Warning: This blog post contains spoilers for the Indie 500 puzzles. Proceed at your own peril.
My first crossword puzzle tournament was definitely a worthwhile experience. No doubt about it. I'm very glad I went. The vibe was welcoming; the people were cool; the organizers were exceptionally competent (especially given it was their first tournament too); the puzzles were well-crafted; and, as promised, there was pie. It was good. It was fun. But... it wasn't fun. It wasn't a success. I did awfully on the very first puzzle -- an embarrassing Did Not Finish -- and it put a damper on the entire rest of the competition. To immediately have the prospect of a good tournament stamped out is so disheartening. It's like blowing out a tire on the first lap of the real Indy 500. Straight-away you're at the back of the pack, and there's no way you're getting to the front. Maybe you can fight your way back to respectability, but respectability is, like, the top quartile, it's not the winner's circle. That shipped has sailed. That dream is over. Now, in my case, winning was not a realistic option to begin with, but I just wanted to keep the door to that fantastical notion slightly ajar for a little while -- just a crack and just for a few puzzles. Let me bomb out on the last puzzle of the day (well, I did that too), not the first one. Let me at least look through the standings and do the far-fetched mental calculations while looking at the names ahead of me -- well, if I can solve this puzzle a minute faster than this guy, and if she makes a mistake somewhere, and if he total tanks... Just let me get in on some of the excitement. That's all I want. And it all went out the window on Puzzle 1.
But I muddled my way through the other four puzzles, not completely devoid of success, and I finished 30th out of 60 in my division (the Outside Track). Smack in the middle. Here's a puzzle-by-puzzle recap.
Puzzle 1 (Click to the left to see my grid and the correct grid, but don't laugh, please.)
I took physics as a freshman my first quarter in college. There were four exams. My scores on them were 100, 10, 100, and 100. That's not a typo. I scored perfect on three of the four exams (it was an intro course at a state school) and scored 10% on the other one. During that second exam I got stuck early on, got flustered, became fixated on the fact that I was flustered, which only made me more flustered, and before long my time was up and my paper was nearly blank. (Thankfully, we were allowed to drop our lowest exam score.)
Something very similar happened with Puzzle 1 today. I got buffaloed out of the gate in the northwest when YOUSGUYS didn't fit in the grid (the clue was something like "Alternative to y'all," and apparently the preferred spelling is YOUSEGUYS), and I didn't know the crosses (Damn you, PEETA from The Hunger Games!). I tried to move on, but mentally I couldn't do it very easily, and then when I finally did, I couldn't get the theme to the puzzle right way (or rather I got the theme, but couldn't get the theme answers), and then I relapsed into freshman-physics mode and the whole thing was fucked. I didn't finish, and my desperation fill at the end was almost entirely wrong. My final score was brutal, and that basically was the tournament for me -- effectively over after 20 minutes.
In general, I didn't really like this puzzle. I mean, it was OK. I don't want to come off as bitter. But I thought it was the worst of the bunch. The theme was based around the DC Metro system -- so the clue is "Silver Line" and the answer is STATISTICS (get it? because statistics is Nate Silver's line of work) -- which is a cute idea, but the execution was lacking, in my opinion. The theme is so loose, there are seemingly endless possibilities for each color line, that I feel like the other clues have to be really straightforward to be fair to the solver. And the clues weren't straightforward at all. They were too clever by half. Too cool for school. Too hot to handle. Pick you idiom.
Anyway...
Puzzle 2
I nailed this one -- no mistakes and a decent time (for the Outside Track). A lot of solvers, even the really good solvers, made mistakes on this one, so it felt good to do well -- especially after my previous debacle. My buddy Josh Himmelsbach actually won the Outside Track division (more on that below), and this was the only puzzle I scored better than him on. He finished before me, but he misspelled PHARAOHS (always remember: it's a rare A before O word), and you get penalized harshly for errors.
