Friday's Puzzle
A puzzle of mine is running in the New York Times today. It's one I made a while ago, which is unsurprising, since the queue for NYT themeless puzzles is l-l-l-long. I've actually stopped submitting themeless puzzles for the time being, in part because the field is so crowded. The NYT themeless supply apparently far outweighs its demand, so it's getting harder to get themeless puzzles accepted and the wait until they run is just as long as always. Also, I'm currently going through a bit of a "blah" period with respect to puzzle making in general. My crossword-constructing battery is low, and I have other projects I want to work on in my (very limited) spare time, so I will probably take a little respite from constructing. However, I still have a bunch of puzzles in the NYT pipeline (both submitted and already accepted), and these breaks never last too long, so my fans, of which I can only assume I have myriad, should hardly even notice my absence.
Anyway, I don't have much to say about today's puzzle,* so instead I will give a recap of my favorite annual crossword puzzle tournament -- and also the only one I've ever attended -- The Indie 500.
*One thing I will say: I wish the clue for FRANZ FERDINAND wasn't so straightforward. The clue I submitted was something like "Royal Prince who famously died in an automobile along with his wife in 1914." Now that has some teeth to it.
Indie 500 Recap
This is my third year at the tournament (it's also the tournament's third year at the tournament), and each year I seem to arrive on the latish end of the *time* spectrum despite living just a few miles from the tournament's location -- or maybe it's because of this. Many solvers come in from out of town, so this is the only reason they are in D.C. to begin with. But I go through my usual morning routine (clothing and feeding two small children) before the tournament starts, and my usual morning routine involves me rushing out the door like a madman.
There's only scattered seating available in the tournament ballroom when I arrive, so I grab two available seats in the corner. I'm supposed to meet a friend there, but he no-shows -- even worse, he doesn't text me to say he can't make it, so I'm there holding his seat like a schmo while the last few entrants are looking for a place to sit. When people ask if the seat is taken, I have to do that apologetic, shoulder-shruggy "yeah, sorry." Man, I hate that. (After the tournament ended, he texted to say something came up and his phone battery was dead all day. That sounds pretty excuse-y to me, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, lest something serious happened, and I'm the asshole for even broaching the subject. Also, he never expressly asked me to save him a seat, so it's kinda on me anyway.)
I had two goals going into this competition: (1) Finish all the puzzles in the allotted time without error; (2) Don't finish in the top 25% of the field. The latter is so that I will still qualify for the "Outside Track" (the JV Division) next year. The former is my own goal since the actual goal of the tournament -- winning -- is not achievable given my current skill level. I keep telling myself that one of these years I'm going to give competitive solving a serious go and train and try to be a force in my division, but I never do, and I doubt I ever will. The truth is I don't love doing crossword puzzles. I very much like doing crossword puzzles, but I'm not fanatical about it the way the top solvers are. (I've always been way more into constructing than solving.) I usually "only" do one a day, often in the background while I'm at work, which isn't nearly sufficient to get me near the top of even the lower division. So I set my own little goals and enjoy the puzzles and the company.
Speaking of the puzzles...
Puzzle 1: "Before and After" by Angela Olson Halsted
A straight-over-the-plate, easy-breezy, Monday-level puzzle to kick things off. The theme answers consisted of two words, one of which can precede the word TIME (the tournament theme, if you didn't already know) and one of which can follow the word TIME, paired together in zany ways. So one theme answer was HAMMMER BANDITS (Hammer Time/Time Bandits), and the clue was "Construction site thieves?" Then everything was tied together using Cyndi Lauper's timeless hit "___ After ___".
I thought this puzzle was pretty good. It was enjoyable and didn't have any big flaws, but I'm not crazy about the randomness of the TIME phrases. There are countless combinations one can come up with (Gratis use of the flute on Super Mario Bros. 3?: FREE WARP), so the ones that are chosen really have to hit the mark -- be very funny or clever -- or tie together in some other way. The ones in this puzzle are fine; they're cute, but none of them stuck with me after I finished.
And I finished quickly, for me -- 5:03 with no errors. This was actually near the top of the Outside Track. I always thought I was more of a long-distance solver than a sprinter, but it seems to be the exact opposite. What I really need to do is work on my endurance, as the bigger puzzles gave me much more trouble than this one.
