Let The Games Begin... And End

The Friday night icebreaker games have concluded. Eric Berlin brought a variation on Siamese Twins puzzles that used visual clues projected in random order three seconds at a time. Magnus Palm offered a series of statements about Sweden, where he is a puzzle master, and you had to guess true or false. Grand prize: his crossword cufflinks.

The Tournament Before The Tournament

Bob vs. Stan Newman on my themeless. Bob had a one minute head start. Stan pretty much has the puzzle filled in now. But Stan was stumped on some clues. Bob wins this round.

First Juicy News from ACPT

The first rule of the 2010 ACPT is NO GREEN PENS.

The second rule of the 2010 ACPT is, NO GREEN PENS.

Your constructors in no particular order: Patrick Berry, Liz Gorski, Maura Jacobson, Stan Newman, Mike Nothnagel, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Merl Reagle, and Mike Shenk. Only given is Maura is #6 as always.

Haven't counted the contestants yet. Bob will be a walk-on this year.

Jay Kasofsky will be competing for the 33rd time, a unique distinction. The only 32-year competitors are Mimi Raphael and Ellen Ripstein.

Puzzle Brothers On Facebook - Follow Us!

If you would like to see our 2010 ACPT tournament updates on Facebook, please visit http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/The-Puzzle-Brothers/332613355217?ref=ts. (Thank goodness you don't have to type that in. We will try to sync both the blog and Facebook.

33RD (and a third?) REVOLUTION

The number 33. It's not a prime number 3 x 11 = 33. It may mean different things to different people. The speed of a long playing record, plus that pesky little third. The mysterious digits on the side of a bottle of Rolling Rock. With an apologetic little ', it becomes a year in the great Depression, the same year that Popeye the Sailor Man made his first cartoon in the New York studios of Max and Dave Fleischer. The year that FDR introduced a lot of his New Deal agencies. But most importantly, the year Prohibition ended.

Whatever the number 33 means to you, to about 700 crossword fanatics, it is the magic number for this weekend as today begins the 33rd annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, at the Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge, the tournament's newly established home. Welcome to our pre-game show.

As always, Will Shortz presides over the marquee event of the cross-world, attracting the best solvers and constructors who gather for an always-magical weekend of solving and side activities. Much of what goes on is already known - games Friday night, cocktail hour afterward, six puzzles Saturday, #5 will kill a lot of on-the-fence solver, "Puzzle number six is by Maura Jacobson," and the nail-biting Sunday finals.

Yet questions remain. The biggest is can Tyler Hinman hang on and win his record-shattering sixth straight ACPT? Is there ANYONE OUT THERE who can beat him? Some say yes. A lot of the crossword community is putting money on a relative newcomer to the elite ranks, Dan Feyer. I fully expect it to be a two-way shootout between Hinman and Feyer. Who will be the third wheel? Lots of logical choices - Trip Payne, Al Sanders, Jon Delfin, Ellen Ripstein... I just can't choose, but the anticipated Hinman-Feyer tilt is going to keep a lot of people in that ballroom after the lower prizes have been handed out.

Sure, the playoff puzzle is the Cadillac event, but the first six hold the key. Those early puzzles are going to be key in determining who takes the stage on Sunday - last year, four solvers were in a dead tie for A contention, and it came down to tiebreakers to determine who went to the podium. (And for the record, that fourth solver who was shut out of A-level contention? Dan Feyer, who went on to win the B division.)

Tournament No. 33 marks the end of an era for Dave and Bob Mackey: The Puzzle Brothers will be competing in their last ACPT ever in which they will not have an age designator next to their name in the standings. Reluctantly, we are entering the ranks of the fifty-plus solvers next year. I fully expect that Puzzle Brother Bob will be the cream of the new crop of 50's as the likes of Al Sanders, Jon Delfin and Ellen Ripstein move on to the next strata.

Naturally, we are excited about what the weekend will have in store. We are looking forward to seeing you all there.

