NEVER SAY DIE

Like most of the rest of the crossword world, we left Dan Feyer for dead yesterday at the side of the road after a head-on collision with one blank and one wrong square (thanks to BEQ for the clarification) on Puzzle No. 3.

What happened after that is worthy of a primetime soap opera on the order of classics like "Dynasty" and "Dallas".

Through a series of missteps, appeals and one recanted appeal by a very sportsmanlike contestant (who wound up making the podium anyway), and aided by a very steady podium performance, Dan Feyer captured his third American Crossword Puzzle Tournament championship and another $5,000 check.

Bob Mackey will be analyzing Dan's rocky road to his third championship in a future blog post. For his part, Bob won a trophy for finishing second among New Jersey solvers, beating out Howard Barkin. Bob was 18th overall, tying his personal best since his blistering 6th place rookie performance in 1998. Dave finished 85th thanks to errors in Puzzles 1 and 7.

Your other champions crowned Sunday:
B: John Beck
C: Guy Tabachnick
D: Benjamin Aisen
E: Alex Allain
Rookie: Erik Agard
Juniors and South: David Plotkin
Fifties: Anne Erdmann
Sixties: Doug Hoylman
Seventies: Neil Singer
Senior: Jane Blanshard (with Mimi Raphael in second, adding to her trophy haul)
West: Tyler Hinman
Connecticut: Douglas Goodman
New England: Joon Pahk
NYC: Dan Feyer
Long Island: Peter Gordon
Upstate NY: Arnold Reich
Mid-Atlantic: Scott Weiss
Midwest: Erdmann
Foreign: Emily O'Neill

Additionally, 140 solvers beat "Dr. Fill", a computer that solved the seven tournament puzzles, programmed by Matt Ginsburg.