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.

As Crossworders Gather In Boston...

...looming is the possiblity of the Boston Globe print newspaper folding. The Globe carries a weekly Sunday crossword alternately authored by Henry Cook and the team of Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon. For a brief period last year, Liz Gorski was doing some puzzles filling in for Hook. It's too early to think about the crossword's fate now.

We are not at the Boston tournament due to other commitments today but we wish the competitors well and hope to bring you news of whoever is victorious there. Will Shortz is directing the tournament, using next week's NYT puzzles. Ironically, Shortz' boss, The Times Company, owns the Boston Globe.

New Blog Examines LA Times Puzzles

And with these new inroads the Los Angeles Times puzzles is making, there is now a new blog focusing on them: L.A. Crossword Confidential.

The names are all familiar there: Rex Parker, PuzzleGirl, and Amy Reynaldo will be on rotating shifts, examining each day's LAT entry in great detail.

Chicago Tribune Puzzle To Be Discontinued

Tribune Media Services has announced the discontinuation of the Chicago Tribune Crossword, effective March 22. This daily and Sunday puzzle series was edited by Wayne Robert Williams. TMS has announced that papers currently receiving the Tribune crossword will now be serviced with the Los Angeles Times crossword, edited by Rich Norris.

Last month, the New York Sun puzzles were very quietly discontinued after an attempt by editor Peter Gordon to self-market the remaining puzzles after the newspaper folded. And last year saw the end of the Fred Piscop Washington Post crossword, with its clients now served by Merl Reagle's Sunday.

BEQ Commentary

Here's a great recap of the tournament from judge and Puzzle 2 constructor Brendan Emmett Quigley.

ALL ALONE

It's not clear from this picture if Tyler Hinman knows that the two grids on either side of him have errors.

But he probably already knew that he is the luckiest son of a bitch on the face of the earth. Tyler Hinman, for the fifth straight time ACPT champ, and again at the expense of faster mistake-makers. I guess slow and steady does win the race!

Both Trip Payne and Francis Heaney made the same exact error on their grids. What made this extremely nailbiting was that Tyler was stuck on a word at lower right, and finally broke through and solved it with maybe 1:30 left to go in the 20:00 puzzling period.

Pictures from the awards banquet are now up and you can check www.crosswordtournament.com for all the rest of the standings.

As for us, I finished a very disappointing 66th. (Disappointing considering I could have done much better, but it still ties my best finish ever.) Bob finished 24th. Oh well, maybe next year.

2009 ACPT A FINALS

This is it! The final showdown between (from left to right) Trip, Tyler and Francis. This is the first time all three have had the same starting time. There is an issue with the contestants' headphones that the judges are trying to resolve. Sound check lines: "You're really handsome, Tyler." "You're really handsome, Trip." "Dumb dad sorry for his bet." "1-Across is ZOLAESQUE." "RPI sucks."

Liane Hansen in the house. She, of course, hosts the Weekend Edition Sunday for which Will has been providing puzzles for the past several centuries.

Ready, set, go! All three race out of the starting gate. "A LeMans start, everyone racing for their cars." There is an answer about a key and Francis and Trip both write in _M__OR, smartly. Trip has a little edge so far. 15-A is a very tricky clue that Tyler has nailed. Tyler is almost finished with the upper left. Now he is finished. Both Trip and Tyler have the last Across-clue. Tyler has now pretty much finished the middle. Francis has gotten a lot of the top left done now. Trip has bottom right. Tyler is now working bottom left. Francis has made some progress on the bottom left. Trip has a lot of the bottom right done. Francis is now working upper right. Trip is working for the middle and is now going to the lower left corner. Tyler has about half the puzzle solved. Trip working upper right now. Francis now has half the puzzle solved too. This could be a photo finish. Trip now has a mistake upper right and he's moved away from that corner. Tyler is now working top right. Tyler now has a mistake upper right. Tyler is fixing his mistake now. "Nobody thinks as fast as Tyler does, when backed into a corner. Except maybe Spider-Man." Trip signals done. The crowd reacts to the mistake and Trip says, "You're kidding me!" Now Francis has made the same mistake that Trip has. Tyler is checking his grid... he doesn't look happy. Francis is finishing up. Tyler is rewriting in the bottom of his grid. Tyler is shaking his head. Francis looks to be finishing up. Francis signals done. He's wrong too. Tyler still checking his board. He's AT SEA. He doesn't have a clue! First time in five years, not perfect? He's got some blanks to do. This could come down to what Tyler does in the next five minutes and it could come down to wrong squares!."I don't know," says Tyler. This is nail biting! Tyler has one wrong square and one blank. He knows he has a few more minutes left. Tyler is now jogging in place, doing the Rocky thing. TYLER HAS FOUND HIS MISTAKE AND FINISHED PERFECT! HE WINS!

3rd place - 2 squares wrong - Francis Heaney
2nd place - 2 squares wrong - Trip Payne
YOUR 2009 ACPT CHAMPION - TYLER HINMAN

ACPT 2009 - B Finals

Right to left we have Katz, Feyer, and Len. Since we have two Dans, we're going to call em by their last names. Hope they don't mind. Feyer will have a large head start, :50 over Katz and an additional :05 over Len.