Puzzle 3
Speaking of errors ... I missed just a single square on the Sunday-sized Puzzle 3, which was extremely annoying. The theme had to do with adding CY to the beginning or end of entries to turn ordinary phrases into zany Crossworld phrases. For example, "Last stage of the Tour de France" was (CY)CLINGWRAP. And the answer to the one I messed up -- "Shocking twist to 'Pride and Prejudice'" -- was GAYDAR(CY), which makes sense given the theme (the word "gaydar" becomes "gay Darcy"), but I put GANDAR(CY), which makes no sense given the theme -- or presumably any theme. The reason I did this is because I've never read Pride and Prejudiced (nor seen the movie), so I thought, "Guess I'll have to get this one from crosses", and the clue for the cross at the Y was a Homeland character named Martha, whom, despite seeing every episode of Homeland, I didn't know.
The answer was BOYD and I guessed BOND. Martha Bond? It seems plausible, right? Not really. It was actually a very silly rookie mistake. For one thing, BOND is a common word and popular surname, so it likely would not have been clued through an obscure TV character. For another thing, I should not have been so immediately dismissive of the Pride and Prejudiced clue. I actually have heard of the character Mr. Darcy, and the theme could have led me to the correct answer even if I hadn't. There was no good reason to enter 'N' into the square before going through the entire alphabet over and over until something clicked. Total tyro error.
It was also a bit of bad luck. If the clue for BOYD was something like "Baseball's 'Oil Can'" or "Harrelson's character on 'Cheers'" or "William who played Hopalong Cassidy," I would have gotten it. But, it wasn't, and I didn't.
Puzzle 4
Easy-peasy puzzle, and I breezed through it (relatively speaking) without error. This was like a straight-over-the-plate New York Times Tuesday puzzle. It was the most stress-free one of the bunch.
Puzzle 5
Another disaster. But unlike Puzzle 1, this one was made to be a disaster -- or at least a major struggle. It was very hard. The theme was that at the corners the across and down clues were swapped, and then the answers were opposites (e.g., THICK and THIN crossing at the T). I actually did not even get the opposite part. I eventually grokked the clues were swapped, but I completely missed the other half of the theme. It would have helped me a little, but probably not too much. The big issue with this one is that I just couldn't get footholds in wide empty swaths of the puzzle. This one played a bit like a difficult NYT themeless, and such puzzles are typically all or nothing for me. I generally don't get stuck on a few squares. It's either all filled in or there is a huge section missing. In this case, there was a huge section missing -- several, in fact. From a score standpoint this one probably hurt me more than the first puzzle, but emotionally it didn't feel as devastating. I don't know why that is -- perhaps by the last puzzle I was just too tired to care. It was a long day.
Final Puzzle
I, of course, did not make it to the finals, but my friend Josh Himmelsbach did, and surprisingly he won! I say surprisingly, because another competitor, a fellow named Andrew Miller, was the fastest solver in the Outside Track by far. He also solved the final puzzle much faster than Josh and the other finalist (Christine Quinones), but he left two squares blank -- just a straight-up oversight, much like Al Sanders at the end of Wordplay -- which meant that if Josh finished the puzzle correctly ahead of Christine (on whom he had a sizable lead at the time Andrew "finished"), he would win. And that's exactly what happened. It was his first tournament also, so it was really cool, mostly for him, but also for me -- vicarious success is better than no success.
Joon Pahk won the Inside Track fairly handily. Amy Reynaldo came is second, and Eric Maddy placed third. I felt bad for Eric; he struggled mightily on the final puzzle and didn't finish. In his defense, that thing, with the Inside Track clues, was an absolute beast.
Next Tournament
Yes, there probably will be a next tournament for me. I just don't know when. The next opportunity is Lollapuzzola in New York on August 8, but I'm probably not going to make that one. My wife is pregnant, and I think that is literally the due date. I like solving crossword puzzles, but I should probably be around for the birth of my second child.
