I do the daily Sudoku and they get harder each day. I didn't realize crosswords were the same.

They'll post 2 crosswords if the next day is a holiday, but they don't do that with sudoku for some reason nor do they post the solution puzzle the day after the holiday.

The NY Times puzzles similarly get more difficult as the week goes on, with Saturday being the hardest. My favorites are Thursdays, where there are usually extra tricks, such as two more more letters in one box. I also solve in pen, as I just enjoy the feel of pen on paper more than a pencil (and certainly much more than doing the puzzle online, which I find wholly unsatisfying.)

I do the NY Times puzzles daily and enjoy the Spelling Bee even more than the xword puzzle, though I do also enjoy the Acrostics and I usually do the hard sudoku every day.

For those of you pen solvers, you may want to try Pilot FriXion pens...they are actually erasable...the heat from the friction of rubbing the ink causes it to become invisible.

https://www.amazon.com/Pilot-FriXion-Erasable-3-Pack-31556/dp/B0031TR406/ref=asc_df_B0031TR406/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=167123392997&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=12618325959679380772&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9003385&hvtargid=pla-343950345804&psc=1

The NYT Sunday puzzle is targeted to be about as difficult as a thursday puzzle, only bigger.

I took up cross words for a while after Chemotherapy to help my brain regain some of what I lost. I found it to be really helpful and realized relatively early on that they did increase in difficulty as the week wore on. I would have to look up answers and hints at first. I replaced them with sudoku and I remember when I used to actually write numbers in the squares. Making the leap to what the number had to be because of what it couldn't would give my brain a tweak that I could feel. Either I got better or am too far gone to notice these days.

How timely that you should mention Spelling Bee, Annie. I just became aware of that puzzle earlier this morning and downloaded it onto my tablet (it's my "game" device). On the first try, some words I missed were in my vocabulary and I simply didn't think of them, but then there were those other words - I'd never seen them before and would have to spend a lot of dictionary time to know what they mean. Anyway...fun game.

For crosswords, I don't even download Friday, Sat. or Sun.

I do a daily online cryptic crossword, constructed by an Australian. I’m finally remembering that it’s -our, not -or, and -re not -er. But other things I had to learn, like a reference to the queen indicates ”er” (for Elizabeth Regina), a reference to the church indicates ”ce” (for Church of England), and duck means 0. Very, very slowly, I am learning cricket and rugby terms, but i don’t know any athlete or television actor/show references at all.

On the other hand, I don’t find it nearly as diabolical as the ones in the British papers. In fact, sometimes a cryptic in Games Magazine is still be unfinished by the time my next issue arrives.

I subscribe to two crossword puzzle books: "Herald Tribune" and "Superb Crosswords". However, I actually only enjoy the Sunday puzzles the ones in the books that are 120 clues and up, normally to 145 clues, and have the clues on one page, the squares on the adjoining page.

Now here's what's dumb. I only do those Sunday puzzles, the other single page puzzles of 55 or up to 80, I ignore. I forget how many Sunday puzzles there are, maybe 10? But I do save the books for when I'm waiting on the next new book and desperate to work a puzzle. When I accumulate too many I recycle them.

I only use pencils with a good eraser. ha I run into trouble when the clue is about authors or scientists, and modern actors. Also initials for unions and government programs. Altho I am learning.

I just work the one in The Week magazine even tho' I get the LA Times daily. Maybe I should start working the LA Times' earlier in the week to give my brain some extra exercise. I have the most trouble with movie stars' and sports athletes' names more than regular words. I rarely cheat by going to the website "One Across."

I like a pen called "Art Minds." If I think a letter or words might be wrong, it can write very small so there's room to black it out and write another letter. I don't like pencil.

I'm going to check out Spelling Bee

I do the NYT Mini every morning and aim to do it in less than a minute.I usually make it. I work on the Spelling Bee all day. When i look at Yesterday’s answers, I sometimes cant believe what I got and the simple ones i missed. I dont often do the big N YT crossword.

Embarrassed to admit Im on level 4200 of Candy Crush.

I do those Sunday Tampa Bay Times games inserts too, but I only do the Jumbles, the Scrabble Words and the Word Wheels - and I only recently started doing the Kriss Kross puzzles.

