The blog I have chosen to follow for the third Contemporary Mass Media assignment is this.
I chose this blog for two reasons. First, it is guaranteed to have a daily update. Second: because I enjoy doing the crossword (although I must admit I can usually only complete Monday and Tuesday alone) and I like to check my answers or see the clues I couldn't complete. If you google "New York Times crossword answers" this is the first blog that comes up. That's not how I was introduced to it (ex-boyfriend), but there it is.
I've learned from previous posts that the guy who writes the blog is a professor somewhere (NYU?) and that he competes in national crossword competitions. He always signs his blog "Rex Parker, King of the Crossworld," but that's not his real name.
Each day he does the New York Times crossword puzzle and times himself. He then identifies the constructor, ranks the puzzle as some variation of easy, medium or hard, and identifies and comments on the theme. He talks about some of the clues that threw him off (mostly blaming the puzzle creator for ambiguous wording) and applauds others. He thought today was "Monday easy," which explains why I was able to finish it.
He also always posts a word of the day, a fun word that maybe he didn't know before the puzzle or that he thinks his readers might not know. Today was tabor, a drum. [REVISED: picture added}
The blog is really only about the puzzle, and the writer's tone is pretty informal. He brags, he posts links to YouTube videos that puzzle answers reminded him of, he makes up brand slogans for Turkey, which was mentioned twice in today's puzzle (Turkey: The Real White Meat). The links add interactivity to the blog. You can watch the videos to get inside the author's thought process. Also, I assume that most people who read this blog at least glanced at the crossword before doing so. In that way the blog creates interaction between crossworders (acceptable word among people who do crosswords).
