Curse you, Will Shortz

Dormant Gorilla — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:23:04 -0800

Help me do crossword puzzles FAST. So after years of procrastination and excuse-making, I've decided to finally go to the national crossword puzzle championships this year and embarrass the hell out of myself.

And I need some help. Not with how to actually answer the clues, obviously- if I couldn't do that I'd be in some trouble at this point. What I need to know is how to do them FAST. These guys are crazy with the speed and I'd like to at least be competitive.

What I'm looking for is things like writing in lowercase because it's fewer pencil strokes, not reading all the clues, doing the puzzle in quadrants- that's pretty much all I can come up with myself so if you guys know of any other practical tips for upping my speed, I would hugely appreciate it. The tournament is next weekend so I don't have THAT much time to adjust my gameplay but I want to do what I can.

Thank you!

PS If anyone has gone to one of these things and can give me advice on what to expect, that would be awesome too, but it's not the primary question. I've seen Wordplay but that pretty much focused only on the top five guys whose experience, sad to say, will probably not be much like mine.

Best resouce for free printable crosswords?

iamisaid — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:18:18 -0800

Where can I find free printable crossword puzzles online for this lazy Sunday and beyond? Preferably a resource that lets me choose from a variety of difficulty levels or is geared more toward beginners than experts. A google search turns up a mixed bag of less than stellar results. Where are your favorites? If the answer involves installing a program like Across Lite (which I've only tinkered with in the past) and then printing from there, that's fine as well. And I'm aware that there are plenty of crossword books around, but I'd prefer to print on-demand. Thanks all.

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Curse you, Will Shortz

Best resouce for free printable crosswords?