The Guardian, one of Britain's and possibly the world's leading newspapers, has officially started charging for the use of their online crossword puzzles. I played the very last free crossword puzzle yesterday. I am a little sad now as it's one of the things I do everyday. I know, it might seem weird to some people, but I really enjoy crossword puzzles and in the process of doing it, learn new words.
The Guardian now charges an annual subscription fee of �25 which will grant a subscriber access to several things. Check it out here. I suppose the sales team at The Guardian must have discovered that there are millions of people like myself, and thus decided to try to get some revenue from it. I hope their sales strategy fails, and then maybe I will be able to get my free daily dose of crossword puzzles. Haha.
But for the moment, there goes my daily dose of crossword puzzles. I am not very willing to spend �25 on it. I guess I will just find some other website. Though I must say that the people who set the crossword puzzles at The Guardian are really smart and set really good puzzles! I usually only do the Quick puzzles because the Cryptic puzzles are just ttooooo difficult.
The Guardian online was first introduced to me by Vanessa when I went to visit her in Bristol three years ago. She was studying there at that time. If I'm not wrong, my friend May is also a huge fan of the paper.
Despite not being able to access the crossword puzzles, I remain a huge fan of the paper. The editorials are very insightful and there are many well-written articles. In addition, the news is very up-to-date. The website's also user-friendly and filled with lots of information. I love the sections on books and films. The website has something for just about everyone.
Highly recommended!
Posted by DSD at July 31, 2003 1:47 AMi can't agree more! Guardian is ace....it's keeps me updated while i am in Deutschland....and the monthly Le Monde Diplomatique is filled with insightful essays on world issues.....(gosh is the advertising dept. of Guardian tuning in??)
pity about the crosswords...sigh.
hey Joan! love your blog!
Posted by: tiggie at July 31, 2003 4:23 AMhi Joan,
Good effort, although I had never seen come across the word "blog", it seems like a online diary to me?
keep up the good work!!!
Posted by: Wan Shu at July 31, 2003 3:51 PMThe Guardian is still one of my favourite news sites, though I do trawl news.google.com more often now.
Weblogs have been around for years. I was in denial for a while, then decided to jump onto the bandwagon :-P
According to search engine Daypop, there are 29683 weblogs indexed and ranked so far: www.daypop.com/blogrank. And weblogs.com has a list of the most recently updated sites.
Posted by: vantan at August 2, 2003 2:38 AM