Crossword-ease

Tyler got me Will Shortz's Greatest Hits: 150 New York Times Crossword Puzzles Personally Picked by the Puzzle Master for our anniversary. I love it when he gets me non-traditional quirky things (like a few years ago, he got me this special kind of floss that I really like). Anyway, I'm a little rusty when it comes to crosswords. It's not like riding a bike, and it's not a matter of just being smart. It's its own particular language. I've been doing the Mondays and the Tuesdays in the book (they get progressively harder during the week) to warm up. Today, I thought I'd try a Wednesday. Here is a list of facts that I didn't know that I had to cheat and look up:

• Sammy Cahn wrote the lyrics to "High Hopes"
• There's an Italian auto maker named Alfa Romeo
• Olio is another word for a hodgepodge
• Dirty Harry worked for the SFPD
• Jonathan Swift wrote a pamphlet titled "A Modest Proposal" in 1729
• Bill Cosby was in a TV show called I Spy
• Gary Lewis and the Playboys sang "This Diamond Ring"
• Paula Abdul and Stevie Wonder sang a song called "Will You Marry Me" (The puzzle was a marriage proposal for a woman named Emily Mindel, which, if I were her, I would have no idea it was meant for me because these clues and a mention of Emily Dickenson are as specific as it gets.)
• There's an artist named Paul Klee
• Cassis is a kind of black current liqueur
• Stephen Foster wrote a song called "Old Uncle Ned"
• Sedge is a kind of reed
• Rollo was a character in an old comic strip called "Nancy"
• Tyrol is the capital of Innsbruck, which is an Austrian state
• Yente is the matchmaker on Fiddler on the Roof (I think I did know this at one point)
  
• Enero is Spanish for January

So... it doesn't look promising for progressing past Wednesday.