No Dessert Until You Finish Your Vegetables

Without rules, the basics in life would never get accomplished. I’ve had to institute this—let’s call it a guideline since, if it were a rule, I’d break it almost every day: no puzzle until you read the rest of the Times. Otherwise, I’d fail in my goal to be a well-informed citizen.

Today, for example. Had I launched right in on solving the crossword, I’d be out of the loop on key stories: former Republican senator Fred Thompson is cleaving to the party line by arguing against the release of John Roberts’s official memoranda (“National Report,” p. A16); “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” continues to do better box office than “Wedding Crashers” and “Fantastic Four” (“Arts, Briefly,” p. E2); and Anita Askienazy knew not only one or two but THREE people on the 79th Street cross-town bus (“Metropolitan Diary,” p. B2).

And now my reward. Too bad the crossword is as Lite as the rest of the paper, since Mondays are historically the slowest news day of the week. I understand the internal logic of making the puzzle progressively harder as the week goes on, but the news gets more voluminous, and substantive, over the course of the week, too. The net result is that there’s not enough time in the day to get through the Friday paper, and most Mondays it’s not worth buying the thing in the first place.

There. I’ve finally found a strong rationale to buy the New York Post.