Puzzle 2: "Jam Session" by Paolo Pasco
A nice offering by constructing wunderkind Paolo Pasco. (He apparently couldn't be at the tournament because he had to take his SATs; I don't think this was a joke.) This one had four CRUNCH TIME theme answers with a unit of time "crunched" two-letters per box. The clues were also written under a faux time crunch, so they got sloppier and sloppier as the puzzle went on (e.g., "Suffres s form" for HAS). I liked that added dimension, but I heard several other solvers grumbling about it between rounds. I could see how, in the context of solving under an actual time crunch, one might find it annoying, but I thought it was fun.
I picked up on the the theme fairly quickly, but spent a lot of time trying to parse out some of the proper nouns. It wasn't the spate of millennial pop culture that got me, as one familiar with Mr. Pasco's work might think (although I had never heard of this ANSEL Elgort guy), but rather it was some old stuff -- an Ottoman leader named ALI PASHA and a Tom Wolfe story from 1976 called "THE ME DECADE". I had to Google both of them after I finished to make sure they were correct. They were, so I was two-for-two with clean grids.
Puzzle 3: "This Mashup's for the Byrds" by Tracy Bennett
Every year there is a puzzle that I do not understand at all while I'm solving it and barely understand after I'm finished and looking back over it carefully. This year it was Puzzle 3. The basic idea, which I didn't fully appreciate while solving, is that the theme clues are lyrics from the Byrds song "Turn, Turn, Turn" with one letter added and then the answer is something cute that fits that new lyric. So the first one is "A time to gather stoners together": BURNING MAN. The actual lyric from the song is "A time to gather stones together", but, man, you have to really know the song well to pick up on something that subtle. And why Burning Man? It's just an answer that fits? And then the extra letters apparently spell out RENT, and one of the long down answers is a song from the play Rent. What the what? There must be a connection here that I'm missing? Was Rent written by David Crosby or something? I totally don't get it. (On the plus side: cool looking grid.)
In addition to being, in my opinion, too obtuse a concept, the execution seemed off in a few places. For example, one of the clues was "A time you many embrace", which I cannot read in a manner that makes grammatical sense. I was able, however, to piece together the answer, GROUP HUG. In fact, I was able to piece together all the answers. My times aren't great, but I'm perfectly accurate at the lunch break.
Puzzle 4: "Non-Linear Narratives" by Erik Agard ft. Allegra Kuney
This puzzle was weird -- really weird. It was also my favorite one of the bunch. I don't think I can succinctly describe the theme, but it involved writing in animals in the wrong direction, and it had three revealers -- one for a pair of theme answers in the grid, one for another pair of theme answers in the grid, and one for all four of them. While I was solving it, it seemed like madness, and I honestly wasn't too keen on it, but after finishing I really appreciated it. It's like when you see a movie and you're not sure if you like it or not, but it sticks with you for the rest of the day, so you conclude that it must have been pretty good -- that's how this puzzle was for me.
It was also, time-wise, probably my worst puzzle of the bunch. I got stuck in a corner and was getting so irritated, I contemplated filling in half-random guesses just to be done with it, but I'm glad I didn't. Again, I was not in contention for any sort of real prize, so there was no reason to not stick it out until the bitter end. And as it turns out I didn't need until the bitter end anyway. After about ten minutes of staring at the empty boxes and rereading the same clues a hundred times, something clicked (as it often does), and I finished the puzzle without error. One more to go!
Puzzle 5: "In Search of Lost Time" by Neville Fogarty
A perfectly cromulent add-some-letters/subtract-some-letters puzzle to close out the day. Other than Puzzle 1, this one was the most straightforward of the set, and coming on the heels of Erik's and Allegra's avant-garde behemoth, it was very welcome for this solver (I'm pointing to myself). The theme involved adding and subtracting the letters ERA from common phrases to create new zany phrases, e.g., "Secure movie rights for a haboob?" was OPTION DESERT STORM and "Smudge on a Scantron form?" was ERASURE THING. (I originally read the latter clue as "Smudge on a Scranton form," so I thought it had something to do with The Office.)
