A Few Puzzles in
Brooklyn, USA
March 2008 (aka, Menehune Do Not Mess Around in Crosswordia)
If you have read this blog before, I hope that you can sense that I believe writing about one's life must be done with scrupulous avoidance of braggadocio. Scruples are a must-have. For a bloggist, at least.
With humility I therefore begin my tale of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament 2008. Actually really short compared to some other blogs out there in cyber-Crosswordland.
Yeah, so they moved the tournament from Stamford, Conn. to the world class city of Brooklyn this year. This is a cool place.
I even know some people who live here. Kate, last seen in these annals beach-knitting; Sam, previously enjoying Clif blocks; and Jeannine, who is an outstanding cruciverbalist, willing to tackle the hardest grid I could find on a Curacao beach. In the above photo is of course Official Awesome Breathing Partner of Your Humble Bloggist, who was very brave to venture into the cold northeast on this ridiculous try at redeeming a horrendous 70.3 Hawaii triathlon in 2007. (Not sure why they would have anything at all to do with each other, but I wanted redemption somehow. I mean, something like that can't go unredeemed, eh? Otherwise the menehune win.)
Did I ever tell you my theory of ordering Thai food?
Probably not. I ALWAYS order pad thai, because every time I have ordered something else, I have ruefully concluded "Should have gotten the pad thai." Yeah. Maybe you didn't find that interesting, but at least it was short.
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How did I become interested in such a thing as American-style crosswords, you say? (Yes, I know you didn't say that, but falsely attributing thoughts to you is all part of blog-writing for me, so roll with it willya?) Well, I'm glad you asked (ahem), because I can mention the Official Crossword Inspiration of Your Humble Bloggist herein. See, Tom likes to do a grid at work. And there were times that occasionally, infrequently, I could help add a few letters to his effort. One time he mentioned the nightly online crossword race-apalooza at the NY Times website and it was on. Oh yeah, it was way on.
Tom is better at many things than I am. Observe him showing off his clear superiority to me at index finger extension. We are all good at something.
My preparation for the big weekend included extreme-weather solving. I think that helped.
Right, so there's this big room and among the participants is the very cool filmmaker, Patrick Creadon, who did Wordplay, the documentary of the 2005 ACPT, which showed Tyler Hinman winning his first of now four in a row. I'm going to try to embed a video of Tyler doing a puzzle in 2 minutes down there. Cross your fingers.
(random html gobbledygook was here, ed.)
Well, that doesn't look like it's going to work to me. I have failed at embedding. If you really want to see it just go here.
There you have me with Patrick, who can solve with the best of them.
Wait a sec! Old Will Shortz, the Puzzlemaster himself, doesn't mind taking a picture with a rank newbie sporting his new good luck shirt.
How did I do? Well, you have to realize that six months of training is probably not enough to be competitive. They score these things on speed and accuracy, and I bobbled a little on both accounts. One of the seven puzzles was a really good one for me, though, and it happened to be puzzle 5, the trickiest of them. I tied for the 15th best score on that one. Still not good enough to turn a lot of heads, but maybe next year. My new best friend is David Kahn who constructed puzzle 5.
The finals were amazing, and hinged on an error by a veteran former champion. The final 3 were doing a puzzle on big dry erase boards while like 1000 or so spectators bit their nails. Trip Payne, the vet, finished in about 9 minutes but put "injects" instead of "invests" for one answer. It wasn't great to see him declare "Done" and watch him spin around to the audience smiling, expecting a big cheer, and only getting a loud groan. We are all human.
This allowed Tyler to win, AGAIN. It took him a very long time (in Tyler minutes) to finish it. 13 minutes or so. The great Howard Barkin never did finish before the 20 minute time limit. Super-tough grid by Bob Klahn, who seriously broke my heart with the hardest puzzle I have ever done, December 29, 2007.
It will be fun to be back in the fray next year, moving up a division to tougher competition. I know those who finished ahead of me and those who finished behind me will all be trying to get faster too. And now I close in order to go find what exactly a besom is, since the tres elegant Paula Gamache (it was neat to see the faces behind the names of frequent constructors) put that in her NYT puzzle today. Besom. Hmm. You can learn some cool words doing this. Like zax. Love that word...