Neal Conan is back on mike this year with Merl. Welcome back, Neal. Hopefully they can say funny stuff that we can tell you about this year. Will did mention that this year, the white noise is on iPods for the first time.

Feyer begins. "It's a beautiful day for a crossword puzzle tournament!" "LET'S PLAY TWO!" Food Network cameras are starting to catch this action as well. Feyer is scattershotting the grid. Katz and Len begin. Katz is working the upper left very rapidly. Len is working on the middle. Feyer has maybe 60% of the puzzle done in less than 4 minutes. Katz and Len are working bottom left. Feyer has most of the left side done so far. No one has made any errors thus yet. Katz has a stray "A" in the upper right. Len's doing quite well on the bottom of the puzzle. If I say "Dan" you'll know who I mean. Feyer just has upper right to do at this point. Katz has significantly more squares to put in. "I've been rehearsing my adlibs all morning," says Conan. Feyer is rapidly finishing. Feyer is checking his completed grid and signals done. Katz is headed to a solid second and Len is lagging behind with a lot of the top still to do. Katz signals doe with about 12:48 left on the clock. It's down to Len now, finishing up to the top. "So you think constructors have an advantage here." "No." "Why?" "Weren't the C finalists all non-constructors?" Len finishes at about 11:00.

3rd place - 8:55, 2 letters wrong - Len Elliott
2nd place - 7:12, perfect - Dan Katz
B DIVISION CHAMP - 6:38, perfect - Dan Feyer

ACPT 2009 - C Finals

The contestants left to right are Jerry, Roberta and Mark.

Roberta has a huge 39 second head start. As always, there is no commentary during this round. Roberta begins with 2-Down, then 21-Across. Jerry is given the signal to begin, with Mark starting third. Roberta pretty much has the upper left corner filled in. Now she begins working the middle. Jerry's got a lot of the upper right done, but not the topmost word. Mark is working the upper right as well and is now migrating lower into the right center. Roberta's got some right center action going too. Jerry is beginning to work further down into the puzzle. Mark has nothing on the left side of his grid yet. It appears that Roberta now has the top half of the puzzle. Mark is starting to go to the left. Jerry now has the entire top half filled in too. Roberta is working lower left. Mark has lower left finished. Jerry is erasing something. Roberta is now working the last section of her puzzle. Mark is in the upper left. Jerry is filling in the center square section. Mark signals done first. Roberta finishes second (the head start apparently doing her no good) and Jerry will finish third.

3rd place - one letter wrong Jerry Cordaro
2nd place - Roberta Strauss
C DIVISION CHAMP - 5:46 - Mark Dixon

ACPT 2009 Finals - Meet The Finalists

C
3rd place - 10,435 - Mark Dixon
2nd place - 10,560 - Jerry Cordaro
1st place - 10,955 - Roberta Strauss

B
3rd place - 11,380 - Len Elliott
2nd place - 11,430 - Dan Katz
1st place - 11,930 - Dan Feyer (tied for A)

A
There was a four way tie in the A Division. Due to tiebreakers, here are the three who will compete.

3rd place - 11,930 - Francis Heaney
2nd place - 11,930 - Trip Payne
1st place - 11,930 - Tyler Hinman

My Tournament Is Over

This is our first blog post from outside the Jackie Gleason room, which for years was our standard haunt.

My happy ending didn't happen this morning. I made one mistake on Puzzle 7, and I did have the time to check it over and fix it. I saw the clock reaching xx:00, raised my hand, realized I had two squares unfilled, and filled them in, one wrongly. Ugh. There goes my Top 50 goal.

Puzzle 7 by Mike Shenk. Puzzle 8 will be Patrick Berry.

Stay tuned as we live blog the finals and hopefully maintain our standards of getting you the big news out there as it happens!

Chef Revealed

Will Shortz and Robert Irvine - the Food Network chef who will be creating today's luncheon menu - commandeered the ballroom for an interview this morning. The filming is for Irvine's series, "Dinner Impossible".

Sunday Morning In Brooklyn

Snow, foreboding a larger storm this evening and tomorrow, is starting to fall outside the Marriott. The Puzzle Brothers went to bed around 1:00 a.m. after playing some Fluxx games with the likes of Joni Dashoff and Doug Hoylman and members of his crew.

We understand that there was filming at 3:30 a.m. this morning for a Food Network segment related to the luncheon this afternoon. We still don't know who the chef is that is concocting our meal, but Will Shortz noted that it's going to be revealed sometime this morning.

Game Show Night

We'd like to thank the three ladies who joined us on our "Family Feud" team, including Susan Boardman, Harriet Geller and Fiona Newman (our scribe from Canada). Although we didn't get on stage to play the game we thank you for your enthusiasm!

The "Chain Reaction" game was actually the show's current endgame, which has been used in various forms on other Bob Stewart shows like "Go". Two contestants alternate words in asking a question to get a third player to say a word, name or place.

Stan Newman's trivia games were a lot of fun; he says he'll be asked back to do the next one in about ten years.