This, of course, is a very common crossword conceit, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. A puzzle with a well-worn theme can still be really fun, if it's really well done, and this one was really well done. Transforming SHOCK TREATMENT into SHOE RACK TREATMENT was especially clever.
And best of all (for me) I solved it without an error. Yay! I did it. Five-for-five! No mistakes!
I finished 20th of 89 in the Outside Track, and I finished 56th of 128 in the combine field -- a little better than average, which is where I think I fit in in life in general. Pretty much everybody at the tournament is a really good crossword puzzle solver compared to the general public, and for the things I'm really good at, when I'm tossed in with a group of people who are also really good at them, I feel I'm usually somewhere between the 55th and 60th percentile. At grad school, I definitely wasn't the best student, but I think I was solidly above average. In high school wrestling, I would get soundly beaten by state champion contenders, but I was varsity for three years and had a winning record overall. When I used to play competitive Scrabble, I was usually near the top of the middle division. Always the same place.
Maybe that's a good new nickname for me "The 57th Percentile". It doesn't sound too impressive, but one must keep in mind that it's among people who are already quite good at doing the things they are doing. With that qualifier in mind, it's not too shabby at all.
Anyway, getting back to the tournament, I actually solved the final puzzle faster than any of the finalists in the Outside Track. Almost certainly this is in very large part because I didn't have the stress of solving in front of everybody on a big board. Also, I chanced into the trick pretty early on -- I randomly started solving at the bottom first, which I don't do normally (and probably wouldn't have done had I actually been in the finals) -- which allowed me to use the Across clues pretty early on in the process -- a huge boon, obviously. Congrats to Eric Cockayne, the Outside Track winner, and to Katie Hammil, the Inside Track winner.
I split pretty quickly after the finals (I wanted to take advantage of my kid-free day and stop by a friend's birthday party), so I missed the annual pie-in-the-face tradition -- each year a solver, selected randomly, gets to throw a pie in the face of a constructor of his or her choosing. I heard Erik Agard was the pie-ee this year. It's just as well I missed it, as it makes me feel uncomfortable, to be honest. I don't get what's enjoyable about watching somebody get hit with a pie in a completely contrived setting. It seems like a big mess for not much payoff. It also seems kinda mean to me (even though I know the recipient is very much in on the joke). But others seem to like it, and it's all in fun, so whatever -- no harm, no foul.
Well, that was my experience at The Indie 500 2017. It was great. My final grade for the entire opERAtion: A. I hope to see you there next year. Until then...
A puzzle of mine is running in the New York Times today. It's one I made a while ago, which is unsurprising, since the queue for NYT themeless puzzles is l-l-l-long. I've actually stopped submitting themeless puzzles for the time being, in part because the field is so crowded. The NYT themeless supply apparently far outweighs its demand, so it's getting harder to get themeless puzzles accepted and the wait until they run is just as long as always. Also, I'm currently going through a bit of a "blah" period with respect to puzzle making in general. My crossword-constructing battery is low, and I have other projects I want to work on in my (very limited) spare time, so I will probably take a little respite from constructing. However, I still have a bunch of puzzles in the NYT pipeline (both submitted and already accepted), and these breaks never last too long, so my fans, of which I can only assume I have myriad, should hardly even notice my absence.
Anyway, I don't have much to say about today's puzzle,* so instead I will give a recap of my favorite annual crossword puzzle tournament -- and also the only one I've ever attended -- The Indie 500.
*One thing I will say: I wish the clue for FRANZ FERDINAND wasn't so straightforward. The clue I submitted was something like "Royal Prince who famously died in an automobile along with his wife in 1914." Now that has some teeth to it.
Indie 500 Recap
This is my third year at the tournament (it's also the tournament's third year at the tournament), and each year I seem to arrive on the latish end of the *time* spectrum despite living just a few miles from the tournament's location -- or maybe it's because of this. Many solvers come in from out of town, so this is the only reason they are in D.C. to begin with. But I go through my usual morning routine (clothing and feeding two small children) before the tournament starts, and my usual morning routine involves me rushing out the door like a madman.