ACPT Registration Up From Last Year

A source within the ACPT has informed me that preregistrations are up from last year. The tournament packet last year boasted 616 contestants. The final number of contestants last year was 675, and the all-time record number of contestants was in 2008, the first year in Brooklyn, when 699 people played in the tournament.

Don't let that statistic stop you! We're looking forward to seeing you in Brooklyn. You could be the next champion if you're good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, if people LIKE you! (Apologies to Sen. Franken.) The 1998 tournament in Stamford had a last-minute entrant who wound up winning the B division and the rookie trophy (I'll leave it to you to find out his identity). So it's not too late. Go to www.crosswordtournament.com and get all the details. Join the party!

Our 2010 ACPT Puzzles

These will be distributed at the Tournament but you can do them at anytime online using Across Lite!

Dave's Themeless
Bob's Themeless
Hold That Note
Lose Weight Now! Ask Me How!

Live Blogging Of ACPT Finals

We are upgrading our coverage of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this year.

Thanks to a service called Cover It Live, we will be live-blogging in real time the tournament in a special window on our website. The live blogging coverage will begin at 12:00 noon on the day of the finals, Sunday, February 21. The real time blogging means that you won't have to wait for a round to be finished to get the play-by-play.

Our finals coverage will include live blogging with (for the first time) commentary from both Puzzle Brothers (unless one makes the podium) of all three upper-echelon divisions, C, B and A, fun polls, videos, and hopefully interviews. Results of lower divisions and age and geographic champions will be disclosed at that time as well.

We thank Harry McCracken, an old friend of the Puzzle Brothers for over two decades, for pointing us toward this site. Cover It Live was used quite a bit yesterday at Apple's launch of the iPad, but didn't work quite so well. Over the next few days you will see the blogging window and reminder posts. You can pre-register and get an e-mail reminder. We hope that our live blogging is the next best thing to being in Brooklyn.

If you want to see what the live blogging will look like, visit our sister blog, DaveMackey.com for Dave's annual review of the Super Bowl Sunday advertising campaigns.

Will Will Pong For Charity Tomorrow

Will Shortz is among the celebrities taking part in "So You Think You Can Pong", a charity table-tennis event to be held Wednesday, January 13, at Spin New York, on 23rd between Madison and Park. The beneficiary is 826NYC, a non-profit that helps young people with their expository writing skills.

Other participants in the tournament will include hockey player Sean Avery, actors Mike Myers, Catherine Keener and David Schwimmer, authors Sarah Vowell and Dave Eggers, and chef Mario Batali.

You can support Will or any of the other celebrities via a donation or you can even play in the tournament should there still be spots available. For more information visit their website.

One Puzzle Brother Going To Brooklyn

I have sent in my registration for The Tournament. I am looking forward to seeing my crossword friends in Brooklyn.

When Do We Eat?

The preliminary schedule of events for the 2010 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament has been posted and there is a huge change on Sunday - there is no longer going to be an awards luncheon.

Sunday instead will have the "Puzzler's Variety Program" at 11:00 a.m., followed by a brief awards presentation at 12:00, then the finals at 12:15 in the C, B and A divisions. As always, the Puzzle Brothers will be on the scene live-blogging the finals.

No information yet on the Friday and Saturday evening programs other than the Eric Berlin "Visual Crossword" scheduled for Friday night.

Peter Gordon is Back!

Fireball Crosswords

A MAD Look at Crossword Tournaments

Check out this blog entry from Patrick Merrell. Constructor Merrell is a sometime member of MAD Magazine's Usual Gang of Idiots, and one of the contestants at the Westchester tournament on Friday Night was the magzine's longtime art director, Sam Viviano. There are some great caricatures here of the likes of Frank Longo, Amanda Yesnowitz and Tony Orbach, but there's one unidentified caricature that looks like it could be the Puzzle Brother who DIDN'T get to be on stage the other night. Patrick is a good guy and we're glad he passed along Viviano's doodles.

JEFFREY SCHWARTZ WINS WESTCHESTER TOURNAMENT

In a very close final round, Jeffrey Schwartz won the 13th Westchester Crossword Puzzle Tournament over second place finisher Bob Mackey and third place finisher Ken Stern.

