part of the puzzle I pay for.2
Crossword puzzle streaks are effectively the gamification of playing a game. My streak did not reach Cal Ripken levels, but I was getting to close to twice the length of the longest consecutive games played streak in the NFL, which is 352 by punter Jeff Feagles.3
There are other websites that I visit that have streak counters and some send emails tellling me to keep the streaks going. The Duolingo language learning app makes people feel like failures if they don’t check in every day. Or else it has mastered the ability to make people feel guilty for not using its app.
Perhaps I need to be a little less worried about such streaks. In one of my high school years, I told my mother that I was going to school even though I was sick because I wanted to get a perfect attendance award. She told me that the perfect attendance award was nothing more than a certificate and no one would care soon after it was given out at an assembly. Which was indeed the case.
But enough about streaks, I have to get working on the Saturday Crossword Puzzle. I need to make my new streak reach 6!
For those of you who are not regular crossword puzzle solvers, the puzzles get harder as the week goes on, with Saturday being the most difficult. Sunday puzzles often take the longest to finish because they have a larger grid than the other days.
You can read the New York Times website for free through the Los Angeles Public Library’s website. This also applies to the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. It does not apply to the Los Angeles Times. Don’t get me started. OK, it’s the LA Times fault.
The longest streak in the NBA is 1192 games by AC Green. The longest in the NHL is 1061 by Phil Kessel and that streak is ongoing as of April 6, 2023. Kessel missed the first 12 games of the 2009 season with Toronto, but has played in every regular season game since.
Dana feels your pain and is impressed by your speed, especially Friday-Saturday.