There's only scattered seating available in the tournament ballroom when I arrive, so I grab two available seats in the corner. I'm supposed to meet a friend there, but he no-shows -- even worse, he doesn't text me to say he can't make it, so I'm there holding his seat like a schmo while the last few entrants are looking for a place to sit. When people ask if the seat is taken, I have to do that apologetic, shoulder-shruggy "yeah, sorry." Man, I hate that. (After the tournament ended, he texted to say something came up and his phone battery was dead all day. That sounds pretty excuse-y to me, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, lest something serious happened, and I'm the asshole for even broaching the subject. Also, he never expressly asked me to save him a seat, so it's kinda on me anyway.)
I had two goals going into this competition: (1) Finish all the puzzles in the allotted time without error; (2) Don't finish in the top 25% of the field. The latter is so that I will still qualify for the "Outside Track" (the JV Division) next year. The former is my own goal since the actual goal of the tournament -- winning -- is not achievable given my current skill level. I keep telling myself that one of these years I'm going to give competitive solving a serious go and train and try to be a force in my division, but I never do, and I doubt I ever will. The truth is I don't love doing crossword puzzles. I very much like doing crossword puzzles, but I'm not fanatical about it the way the top solvers are. (I've always been way more into constructing than solving.) I usually "only" do one a day, often in the background while I'm at work, which isn't nearly sufficient to get me near the top of even the lower division. So I set my own little goals and enjoy the puzzles and the company.
Speaking of the puzzles...
Puzzle 1: "Before and After" by Angela Olson Halsted
A straight-over-the-plate, easy-breezy, Monday-level puzzle to kick things off. The theme answers consisted of two words, one of which can precede the word TIME (the tournament theme, if you didn't already know) and one of which can follow the word TIME, paired together in zany ways. So one theme answer was HAMMMER BANDITS (Hammer Time/Time Bandits), and the clue was "Construction site thieves?" Then everything was tied together using Cyndi Lauper's timeless hit "___ After ___".
I thought this puzzle was pretty good. It was enjoyable and didn't have any big flaws, but I'm not crazy about the randomness of the TIME phrases. There are countless combinations one can come up with (Gratis use of the flute on Super Mario Bros. 3?: FREE WARP), so the ones that are chosen really have to hit the mark -- be very funny or clever -- or tie together in some other way. The ones in this puzzle are fine; they're cute, but none of them stuck with me after I finished.
And I finished quickly, for me -- 5:03 with no errors. This was actually near the top of the Outside Track. I always thought I was more of a long-distance solver than a sprinter, but it seems to be the exact opposite. What I really need to do is work on my endurance, as the bigger puzzles gave me much more trouble than this one.
Puzzle 2: "Jam Session" by Paolo Pasco
A nice offering by constructing wunderkind Paolo Pasco. (He apparently couldn't be at the tournament because he had to take his SATs; I don't think this was a joke.) This one had four CRUNCH TIME theme answers with a unit of time "crunched" two-letters per box. The clues were also written under a faux time crunch, so they got sloppier and sloppier as the puzzle went on (e.g., "Suffres s form" for HAS). I liked that added dimension, but I heard several other solvers grumbling about it between rounds. I could see how, in the context of solving under an actual time crunch, one might find it annoying, but I thought it was fun.
I picked up on the the theme fairly quickly, but spent a lot of time trying to parse out some of the proper nouns. It wasn't the spate of millennial pop culture that got me, as one familiar with Mr. Pasco's work might think (although I had never heard of this ANSEL Elgort guy), but rather it was some old stuff -- an Ottoman leader named ALI PASHA and a Tom Wolfe story from 1976 called "THE ME DECADE". I had to Google both of them after I finished to make sure they were correct. They were, so I was two-for-two with clean grids.
Puzzle 3: "This Mashup's for the Byrds" by Tracy Bennett
Every year there is a puzzle that I do not understand at all while I'm solving it and barely understand after I'm finished and looking back over it carefully. This year it was Puzzle 3. The basic idea, which I didn't fully appreciate while solving, is that the theme clues are lyrics from the Byrds song "Turn, Turn, Turn" with one letter added and then the answer is something cute that fits that new lyric. So the first one is "A time to gather stoners together": BURNING MAN. The actual lyric from the song is "A time to gather stones together", but, man, you have to really know the song well to pick up on something that subtle. And why Burning Man? It's just an answer that fits? And then the extra letters apparently spell out RENT, and one of the long down answers is a song from the play Rent. What the what? There must be a connection here that I'm missing? Was Rent written by David Crosby or something? I totally don't get it. (On the plus side: cool looking grid.)