All three contestants finished the Thursday, October 1, 2009 New York Times puzzle by Patrick Blindauer and Rebecca Young perfectly. The three preliminary puzzles, which you can solve this Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in the Times, were by Lynn Lempel, Paula Gamache, and Kevin G. Der.

Mackey finished first on puzzle 1, Stern on puzzle 2, and Schwartz on puzzle 3. Both Stern and Schwartz finished with mistakes on puzzle 1 ahead of Mackey. Schwartz and Stern were virtually tied on puzzle 2, but Schwartz later stated that Stern had his hand up a split second ahead of him. Schwartz finished first perfectly on puzzle 3.

Besides Gamache, Blindauer and Young, officials in attendance were head judge Stan Kurzban, along with Fred Piscop, Ellen Ripstein, Helene Hovanec, Deb Amlen, Pat Merrell, Nancy Schuster, Adam Cohen, Howard Barkin, Dan Feyer, Tony Orbach, Frank Longo, Bob Bernstein, Mimi Raphael, Caleb Madison, Joe Cabrera, Mike Nothnagel, and Ashish Vengsarkar.

The annual contest, hosted by Pleasantville's own Will Shortz, benefits the Pleasantville Fund for Learning. Shortz noted that there were 67 contestants this year, which might be a record. It was also mentioned that the Tournament and other fundraisers netted the Fund for Learning, which benefits programs in Pleasantville's three schools, over $25,000 last year.

The image gallery is now up. I recommend you go there after you've solved Thursday's NYT puzzle. For more pictures, check out Elaine Lippman's Facebook gallery - thanks Tyger!

ACPT DATES MOVED ONE WEEK EARLIER

The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament will be held one week earlier than originally scheduled. The new dates are February 19-21, 2010. Venue continues to be the Brooklyn Bridge Marriott.

Westchester Tournament Is EARLY This Year!

CORRECTION - Date confirmed by Will Shortz

The 13th annual Westchester Crossword Tournament will be held in September this year - it will be on Friday, September 25. Location will once again be the St. John's Episcopal Church in Pleasantville, New York, and will be hosted as always by Will Shortz. The tournament will feature light snacks and competition, singly or in pairs, on the New York Times crosswords to be published from September 28-October 1. The tournament once again will benefit the Pleasantville Fund For Learning. Puzzle Brother Robert Mackey will be trying for his third straight win in this tournament.

Congrats In Order

Constructor and competitive solver Stella Daily is getting married today on her birthday. We wish her and Dave nothing but the best as they fill in this new chapter in their lives.

The Case Of The Missing Acrostic

Here, from the Wall Street Journal, which blithely makes room on Friday for a Sunday-sized puzzle which is often very good, is a report on the disappearance of the Hex acrostic from the Sunday New York Times print edition.

Please Stand By

Our webhost is making some changes to our hosting platform. This may result in the site being invisible for a day or two as our new DNS is being assigned. So if you were looking for us and we seem to have disappeared, that's why - and thank you for visiting the Puzzle Brothers website!

ACPT "Dinner Impossible" Airs Tonight On Food Network

Please watch - or set your VCR's, if you still like to use tape, for - tonight's "Dinner Impossible" episode. You will recall that during this past February's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the buffet menu was kept hush-hush. Reason for that was it hadn't even come to fruition until hours before the buffet, thanks to daring chef Robert Irvine. The story of the weekend will be told in tonight's episode, "Crossword Puzzle Crisis", giving viewers another look inside a corner of Will Shortz' puzzle empire - and hopefully boosting up attendance at the next tournament next February, just as "Wordplay" did.

Food Network has up its episode page for the show including many of the tasty recipes from tonight's episode. Basically, he created a number of dishes, each based on a famous saying. Such as "soup to nuts" yielded a coconut soup with carmelized nuts. The dishes were then described and tournament attendees including five-time champion Tyler Hinman had to guess the sayings the dishes were based on.