More Wordplay

Apart from the occasional game of Scrabulous Lexulous, I don't do much online gaming.  My primary online entertainment is the sport of gossip, at which I'm embarrassingly adept. 

I do, however, enjoy a good crossword from time to time, and I recently pledged to pick-up my crossword pen(cil) more often in order to sharpen the skills I learned in college.  Before the time of laptops in the classroom, we had to not pay attention the old-fashioned way - completing the Red & Black crossword. 

I used to be able to crack the puzzle in under ten minutes (which sounds impressive, but not really because once you did it so much the same esoteric clues repeated themselves so you just memorized them and deduced the rest of it).  Nowadays, though, I kind of suck. 

That's why I do the USAToday online puzzle.*  You can do it in "regular mode" or "the other mode I never do."  "Regular" allows you to see immediately if a letter you plug in is not correct; Read: you can guess all the letters of the alphabet until you get it right, thus you ALWAYS WIN. 

I don't know about you, but a game I ALWAYS WIN is a game I will play For.Ev.Er. 

Also, they have a two-week archive which means at any given moment there are 14 crosswords at your fingertips that you can ALWAYS WIN that are free.  It doesn't get much better than that.

*Ok, so I'll be honest. Originally I wanted to do the New York Times puzzle because it seems smarter, has a better reputation, and probably provides a better education.  Unfortunately, you have to pay for that one, and I'm just too cheap for that.  I'll take the somewhat inferior freebie, thankyouverymuch, because really, I'm probably not intelligent enough to complete a Times puzzle. Like, ever.