JON DELFIN TRIUMPHANT AT LOLLAPUZZOOLA 7

(Updated 8/11/2014)

Jon Delfin showed he can still run with the puppies when he proved victorious at the seventh installment of Brian Cimmet and Patrick Blindauer's Lollapuzzoola, held on August 9 (a Saturday in August) at the All Souls Church on the upper East Side of Manhattan.

Delfin, who will begin competing in the Sixties age bracket at next year's ACPT in Stamford (and who has won that tournament a record seven times), defeated the decades-younger Francis Heaney and Scott Weiss in the Express bracket. None of the three made any mistakes on the championship puzzle by Patrick Berry.

L-R: Scott Weiss, Patrick Blindauer (holding Weiss' clue sheet for him), and Patrick Heaney

In the Local bracket, Simon McAndrews finished first but had one void square. Patti Varol, who finished second, was crowned Local Champion and Sara Nies was third.

Rounding out the top 10 overall finishers in the Express division were Jeffrey Schwartz, Andy Kravis, Joon Pahk (who solved using only Down clues - the only other competitor to do so was Peter Gordon), Andrew Feist, Ellen Ripstein, Robert Mackey and Thomas Weisswange. Pahk also won the Worst Handwriting Award.

For the second year in a row, Marcia Hearst and Julian Ochrymowych won the Pairs title.

The only competitors to solve all five competition puzzles cleanly were Heaney, Delfin, Schwartz, Pahk, Ripstein, Weisswange, Elaine Lippman, Matt Sandler, Richard Hovan, Dave Mackey (who finished 25th, an improvement of 100 places from last year), Brendan Emmett Quigley, Patty Buethe, Amy Goldstein, Sasha Shapiro and Josephine Quinones.

The rest of the top 10 in Local was Rebecca Moody (who also won the Rookie award), Martin Davis, Vegavahini Subramaniam, Thomas Perretti, Finn Vigeland, Aaron Riggio and Amy Paepke.

The slogan of the tournament this year was "It Ain't Over Till It's Over", which was of course a phrase coined by Yogi Berra, the great baseball manager and coach, and some of the puzzles - including a very accessible meta by Blindauer - had a baseball theme. In fact, Blindauer (who probably has a closetful of St. Louis Cardinals jerseys) led TWO singings of "Take Me Out To The Ball Game", and at least one Puzzle Brother was familiar with the first rendition...

The finale version was the conventional singing, a la Harry Caray. Of course, the cheese ball snacks (joined by a blue Cotton Candy version) and other familiar trappings of Lollapuzzoola returned, surrounded by some great puzzles that included audio and visual clues and other tricks you would never think of. The puzzles, in order, were by Cathy Allis (14x16), Mike Nothnagel (17x), Tony Orbach (21x), Blindauer (15x) and Doug Peterson (21x).

More information and final standings are available at bemoresmarter.com.

Al Sanders Takes Lollapuzzoola 6 Express Title

The image most people have in their brains of Al Sanders is the overconfident man who raises his hand to indicate "done" at the 2005 ACPT, only to realize he's left two squares blank in 1-Across, throwing his headset to the ground in frustration. We've all seen that movie before. (Except maybe for Oscar Cimmet.)

Yesterday, the ACPT perennial flew in from Colorado to participate in Lollapuzzoola 6 in New York City, and wound up besting another cross-country commuter, Trip Payne, and Francis Heaney in the onstage finals of the "Express Division", roughly equivalent to A- and B- class ACPT contestants.

Jonathan Brown wound up the winner of the "Local Division", defeating Erin Milligan and Angela Halsted (who was found to be the tournament's sole 6-time participant and the analogue to Jay Kasofsky at the ACPT). The extremely tough finals puzzle was constructed by Joon Pahk, who was unable to attend to defend his title from last year.

The tournament was under the capable supervision of co-creator Brian Cimmet and Patrick Blindauer, who replaced co-creator Ryan Hecht a few years ago, and over the six years of its existence it has steadily attracted more top solvers around the country, including fourth place finisher Amy Reynaldo, the aforementioned Payne and Sanders, and Katie Hamill from Boston among others. This year's tournament set a record with over 150 solvers, including past ACPT winners Jon Delfin and Ellen Ripstein. The judges included the likes of Dan Feyer and Anne Erdmann.

In keeping with the tournament's irreverent streak, prize trophies featured figurines from such unrelated disciplines as karate and gymnastics (but were engraved for the first time) as well as leftover ACPT trophies. Clever word games helped fill the time and there was a metapuzzle that was related to the five crosswords solved by everyone.

More tournament information and pictures may be found at http://www.bemoresmarter.com.

The Fabulous Fifties

In 2011, the Puzzle Brothers will become eligible to compete in age-related brackets at the ACPT for the first time. Coming off a very strong Westchester Tournament win in which he swept all the puzzles, Bob Mackey is going to be the new force in the 50's age bracket. (Me, minorly so.)

We are absolutely pleased to be in the same company, albeit for a few years, with former champions Ellen Ripstein (who will join the 60's bracket for the 2013 tournament) and Jon Delfin (2015), as well as prominent non-winner Al Sanders, who at the age of 52 is our closest contemporary among the elite solvers. By 2019, Trip Payne will be in his 50's as well... it's going to be interesting to see if we can all hold our skills as we rack up more tournament experience.

Standings Through Four Puzzles

1. Dan Feyer
T2. Francis Heaney
T2. Tyler Hinman
T2. Trip Payne
5. Al Sanders
6. Stella Daily
7. Jon Delfin
8. Roger Barkan
9. Amy Reynaldo
10. Eric Maddy

41. Dave Mackey
43. Robert Mackey

Games Time

Hello from my perch just outside the Jackie Gleason room at the Marriott. Right now, the Saturday evening festivities have ended and it looks as though the game time will be a little more participant friendly than last night.

The standings are up on the website now and here's how the top 10 stack up after 6 puzzles:

1 Tyler Hinman
2 Howard Barkin
3 Francis Heaney
4 Trip Payne
5 Ellen Ripstein
6 Roger Barkan
7 Al Sanders
8 Katherine Bryant
9 Jon Delfin
10 Kiran Kedlaya

19 Robert Mackey

58 Dave Mackey