So, whenever it may be, until next time ...
My first crossword puzzle tournament was definitely a worthwhile experience. No doubt about it. I'm very glad I went. The vibe was welcoming; the people were cool; the organizers were exceptionally competent (especially given it was their first tournament too); the puzzles were well-crafted; and, as promised, there was pie. It was good. It was fun. But... it wasn't fun. It wasn't a success. I did awfully on the very first puzzle -- an embarrassing Did Not Finish -- and it put a damper on the entire rest of the competition. To immediately have the prospect of a good tournament stamped out is so disheartening. It's like blowing out a tire on the first lap of the real Indy 500. Straight-away you're at the back of the pack, and there's no way you're getting to the front. Maybe you can fight your way back to respectability, but respectability is, like, the top quartile, it's not the winner's circle. That shipped has sailed. That dream is over. Now, in my case, winning was not a realistic option to begin with, but I just wanted to keep the door to that fantastical notion slightly ajar for a little while -- just a crack and just for a few puzzles. Let me bomb out on the last puzzle of the day (well, I did that too), not the first one. Let me at least look through the standings and do the far-fetched mental calculations while looking at the names ahead of me -- well, if I can solve this puzzle a minute faster than this guy, and if she makes a mistake somewhere, and if he total tanks... Just let me get in on some of the excitement. That's all I want. And it all went out the window on Puzzle 1.
But I muddled my way through the other four puzzles, not completely devoid of success, and I finished 30th out of 60 in my division (the Outside Track). Smack in the middle. Here's a puzzle-by-puzzle recap.
Puzzle 1 (Click to the left to see my grid and the correct grid, but don't laugh, please.)
I took physics as a freshman my first quarter in college. There were four exams. My scores on them were 100, 10, 100, and 100. That's not a typo. I scored perfect on three of the four exams (it was an intro course at a state school) and scored 10% on the other one. During that second exam I got stuck early on, got flustered, became fixated on the fact that I was flustered, which only made me more flustered, and before long my time was up and my paper was nearly blank. (Thankfully, we were allowed to drop our lowest exam score.)
Something very similar happened with Puzzle 1 today. I got buffaloed out of the gate in the northwest when YOUSGUYS didn't fit in the grid (the clue was something like "Alternative to y'all," and apparently the preferred spelling is YOUSEGUYS), and I didn't know the crosses (Damn you, PEETA from The Hunger Games!). I tried to move on, but mentally I couldn't do it very easily, and then when I finally did, I couldn't get the theme to the puzzle right way (or rather I got the theme, but couldn't get the theme answers), and then I relapsed into freshman-physics mode and the whole thing was fucked. I didn't finish, and my desperation fill at the end was almost entirely wrong. My final score was brutal, and that basically was the tournament for me -- effectively over after 20 minutes.
In general, I didn't really like this puzzle. I mean, it was OK. I don't want to come off as bitter. But I thought it was the worst of the bunch. The theme was based around the DC Metro system -- so the clue is "Silver Line" and the answer is STATISTICS (get it? because statistics is Nate Silver's line of work) -- which is a cute idea, but the execution was lacking, in my opinion. The theme is so loose, there are seemingly endless possibilities for each color line, that I feel like the other clues have to be really straightforward to be fair to the solver. And the clues weren't straightforward at all. They were too clever by half. Too cool for school. Too hot to handle. Pick you idiom.
Anyway...
Puzzle 2
I nailed this one -- no mistakes and a decent time (for the Outside Track). A lot of solvers, even the really good solvers, made mistakes on this one, so it felt good to do well -- especially after my previous debacle. My buddy Josh Himmelsbach actually won the Outside Track division (more on that below), and this was the only puzzle I scored better than him on. He finished before me, but he misspelled PHARAOHS (always remember: it's a rare A before O word), and you get penalized harshly for errors.