In addition to being, in my opinion, too obtuse a concept, the execution seemed off in a few places. For example, one of the clues was "A time you many embrace", which I cannot read in a manner that makes grammatical sense. I was able, however, to piece together the answer, GROUP HUG. In fact, I was able to piece together all the answers. My times aren't great, but I'm perfectly accurate at the lunch break.
Puzzle 4: "Non-Linear Narratives" by Erik Agard ft. Allegra Kuney
It was also, time-wise, probably my worst puzzle of the bunch. I got stuck in a corner and was getting so irritated, I contemplated filling in half-random guesses just to be done with it, but I'm glad I didn't. Again, I was not in contention for any sort of real prize, so there was no reason to not stick it out until the bitter end. And as it turns out I didn't need until the bitter end anyway. After about ten minutes of staring at the empty boxes and rereading the same clues a hundred times, something clicked (as it often does), and I finished the puzzle without error. One more to go!
Puzzle 5: "In Search of Lost Time" by Neville Fogarty
A perfectly cromulent add-some-letters/subtract-some-letters puzzle to close out the day. Other than Puzzle 1, this one was the most straightforward of the set, and coming on the heels of Erik's and Allegra's avant-garde behemoth, it was very welcome for this solver (I'm pointing to myself). The theme involved adding and subtracting the letters ERA from common phrases to create new zany phrases, e.g., "Secure movie rights for a haboob?" was OPTION DESERT STORM and "Smudge on a Scantron form?" was ERASURE THING. (I originally read the latter clue as "Smudge on a Scranton form," so I thought it had something to do with The Office.)
This, of course, is a very common crossword conceit, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. A puzzle with a well-worn theme can still be really fun, if it's really well done, and this one was really well done. Transforming SHOCK TREATMENT into SHOE RACK TREATMENT was especially clever.
And best of all (for me) I solved it without an error. Yay! I did it. Five-for-five! No mistakes!
I finished 20th of 89 in the Outside Track, and I finished 56th of 128 in the combine field -- a little better than average, which is where I think I fit in in life in general. Pretty much everybody at the tournament is a really good crossword puzzle solver compared to the general public, and for the things I'm really good at, when I'm tossed in with a group of people who are also really good at them, I feel I'm usually somewhere between the 55th and 60th percentile. At grad school, I definitely wasn't the best student, but I think I was solidly above average. In high school wrestling, I would get soundly beaten by state champion contenders, but I was varsity for three years and had a winning record overall. When I used to play competitive Scrabble, I was usually near the top of the middle division. Always the same place.
Maybe that's a good new nickname for me "The 57th Percentile". It doesn't sound too impressive, but one must keep in mind that it's among people who are already quite good at doing the things they are doing. With that qualifier in mind, it's not too shabby at all.
Anyway, getting back to the tournament, I actually solved the final puzzle faster than any of the finalists in the Outside Track. Almost certainly this is in very large part because I didn't have the stress of solving in front of everybody on a big board. Also, I chanced into the trick pretty early on -- I randomly started solving at the bottom first, which I don't do normally (and probably wouldn't have done had I actually been in the finals) -- which allowed me to use the Across clues pretty early on in the process -- a huge boon, obviously. Congrats to Eric Cockayne, the Outside Track winner, and to Katie Hammil, the Inside Track winner.
I split pretty quickly after the finals (I wanted to take advantage of my kid-free day and stop by a friend's birthday party), so I missed the annual pie-in-the-face tradition -- each year a solver, selected randomly, gets to throw a pie in the face of a constructor of his or her choosing. I heard Erik Agard was the pie-ee this year. It's just as well I missed it, as it makes me feel uncomfortable, to be honest. I don't get what's enjoyable about watching somebody get hit with a pie in a completely contrived setting. It seems like a big mess for not much payoff. It also seems kinda mean to me (even though I know the recipient is very much in on the joke). But others seem to like it, and it's all in fun, so whatever -- no harm, no foul.
Well, that was my experience at The Indie 500 2017. It was great. My final grade for the entire opERAtion: A. I hope to see you there next year. Until then...
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