I love crossword puzzles.  Particularly the Wall Street Journal crossword puzzles.

In 2000 I bought a crossword puzzle of the day calendar and would work on the puzzles during my lunch hour.   Occasionally I would ask if anyone knew a x-letter word for ????  Over the course of a few weeks my lunchmates (or whatever you want to call them) got interested in solving the puzzles.  During that same time, we also had access to the Wall Street Journal that publishes a crossword puzzle on Fridays.  When the calendar was finished, I tried a WSJ puzzle and thought it was too hard.  By this time the crossword puzzle was a staple during lunch so we all put our heads together.  We worked and worked on those puzzles and at the beginning it took us a week to solve one.

Eventually we could finish one in a day…with a somewhat extended lunch hour.

Well, I changed jobs a few years ago and lost out on the print version of the WSJ puzzles.  Then I discovered a web site that had them so I would print them out and solve them on my own.

Now a couple of people come to me at lunchtime and ask if I have a new puzzle we can work on.  They’ve got the bug.  It takes us a few days to solve them (and I know some people can do it in less than 15 minutes) but we have fun.

I have my own stash of puzzles I solve while I eat my breakfast.  In fact that’s the only reason why I turned on my computer tonight.  I ran out of puzzles so I had to print some out or I would be lost in the morning without a puzzle.

Just thought you’d like to know.