Just a couple of quick notes. It's the depths of winter and I've had some time off, so I'm playing with puzzles. I kind of like <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=4425">Wordle</a>. I don't play to win as quickly as possible. I like to throw unusual words at it, on the off chance that it will result in a lucky punch. <img src="{att_link}bacon.jpg" href="{att_link}bacon.jpg" align="none" caption="Bacon Wordle" scale="25%"> I sent the picture above to a friend who also likes <i>Wordle</i> with the note: <bq>There are probably not a lot of people who unironically and eminently hopefully guess "capon" before they’re forced to remember that "bacon" would also have worked.</bq> Sometimes I deliberately try guessing as "badly" as possible to see how long I can keep the field gray, using up as many letters as possible before solving it. For example, if you look at the keyboard, there is really only one solution remaining, given the revealed letters. The solution has to be CAL_E of CA_LE, with the letters shown on the keyboard (or C, A, L, E). It could have been "calve", but "cable" seemed like the better bet. The Wordle almost never uses a fancy word like "calve" (either because of its relation to proletarian animal-husbandry, or because of its relation to climate-change, with glaciers "calving"). <img src="{att_link}cable_is_the_only_answer.png" href="{att_link}cable_is_the_only_answer.png" align="none" caption="Cable is the only answer" scale="35%"> I finished another recent Wordle in three steps by first guessing <hl>Quest</hl>, then <hl>Emoji</hl>, then was quite surprised to find that <hl>Evoke</hl> was actually the answer. <img src="{att_link}evoke.png" href="{att_link}evoke.png" align="none" caption="Evoke" scale="25%"> In <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=3974">Spelling Bee</a> news, I continue to add to a list of real words that the puzzle does not recognize. I'm up to over 150 of them. My most recent addition is <hl>phaeton</hl>. <img src="{att_link}phaeton.png" href="{att_link}phaeton.png" align="none" scale="25%"> I also did a couple recently that had very few words and points. <div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr; gap: 15px"><img src="{att_link}rhythmic_spelling_bee.png" href="{att_link}rhythmic_spelling_bee.png" align="none" caption="Rhythmic - 20 words for 85 points" scale="25%"><img src="{att_link}homepage_-_27_words_for_76_points.png" href="{att_link}homepage_-_27_words_for_76_points.png" align="none" caption="Homepage - 27 words for 76 points" scale="20%"></div> And, finally, the actual crossword advertised in the title. My partner and I have a very long streak going---almost five years---and we've amassed quite a lot of statistics. I generally don't do Monday-Wednesday because those are the easy ones. Again, because I have more free time---and I'm currently six hours ahead of my partner---I gave Monday a shot for Christmas. I wanted to set a record time. <img src="{att_link}crossword_in_record_time.png" href="{att_link}crossword_in_record_time.png" align="none" caption="Crossword in record time" scale="50%"> I was pretty pleased with myself. 4:20 is very fast. I was certain that I'd just set the record. Unfortunately, the NY Times has stored some unusual numbers. <img src="{att_link}record_time_is_impossible.png" href="{att_link}record_time_is_impossible.png" align="none" caption="Record time is impossible" scale="50%"> We've never solved a Monday puzzle in 1:15. That's pretty much impossible, I think, unless you already knows the answers and are just transcribing them into the game interface. I could see that the record for Tuesday is 4:21, so I beat that one, at least, if only by a second. 😉 Finally, I just noticed that I had an old screenshot lying around of our average times when we were still at a 765-day streak. <img src="{att_link}nyt_crossword_765_streak.png" href="{att_link}nyt_crossword_765_streak.png" align="none" caption="NYT Crossword 765 Streak" scale="65%"> I compared to a recent screenshot, at 1710 days, and the daily averages haven't moved much, a few a bit slower, a few a bit faster. <img src="{att_link}nyt_crossword_1710_streak.png" href="{att_link}nyt_crossword_1710_streak.png" align="none" caption="NYT Crossword 1710 Streak" scale="35%">