I started doing the NYT crossword on a regular basis on Dec 4, 2018.
I turned Bella onto it during our christmas vacation in Malta that year.
My first real streak started Dec 29, 2018 and ran through Jan 31, 2019. Fridays are tough to keep up with! Especially when I was working in Iraq and it was my one free day to party. I’ve done every Monday puzzle in a streak since Dec 10, 2018, and every Tuesday since July 7, 2020 (it would have been since Dec 18, 2018, but June 30 was an unfortunate day).
My current streak started on Sep 12, 2021. Prior to that, my streak had run from Sep 2, 2019 (Sep 1 was another unfortunate day) through June 12, 2020 (the first day I went hiking after the spring 2020 lock down lifted).
My all time fastest record is 3:49, on Monday, Sep 5, 2021. My fastest Sunday is 22:14 (Feb 13, 2022), and my fastest Thursday is 4:34 (Mar 31, 2022). I guess 2022 was a good year for my puzzle times as I also set records for Friday (9:36 on Aug 26), Saturday (13:24 on Aug 27) and Wednesday (7:32 on Nov 30).
Mom was kind of notorious for doing puzzles, but she wasn’t a crossword-er. She was obsessed with the Dell Logic problems, Cross sums and Word arithmetic. The puzzle books were all over the house, and I started doing them as well, solving in her books when she wasn’t looking.