Ryan Greenberg

I started doing the New York Times crossword in their app. Once I got on a bit of a streak I thought “well, it would be a shame to let this arbitrary accomplishment end.”

Today I hit 52 weeks of solved puzzles! Writing about it is a little self indulgent, but Mondays are the easiest puzzles each week so we can agree not to be all that impressed.

I look up answers from time to time. I try to do it mostly in Wikipedia and learn something along the way. Here are some of my faves from my notes:

• ARIANA is the flag carrier and largest airline of Afghanistan (and also obviously Ari).
• There are spring tides and NEAP tides, which each happen twice a month.
• 5.5 yards is a ROD.
• “People are wrong when they say that the OPERA is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be—that’s what’s wrong with it” (Noël Coward, in one of his plays).
• Nobelist IRENE Joliot-Curie synthesized radioactive isotopes. Her mother, father, husband, and brother-in-law also won Nobel prizes bringing the Curie family total to five.
• OLIO is a mishmash or miscellaneous mixture.
• NERTS is an old-timey oath (a 1930s euphemism for “nuts”).
• SOU is a pittance (named for an old, low-value French coin).
• Eric Arthur BLAIR wrote under the pen name George Orwell.
• IDEE fixe is an idea or desire that dominates the mind; an obsession (This was my favorite solve of the year).