For the past several weeks I have been opening the Sunday paper and trying my hand at the two crossword puzzles in my local newspaper. One is a relatively easy puzzle, the other is the re-published NY Times Crossword. Without saying, I have been failing miserably at the NY Times one.

Over the weeks, I have noticed that the crossword designers have been getting a lot more interesting in their puzzle design. One of the puzzles last weekend actually had a bingo card in the middle of the puzzle. And then 9 or 10 of the clues throughout the puzzle it just said Mark your bingo card. For those clues you had to go to the bingo card and spell out in letters what was on the card. For example the card had B-15. One of the answers was BFIFTEEN. O-55 fit another clue OFIFTYFIVE. I thought it was a pretty interesting twist. You had to figure out just enough letters in the surrounding clues to find out which bingo combination worked for that clue.

On Tuesday when I was out I went to the local book store and picked up a crossword puzzle book. Previous to that I did some free crossword puzzles on-line and even downloaded an iPhone app, but for some reason it is not the same thrill as doing it on a piece of paper.