WESTCHESTER TOURNAMENT RETURNS TO ST. JOHN'S CHURCH SEPTEMBER 19

The 18th edition of the Westchester Crossword Puzzle Tournament will be on Friday, September 19, and the tournament is moving back to the St. John Episcopal Church in Pleasantville, once again to benefit the Pleasantville Fund for Learning. As always, the tournament will feature the four New York Times puzzles from the following Monday through Wednesday, with the Thursday puzzle serving as the playoff puzzle for the top finisher on each of the three puzzles. $30 to compete singly, $45 as a team, or $5 just to watch.

Last year's tournament finals involved the same three solvers from the 2013 ACPT "B" finals, Glenn Ryan, Jeffrey Schwartz, and Robert Mackey, which culminated in Mackey winning his sixth Westchester trophy - five singles and one doubles title with Dave Mackey.

The tournament was held the last three years at the Westchester Table Tennis Club, which is owned by New York Times crossword guru Will Shortz. No reason was given for the change, although a Facebook post by perennial Westchester finalist Elaine Renner noted "the acoustics are better" in the church.

Celebrity Puzzlers Revealed!

If Patrick Creadon ever intends to make a sequel to "Wordplay", these two ladies should be featured. At left, comedienne Suzanne Whang, the original host of "House Hunters" on HGTV, has revealed herself to be quite the crossworder, and has dipped her toe into the construction arena with a recent American Values Club crossword co-authored by Tyler Hinman. She was also a recent contributor to the New York Times crossword blog, authored by her friend Deb Amlen, a funny lady in her own right. Suzanne's Twitter is @suzannewhang.

Kat Dennings is immediately recognizable in her yellow and red waitress outfit from the CBS sitcom "2 Broke Girls", and is currently on a vacation where she has discovered the New York Times crossword puzzle, as evidenced by some of her recent Instagram posts, including one where she's clearly solving in pen with the caption "Confidence", and another displaying the fully solved grid of the Saturday, May 13 puzzle by Sam Ezersky. Later that day, she posted on her Twitter: "Where have you been all my life, crossword puzzles".

Kat's Instagram: katdenningsss
Kat's Twitter: @officialkat

WESTCHESTER TIME AGAIN

The cooler weather and turning trees mean only one thing - Westchester time is upon us! Will Shortz is again hosting his hometown Westchester Crossword Tournament at his Westchester Table Tennis Club, in Pleasantville. The 17th tournament, to be held Friday, September 27 beginning at 7:30 p.m., will again benefit the Pleasantville Fund For Learning.

Donationa to compete are $30 for single, $45 for doubles pair, or $5 if you just want to watch.

Competitors will tackle the next three Monday-Wednesday New York Times puzzles, then the top finisher on each puzzle (perfect in the quickest time) will solve the Thursday puzzle on stage using the familiar white boards.

Additionally, this year there will also be a crossword/table tennis biathlon. The top four finishers at crosswords who sign up for the biathlon will face off in table tennis to determine the biathlon champion.

Last year's singles champion was Thomas Weisswange. More information available at www.pffl.org.

Starbucks Winner Has The Last Laugh; Cashes Gift Card for $$$$$$$

If you will remember, Starbucks sponsored a crossword contest in conjunction with the New York Times in 2006, which featured six weekly puzzles distributed through the coffee chain (all very well crafted by Patrick Berry), plus a tiebreaker puzzle with the all-too obvious answer "Starbuck". The winner of that puzzle likely called in with a lucky guess not a minute after the phone lines open. Trip Payne, among others, was up in arms. There were also runner up prizes, likely also going to guessers.

Now comes word that one of those runners-up, who won one of the extremely rare Crossword gift cards valued at $500 (the grand prize was an approximately $73,000 gift card, representative of one cup of coffee a day for life), has auctioned off his card on eBay for over $10,000. Apparently, there were only six of these cards made, making them the rarest gift cards of all time and are highly sought after by cartodorologists, or gift card collectors.

