A note to readers about comics and puzzles

Starting today, the Ottawa Citizen is expanding our weekly offering of crossword puzzles to readers, and adding fresh, new and awardwinning content to our comics pages.

The Citizen will feature three of North America’s best and industry-leading titles, with the New York Times and L.A. Times crosswords appearing Monday through Saturday and, in Satur- day’s paper, adding the Washington Post’s popular and challenging weekend crossword. We’ve also made changes to our lineup of comics and puzzles. While some familiar titles have disappeared, we’ve added new, award-winning and Canadian comic strips to our daily mix of funnies.

We’re proud to carry Canadian comics like Between Friends, Chuckle Bros and The Other Coast and the smart, off the wall humour of Bizarro, Rhymes with Orange and Pardon my Planet. We’ve kept some of North America’s most popular strips, such as Zits, created by Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Jim Borgman and Reuben Awardwinning cartoonist/writer Jerry Scott, which appears in more than 1,600 newspapers worldwide. Brian Crane’s Pickles has been a reader favourite for years and a past winner of best newspaper comic strip of the year from the National Cartoonists Society.

You’ll find fewer titles overall in our Saturday paper. Our plan in redesigning the Citizen is to bring you a smart, visually stunning and contextual read every day of the week. It’s part of a broader plan to invest our resources into our digital offerings — smartphone, tablet and web — and to make our daily newspaper more relevant.

We hope you’ll find our focus on quality comics and puzzles, old favourites and contemporary titles in Saturday’s three-page package challenges and entertains you.

You’ll find the answers to the puzzles we will no longer be running on page I5 today.

Email us your feedback at NewOttawaCitizen@ottawacitizen.com.