Tuesday, July 14, 2009

SoSG Gives Puzzles While Others Cut Back

For those of you participating in the 2009 PCS series, please take note: while we Sons slave away at providing your Dodger off-days with hours (or at least, minutes) of extra enjoyment--other newspapers and sites are cutting back:

For people like Ms. Urban and Mr. Szurek — who calls himself “a habitual user” — the greatest puzzle of all these days can be finding one. As magazines and newspapers cut pages to save money, crossword puzzles, acrostics, sudokus and other games are being left on the production-room floor.

The Atlantic’s Puzzler, which will take its final bow in September, and The New York Sun’s crossword are among the most notable recent casualties, in part because of their Ivy League street cred. (Let’s face it: the crosswords in TV Guide and People magazine seldom generate heat at Hamptons dinner parties.) But The Washington Post, The New York Times and countless local newspapers have also trimmed their puzzle space for financial reasons.

The human toll? Ruined Sundays, furious e-mail messages from loyal subscribers and fewer reasons for members of the Obama generation to pause an iPod and pick up a pencil.

It's been a nice mutual benefit; in return for our puzzle construction labors, we are achieving traffic levels on off-days that rival the Dodgers' game days; and, all traffic has seen a significant increase this season. Special thanks to SoSG EK for stewarding the whole PCS affair. And thank you, SoSG readers and puzzlers, and make sure to set your alarms for tomorrow morning's puzzle!

3 comments:

Josh S. said...

I really appreciate the puzzles! I've already achieved my modest goal of cracking the Top 10, so now I might as well shoot for the moon.

Oh, and the NL's chances tonight just got a little better. Longoria is sitting out with an "infected ring finger". Michael Young is starting and the other half of the SoCal ticket has been added to the roster. Maybe there's hope for Matt yet, if another NL guy comes down with some bizarre malady.

karina said...

Puzzles rock my life! and give HOURS of entertainment, in spite i never solve them.

Thanks!

ubragg said...

I have to say, I read the blog last year (all through Google Reader) but was never current enough to participate in the puzzles, usually catching up on my feeds on the weekends. As I was subscribed to lots of Dodgers blogs, I didn't make the association that most of the most enjoyable posts were from here.

This year, I decided to make an effort to do the puzzles, and as a result it really brought my attention to the rest of the blog as well. Now I visit the site every day. I love the posts, the pictures, the humor, and of course, the off-day puzzles. Definitely my favorite Dodgers site by a wide margin. In fact, according to my Chrome New Tab page, this is my third most visited site behind Gmail and ESPN. Not bad.

Unfortunately I don't participate much in the game threads because due to my work schedule, I usually watch all the games at night on delay so I miss out on all the real-time banter. On the days I have watched live, I've checked in there, but haven't really found an efficient way to follow the conversation in real time. Do folks really sit there and hit reload, or is there some interface that is more conducive to real-time chat that I'm not aware of? (BTW, if this is a problem that others have, there must be some way to embed a more real-time chat widget for the game threads... I can investigate some way to help get that set up if there is interest.)

Anyway, thanks for the fantastic blog and the equally fantastic puzzles. Both have added enormous enjoyment to the baseball season for me. Go Blue!