The jumbo Sunday crosswords that appear under the imprimatur of the New York Times … had been kicking my butt.

Seventeen straight that I failed to complete without a mistake. Making me wonder if the canary had stopped singing in the coal mine of my brain.

I completed one on February 20 but, through May 8, all I had was failure.

A few, I note beneath the puzzle as having come close … but a few more puzzles never allowed me to establish a beachhead. My notes jotted under three of those puzzles read: “Total BS … ridiculous … beyond ridiculous”.

Which struck me as fair comment … but also would be the sort of comments I would make when I had lost enough gray cells to see my performance decline.

It did not help, of course, that the puzzles originally appeared in NYT from 1988 to 1992. Lots of dated information there. Pop stuff, cabinet secretaries and the usual dollop of French/German/Latin words.

Then, I had a thought.

What about trying some Los Angeles Times puzzles from their Sunday editions? I have some in the house. So I fetched one and got to work …

And suddenly I got much smarter. Senility had been pushed back to its starting point. Seemingly.

I banged out nine LAT Sundays in about a month, and three of them were perfect. That is from a 21×21 grid — 241 squares. A big puzzle.

I was getting clue after clue without much trouble. Perhaps because the L.A. puzzle is markedly easier — or fairer or less perverse — than the NYT puzzles.

Let’s look at some clues. First, from L.A.

First victim, four letters. (Adam)

Minutiae, six letters. (trivia)

Rum-soaked cake (four) … Madcap’s motive (seven) … Fashion’s Christian (four) … Batter after Babe (three). Answers: baba, impulse, Dior, Lou

It was almost easier than I like, after years of pitiless hand-to-hand combat with NYT. And I moved through them quickly.

So, I have gone back to NYT as the test for my state of mind.

Some of the clues from those beasts:

Algae extract (four letters) … Cry of encouragement to Mary Lou (eight) … Rainier realm (six) … Colorful fish (four). Answers? agar, attagirl, Monaco, opah.

See the difference?

Also, the NYT overarching clue, pertaining to the long answers in the puzzle, are without question more difficult. LAT will give you something like “What’s where” as the clue and soon you realize that all the answers have i-n-t-h-e at the middle. Theifinthenight, etc.

NYT doesn’t want you to have a fair chance.

For instance: “Author-clergyman” is louisamayalcottonmather. The author is Louisa May Alcott and the clergyman is Cotton Mather, but those two share four letters at the front/back of the correct answer to the clue.

Get it? “Louisa May Al Cotton Mather”.

And that is not a particularly perverse one. But perverse enough.

So, a month on L.A. Times “Sunday Crossword Omnibus” and I batted a nice .333. Amazing how smart I got.

Now, back to the NYT coal face, where any success is rare and fleeting and celebrated — because it will be a long time before I bring down another of these 30-year-old brutes. Which probably is more about NYT than it is about me.

At least for now.