Deb Amlen Taking Over NYT "Wordplay" Blog

The New York Times will be introducing a new crossword blogger after the first of the year. Crossword constructor Deb Amlen will be taking over the "Wordplay" blog from Jim Horne, with frequent guest appearances by Patrick Merrell. Deb will give daily commentary on the New York Times puzzles. The blog replaced the old message boards on the New York Times website several years ago.

Deb should be expected to lace her blog with a dose of her trademark humor - she has her own humor blog called "Can't You Get Along With Anybody?" at http://www.debamlen.com, and this year published her first book, "It's Not PMS, It's You!: A Totally Non-Hormonal Analysis of Male Behavior". In addition to appearing in all the usual crossword markets, Deb also creates the puzzles for Bust Magazine. The Puzzle Brothers wish Deb well in her new adventure!

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.

Merl's NYT Simpsons-Related Puzzle

Transparently, it is your basic Merl Reagle puzzle... but I recommend you do this puzzle before watching the show to enjoy all the surprises of this puzzle.

http://query.nytimes.com/premium/xword/Nov1608.puz (Subscription to NYT Premium Crosswords required)

NYT Black Square Record Broken

Kevin G. Der broke the record for fewest black squares with Friday's New York Times puzzle. The new low-water-mark is 18, beating Manny Nosowsky's old record by one.

NYT 8/22 puzzle (requires subscription to NYT puzzles)

New York Times - Wednesday, May 21, 2008

We are sorry to give you late notice on this but our web hosting provider - who we are considering dumping over this - would not let us update our blog for the past several days, and we were unable to promote Wednesday's New York Times puzzle in a timely manner. Anyway, we sure hope you enjoy this puzzle.

Across Lite Puzzle File - for New York Times Crossword Subscribers Only

New York Times Puzzle Today!

By Dave Mackey of the Puzzle Brothers

Here is the puzzle - available to New York Times crossword subscribers only.

Important Medical News!

Well, that's what they say in commercials, but this may hold some water. It's been long thought that mental exercises such as crossword puzzles help keep the brain active and may help ward off later-life dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

Now, the author of "The Memory Cure", Dr. Majid Fotuhi, has teamed up with Will Shortz to present "The New York Times Crosswords to Keep Your Brain Young: The 6-Step Age-Defying Program".

This was one of two new NYT books issued by St. Martin's Griffin last week. The other, "Crosswords for Two", compiles 200 puzzles (including, I hear, one by yours truly) designed to be shared.

It's MEGA-Tastic!

Just got my copy of the new Simon & Schuster MEGA Crossword Puzzle Book, Volume 1. This just came out in bookstores today. Wow! This is enough to keep me busy for weeks on end. For the list price of $13.95, you get 300 original crosswords, including a healthy selection of 75 15x's, 75 mixed 17x's and 19x's, and 150 21x's. Many of your favorite authors in the old Crossword Puzzle Book series are represented here, and there are some new names too (including - and correct me if I'm wrong - the construction debut of Amy Reynaldo).

John Samson still continues as editor, now with three times the workload, as there will now be 900 puzzles used per year - approximately three times the amount required by a New York Times or Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

While I'm plugging things, I must put in a word for the 2008 New York Times Sunday Puzzle Appointment Book, from Pomegranate Press. It's a neat compilation of all the Sundays from October 2003 to October 2004, including a neat Leap Day puzzle by Patrick Merrell. One puzzle is misattributed to Kyle Mahowald instead of Joe DiPietro, but that's just a minor quibble. Neat package, nice paper that takes my favorite gel pen quite well. Got it for a gift in '07, bought it for myself in '08.

Will Shortz Raises The Rates Again

I just got word that Will Shortz has once again raised his rates for puzzle contributors.

The lucky person who constructs the June 3, 2007 Sunday puzzle will be the first to enjoy the new rates, which for Sunday puzzles will be a cool grand, up from $750. The daily rate is increasing too to $200. These once again put the Times at the forefront of the puzzle industry as far as contributor rates (until, of course, Peter Gordon decides to go his traditional one dollar more for Sun dailies).