I come from a long line of crossword puzzle solvers. My grandfather, my mother, my sister and I all do multiple puzzles every day.

When I was in Canada finding lots of puzzles in the newspapers was not an issue. (Crossword Puzzle books are never the same as daily puzzles – they will do in a pinch but that is it).

I would happily do The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The Sun and just before I left The Post.

Week-ends were a special treat with lots of large week-end puzzles to solve.

When I first arrived in Ajijic, Lake Chapala we had access to one English newspaper out of Mexico City with one small crossword puzzle. Jumbles and Sudoku were, of course, out of the question.

When I would return to visit my sister and her family in Toronto I would be green with envy of her daily plethora of daily newspaper puzzle opportunities and watch despondently as she was up to her ears happily in week-end crosswords.

Then when my father would come to visit to get away from the frozen north I would carefully copy our one crossword every day and it was not long before we had our very own Jumble too. We would both do our puzzles with a spirit of competition as who could successfully solve them first. (more…)