Puzzle 3
Speaking of errors ... I missed just a single square on the Sunday-sized Puzzle 3, which was extremely annoying. The theme had to do with adding CY to the beginning or end of entries to turn ordinary phrases into zany Crossworld phrases. For example, "Last stage of the Tour de France" was (CY)CLINGWRAP. And the answer to the one I messed up -- "Shocking twist to 'Pride and Prejudice'" -- was GAYDAR(CY), which makes sense given the theme (the word "gaydar" becomes "gay Darcy"), but I put GANDAR(CY), which makes no sense given the theme -- or presumably any theme. The reason I did this is because I've never read Pride and Prejudiced (nor seen the movie), so I thought, "Guess I'll have to get this one from crosses", and the clue for the cross at the Y was a Homeland character named Martha, whom, despite seeing every episode of Homeland, I didn't know.
The answer was BOYD and I guessed BOND. Martha Bond? It seems plausible, right? Not really. It was actually a very silly rookie mistake. For one thing, BOND is a common word and popular surname, so it likely would not have been clued through an obscure TV character. For another thing, I should not have been so immediately dismissive of the Pride and Prejudiced clue. I actually have heard of the character Mr. Darcy, and the theme could have led me to the correct answer even if I hadn't. There was no good reason to enter 'N' into the square before going through the entire alphabet over and over until something clicked. Total tyro error.
It was also a bit of bad luck. If the clue for BOYD was something like "Baseball's 'Oil Can'" or "Harrelson's character on 'Cheers'" or "William who played Hopalong Cassidy," I would have gotten it. But, it wasn't, and I didn't.
Puzzle 4
Easy-peasy puzzle, and I breezed through it (relatively speaking) without error. This was like a straight-over-the-plate New York Times Tuesday puzzle. It was the most stress-free one of the bunch.
Puzzle 5
Another disaster. But unlike Puzzle 1, this one was made to be a disaster -- or at least a major struggle. It was very hard. The theme was that at the corners the across and down clues were swapped, and then the answers were opposites (e.g., THICK and THIN crossing at the T). I actually did not even get the opposite part. I eventually grokked the clues were swapped, but I completely missed the other half of the theme. It would have helped me a little, but probably not too much. The big issue with this one is that I just couldn't get footholds in wide empty swaths of the puzzle. This one played a bit like a difficult NYT themeless, and such puzzles are typically all or nothing for me. I generally don't get stuck on a few squares. It's either all filled in or there is a huge section missing. In this case, there was a huge section missing -- several, in fact. From a score standpoint this one probably hurt me more than the first puzzle, but emotionally it didn't feel as devastating. I don't know why that is -- perhaps by the last puzzle I was just too tired to care. It was a long day.
Final Puzzle
I, of course, did not make it to the finals, but my friend Josh Himmelsbach did, and surprisingly he won! I say surprisingly, because another competitor, a fellow named Andrew Miller, was the fastest solver in the Outside Track by far. He also solved the final puzzle much faster than Josh and the other finalist (Christine Quinones), but he left two squares blank -- just a straight-up oversight, much like Al Sanders at the end of Wordplay -- which meant that if Josh finished the puzzle correctly ahead of Christine (on whom he had a sizable lead at the time Andrew "finished"), he would win. And that's exactly what happened. It was his first tournament also, so it was really cool, mostly for him, but also for me -- vicarious success is better than no success.
Joon Pahk won the Inside Track fairly handily. Amy Reynaldo came is second, and Eric Maddy placed third. I felt bad for Eric; he struggled mightily on the final puzzle and didn't finish. In his defense, that thing, with the Inside Track clues, was an absolute beast.
Next Tournament
Yes, there probably will be a next tournament for me. I just don't know when. The next opportunity is Lollapuzzola in New York on August 8, but I'm probably not going to make that one. My wife is pregnant, and I think that is literally the due date. I like solving crossword puzzles, but I should probably be around for the birth of my second child.
So, whenever it may be, until next time ...
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