Stamford - Final Report

TYLER TRIUMPHANT

In an eerie recreation of the movie "Wordplay", Tyler Hinman has again won the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament title, at the expense of Al Sanders. Sanders finished the championship puzzle by Stanley Newman first, but had one letter wrong. Tyler won the trophy for the third year running and this year's prize check of $5,000. Francis Heaney (shown at right in the photo above) was a distant third, not even finishing the final puzzle.

In another development, the B class has an asterisk this year. Due to a judging error, Howard Barkin was awarded duplicate B prize money. However, he will stay in B class for next year's tournament.

The breakdown of winners:

Geographic: West, Al Sanders; Connecticut, Ron Osher; New England, Kiran Kedlaya; New York City, Francis Heaney; Long Island, Kathy Konarck; Upstate NY, Zack Butler; New Jersey, Howard Barkin; Mid-Atlantic, Dave Tuller; South, Trip Payne; Midwest, Tyler Hinman; Foreign, Fraser Simpson.

Juniors: Tyler Hinman; 50's, Ellen Ripstein; 60's, Doug Hoylman; Seniors, Arthur Schulman; Rookie: Eric LeVasseur.

Special $100 gift certificate prizes for the 100th, 200th, etc. finishers: 100 - Fraser Simpson; 200 - Sandy Fein; 300 - Kim Blanchard; 400 - John Reid; 500 - George Sneddon Jr; 600 - Francoise Kemp.

As for the Puzzle Brothers, Robert maintained 20th place finish while Dave improved to 65, but it's likely there was a mistake on the final puzzle that dropped him down from 44th and out of the C finals. We'll be back strong next year. For now, we're taking a few days off from puzzling. Good bye for a while.