We get a daily newspaper and it has both a cross word and a sodoku puzzle. [I do both in pencil by necessity.] Once in a while, I'll try the cross word puzzle, but most of the time, i don't get more that half way through. Our puzzle editor is too obtuse with his definitions. The sodoku puzzles are fun. In our paper, the difficulty lever begins with the easiest on Monday and then progressing to the most difficult on Saturday. I can solve the Monday thru Wednesday puzzles in reasonabe time, and then the snags begin to appear on Thursday. I can solve the Thur - Sat puzzles, but have to resort to drastic measures becasue these require guesses after the obvious numbers have been filled in. I usually don't bother with the Friday and Saturday puzzle because those are too time comsuming. I make use of the copier built inot my printer to solve the harder puzzles. After all the obvious numbers have been filled in, I lightly pencil in all possibilities in the remaining squares and then make several copies. I begin experimenting on a copy starting by circling a guess and marking out all eliminations this guess makes. If i can proceed through the entire puzzle ending with a solution, then I have guessed correctly. Most of the time, this does not happen and I must return to a nother copy and make a different guess. Continue making guesses on fresh copies until you find the solution. Hint: Start the first guess in a square that contains only 2 possibilities. If that one does not work out, then return to that square and try the other possibility. Often, this is the quickest way to find a solution. However, I have encountered puzzles where both guesses have ended in blind alleys which forces one to try a different square.

Oh, gosh! I missed all this somehow, I'm sorry! I hope the biopsy report is also good news, Sandie, and I hope Jim is feeling much better really soon.

Sue, I used to do the NYT puzzle the old fashioned way, but now I like doing it online quite a bit. Mostly because when you finish, it tells you whether you've done the whole thing right or not. I'm not really into the mini because it's not much of a challenge. I do like Spelling Bee, though.

I'm an avid crossword puzzler - so yes, I know they get harder as the week goes on. Our local paper saves the hardest crossword for Sunday. I do the crossword every day and set aside the Sunday one (and the NYT one, if I happen to come across one) to work on at my leisure - sometimes it takes me a few days to finish...but I usually do. Don't let the harder ones intimidate you - the more you work on them the more you will pick up on the clues that get used often - which often helps with the longer answers. Also, I had some guy comment the other day that I was "confident" for using a pen to do the crossword. Yes, maybe - but the truth is I cannot stand to use a pencil on newspaper. And like @Bookwoman I just write over any mistakes. I haven't seen/heard of Spelling Bee...I will have to look into that.