The only crosswords I truly enjoy are the ones by the late Merle Reagle. They're funny and punny and always have a clever theme. Creative Loafing used to carry them, but I haven't gotten that paper in awhile so I'm not sure if they still do. It makes me sad that there won't ever be any new puzzles from him. There are a bunch of books of his old ones tho, and I only ever bought and finished one...

When I lived in San Diego, I subscribed to the LA Times and always enjoyed the puzzles in the Sunday magazine- in fact would always make sure that I had a few set aside for trips. Now I can't remember what their unique feature was - puns, maybe? - that I didn't find in the SD Tribune puzzles.

I do the daily x-word puzzle in the Columbus Dispatch, along with the sudoku and the Cryptoquip (my favorite). My suburb's little weekly has a NYTimes x-word, where I find that I just don't know enough of the popular culture references.

I haven't even tried a crossword in years, just hasn't been my thing, so far. But TWO LETTERS IN ONE BOX -- outrageous!

And sometimes more: this past Thursday it was four letters in a few boxes. Great fun!

Bpath, you must be doing Lovatt's

DH and I did "The Nation" cryptic every Sunday for years. Originally it was the sainted Frank Lewis and when he retired and promptly died it turned into an inferior duo whose names I cant recall. We tried to dig out archived FL's but digging things out of the 165 year old Nation is like mining truffles. They dont have the money for a real searchable archive. We are now working through a book of Cryptics from some British newspaper, Telegraph? Pulling teeth as so much of cryptics is cultural. I am helpful having lived there but still. Too much I dont know.

Years ago I used to do the Diagramless Crossword puzzles. You don't see them anymore, it was in Sunday papers.

For many years my DH would stop on his way to work and buy 2 Detroit Free Presses (I did not know this for many years). One for him to take into work and one to bring home to me so I could do the crossword too! Such a sweety!

patriciae, yes, the Lovatt’s. I do it over my morning coffee, : :

The NY Times runs a special puzzle each week...it can be a puns and anagrams, a cryptic crossword, an acrostic, or a diagramless. They also offer a weekly ken ken.

i work all the crosswords I run across, but the kind I really miss are double crostics. When i was growing up, my mother got The Saturday Review, a now defunct magazine, and it had a double crostic in it that my grandmother and I always worked. It's a fascinating type of puzzle.

The NYT still has acrostics, but I don't know if that's different from a "double" crostic...

I just looked it up....looks like they are the same.

Wahoo!!! I just did it. Made Queen Bee on the Spelling Bee!! That's a rarity.

Good for you! Today I got close, with 100 points, but I haven't made Queen Bee in quite a while.

The NYT Spelling Bee is in their newsletter I subscribe to, but they don't show the rules, so I don't know how do it. I don't subscribe to the paper, so most the click-through content is barred to me.

Care to share the rules?

Annie's comments about Acrostic puzzles got me interested in this site, and now I am somewhat addicted. I really do not need more puzzles to do, but these are fun, even though I am still considered "slow" by the website.

carol the rules are very simple...make as many words as you can using the 7 letters given. You can repeat the letters as many times as you like, but the center letter must be in every word. Words must be at least 4 letters long.

Every puzzle has at least one pangram...a word that uses all the letters.

Scoring: 4 letter words are 1 point each, longer words, points are the same as the number of letters, pangrams earn an extra 7 points.

I'm an avid crossword puzzler - so yes, I know they get harder as the week goes on. Our local paper saves the hardest crossword for Sunday. I do the crossword every day and set aside the Sunday one (and the NYT one, if I happen to come across one) to work on at my leisure - sometimes it takes me a few days to finish...but I usually do.

Don't let the harder ones intimidate you - the more you work on them the more you will pick up on the clues that get used often - which often helps with the longer answers.

Also, I had some guy comment the other day that I was "confident" for using a pen to do the crossword. Yes, maybe - but the truth is I cannot stand to use a pencil on newspaper. And like @Bookwoman I just write over any mistakes.

I haven't seen/heard of Spelling Bee...I will have to look into that.

Well, thanks, Annie, Spelling Bee is now in my puzzle rotation. If this keeps up I'll never get anything done.

I love Spelling Bee so much! I sometimes stay up until midnight when the next day's puzzle is released so I can work it. I have never gotten to Queen Bee status because once I reach Genius, I am satisfied and stop playing. I sometimes can't get to Genius and it's really depressing, lol.