Study

Like many iPhone owners, I'm addicted, even though we have no cell service at our house. We do have wifi, and that's all I need.

The application I use the most is called "Crosswords." Each day, it downloads 5-7 crossword puzzles to help me waste time. The king of the puzzles is, of course, ,The New York Times. I had done these sporadically in my life, but over the last year or so I've been a daily doer. Mostly.

See, the Times puzzles increase in difficulty through the week.

Monday's puzzle is often so easy, it seems like it should be from TV Guide. Sample clue: Loser to a tortoise, in a fable (4 letters). Not very satisfying.

Tuesday is pretty easy, too. Simpson and Kudrow (5 letters).

Wednesday and Thursday are the weekday ones I enjoy most, and I imagine I'm not alone. They're doable, but they take some time. The clues are such that you can make steady progress, knocking off an answer here and there.

Friday and Saturday are a whole different beast. Often, the answers are multiple words, so they're tough to get without some cross-letters; but cross-letters are hard to get, too. So I end up staring at a corner of the puzzle, until (if I'm lucky) the whole section comes to me at once. I'll admit that this feels pretty good when it happens, but I find I don't have the patience to work at this very often. Maybe summertime can change this.

The Sunday puzzle is the best, of course. I don't know if it's the electronic version that helps me, but I've been far more successful on the iPhone than I ever remember being on paper.

There's a feature on the iPhone that times how long you take to solve a puzzle, then submits it to a site and compares you with all other solvers. The puzzles are online at 10 PM the day before. I like to get them then and solve them, so that for a brief few hours I'm on the leaderboard.

Whatever builds your self-esteem, right?