Friday, January 06, 2012

TRIP PAYNE RETIRES FROM ACPT

Trip Payne has announced on his Facebook page that he will no longer be competing at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

The three-time ACPT champion (1994, 1998 and 2004) cited the expense of attending the tournament - he recently moved to Los Angeles from his longtime home of Boca Raton, Florida - as one of the reasons that he will no longer attend the tournament.

Payne was one of the super-solvers featured prominently in the documentary "Wordplay", which chronicled Trip's second-place finish to Tyler Hinman. It was one of five second-place finishes and three third-place finishes in his ACPT career. Overall, Payne finished in the money 11 times over roughly 20 years of competing, in addition to a slew of geographic and age-level awards.

Trip's LiveJournal page notes that he has been considering retirement from the ACPT since at least September of last year.