I stayed up late Saturday night.  Late, as in 10:00 p.m.  This is unusual for me, as I’m definitely a morning person.  Yes, “early to bed, early to rise” people do exist.

What kept me up so late?  The New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle.  A friend at work showed me the application on his iPad last week, so I downloaded it as well.

Now, I am a casual crossword puzzle person.  I like them but I can’t say I’m any good at solving them.  Years ago, I tried to work the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzles.  If I managed to write in five items, I was feeling pretty good.  If it turned out that any of them were correct, I considered myself really hot stuff.  However, it wasn’t much fun spending all that time for only a few entries (mostly or all wrong), so I gave that up after a very short while.

Then the Internet was born.

“Kiss of the Dragaon” star?  Jet Li, of course.  Now I know that, too, even though I didn’t see the movie. The capital of East Flanders, Belgium?  Ghent!   The Welland Canal connects Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Who knew?

With the Internet at my fingertips, I have a chance at doubling — no, tripling — my entries.  Fifteen, whew! The more people, geography, movie, literature clues in a puzzle, the more I can look up and fill in.

Saturday evening, I had my iPad out when ding!  The New York Times crossword puzzle application notified me that the Sunday puzzle was available.  Sure, I thought, I’ll just take one little peek.  Only a peek.  Right.  I managed a few more than my usual five entries, got inspired and decided to stay up “just a little bit longer.”

My experience makes me suspicious of some of my entries. I’ve been absolutely sure before and have been absolutely wrong.  I’m amazed at how many wrong answers have the same number of letters as the right answers.  One clue was “Rock and roll, e.g.”  I wrote “Music.”  No, it was “nouns.”  I’m leery of answers that I get right from the get go.  “Pathfinders, etc.” was the clue.  I put in Nissans.  That just sounded too easy.  But it was right.

One hour, 25 minutes and 22 seconds later, I finished it, just after 10:00 p.m.  And when I mean “I” finished it, that means me, hubby and the Internet.  Do you want to check the puzzle? the app asked me.  Sure, why not.  Ding!  The puzzle is correct!  Your time, it informs me, clocks in as puzzle solver #460.  Yep, 459 people finished the puzzle in a shorter amount of time.  Puzzle solver #1 with the shortest amount of time took 4:42 to finish.  Puzzle solver #2 managed it in 8:11.

But that was Saturday night.  By Sunday afternoon, my 1:25:22 time dropped me to #2071.  I may have downgrade my “hot stuff” level to “glacial.”