i do a lot of crosswords

*note: while true, this post is totally ridiculous. i like it that way.

i sit a lot, trying to stay chill, trying not to bust holes in the wall. i do a lot of crossword puzzles. humiliating my friends at games like scrabble and trivial pursuit is one of my favorite hobbies. tried throwing myself into my work and found that shit bores me a lot of the time. so the NYT crossword is like my daily challenge. it gets harder as the week progresses, generally peaking on saturday. the sunday puzzle is larger, but in my experience not as hard. just big.
today i went to the starbucks by my work on my lunch break and busted out mr. friday, by my formula the second-hardest puzzle of the week. usually i'm about 75% finishing fridays. monday through thursday are generally gimmes (except this wednesday's, which dominated me) but fri-sat is the evil axis of devastating puzzledom.
often you don't have to even look at the clues to know how hard a puzzle will be...if the grid has few black squares, and from a bit back has a lighter feel to it, you could be in trouble. this is indicative of a lot of long, long words/phases with fewer opportunities to fill in chunks with shorter words overlapping a lot. today's friday had a definite lack of black squares. it was whiter than beverly hills.
well, i'm not letting some puzzle scare me am i? a little. perhaps a small whimper of fear escaped my quivering lip. but i bore ahead bravely, dove into the fray, etc. wielding my pen as a sabre, i scanned the field of battle for vulnerable enemies. while it presented an imposing front, there were weaknesses, and i quickly moved to exploit them. the bottom left began immediately to buckle under the weight of my assault, and discovering a 3 letter "asian holiday" (tet) afforded me an opportunity to rout the enemy from this part of the field. with the center of the line holding, i moved to the bottom of the grid, and scored a coup when i filled in a long one ("staring into space") and the bottom fell, though not without a hard-fought battle.
one way to tell if you've done a good job on the puzzle is to see how clean it is when you're done. if you have written over words again and again trying to find out what the right one is, you've fucked up, and deserve to be sent to a corner. as an aside: never use a pencil. it shows weakness, and the New York Times crossword puzzle can smell weakness from several newspaper racks over. use only pen, preferably one with a strong, clear black line. i prefer rollerball pens, the pilot precise V5 to be specific.
anyhow, my top third of the puzzle today was riddled with errors. i incorrectly remembered the german word for "high" (its 4:20 zumvere, ya?), putting "alte" (the word for "old") instead of "hoch". the bitterness in my mouth was unbearable. the battle was turning against me, and my lunch hour was dwindling. i became desperate, scanning the three long, grid-wide across clues that composed the top three lines of the puzzle. "Deviant, in a way" "You know...that woman." 'there are no options". I could think of nothing. the corpses of several incorrectly filled squares led me to chase many red herrings, feints and counter feints in the blood-soaked grid of battle. i feared i would lose this conflict, my pen forced to flee the field. morale plummeted and my hand shook with exertion.
all of a sudden, as a lone raven flew overhead, it struck me. "Deviant, in a way". SADOMASOCHISTIC. the random letters i'd managed congealed in my head and i let out a fierce whoop of bloodlust. i bore down on the now-shattered puzzle, routing its armies from the plain. "You know...that woman" OLDWHATSHERNAME. there are no options....YOUHAVENOCHOICE. My victory was complete.
i sat back. and looked around. i get very intent when i'm doing puzzles and often miss things happening around me. if there had been a pterodactyl attack, i would have been fucked. thankfully, no ancient flying dinosaurs were menacing my local starbucks. i had a smoke to calm my nerves, still singing with the joy of combat.
then i got up and threw the paper away, and made my way back to work. i wondered...do the passing drivers know? can they see it in my face?

then i realized it's highly probable i'm completely insane. i had a little chuckle over that, but it was interrupted by a ferocious pterodactyl attack. ah, but that's a tale for another day.