The second annual Indie 500 crossword puzzle tournament was held yesterday here in Washington, D.C. I competed in it, just as I did last year, bringing my career grand total number of tournaments up to two. I would love to compete in other tourneys, but with two small boys, just getting out of the house to go downtown for one day is a big deal. One day I'll compete in more tournaments. That day might be 18 years from now, but it will come.
I finished
30th out of 77 participants in the "Outside Track" (i.e., the JV division).
* But my ranking is not the important part. The lede of the story of the tournament is that it was awesome! Seriously. I had a blast. I had fun last year too, but this year was more fun for a variety of reasons. The biggest one is that I met more people. It is a very welcoming community, and I shook hands and made small talk with a bunch of friendly folks -- bloggers, fellow constructors, general crossword puzzle enthusiasts, etc. It was great. I've had several puzzles run in the NY Times over the last few months (another one coming up this Thursday), which I think helped facilitate interactions, as I had a few people come up and tell me they recognized my name from bylines. This was very cool. There are few better feelings than having somebody you've never met come up and tell you they like your work. Bringing some joy -- no matter how small -- to other people lives is my definition of success as a constructor. If that comes off as sappy or pretentious, please know I mean it in the most earnest and humble way possible.
Anyway, let's have a look at the puzzles, shall we?
Puzzle 1: Peter Broda and Lena Webb
Because I don't have the speed to compete with the top solvers, even in the JV division, I set a goal for myself this year to finish all the puzzles without any errors. I failed within the first ten minutes of the tournament. As you can see above I put MFA/MENITO, when it should be BFA/BENITO. The across answer could very easily have been MFA (master of fine arts, as opposed to bachelor of fine arts), but Mussolini's first name -- the clue for the down entry -- was most definitely not MENITO. The problem here is that Mussolini's first name didn't come to mind initially, so I thought "I don't know it; it could be anything," but I actually did know it, and had I taken ten seconds to think about it, I would've come up with the correct answer, BENITO. Plus, even if I didn't know it, BENITO is an actual name (
Benito Santiago was 1987 NL Rookie of the Year, after all); MENITO isn't. I realized my error about 30 seconds after handing in my puzzle. Few things are more frustrating than this. Grrr....
Despite my error, this is probably my favorite puzzle of the tournament. The theme is simple -- THAT'S MY JAM is the revealer, and each of the theme entries are songs that start with types of jams (e.g., RASPBERRY BERET) -- but well executed and the puzzle was just plain fun.
Puzzle 2: Andy Kravis and Neville Fogarty
I filled this one in correctly, but on the slow side. The theme was prom-based puns, so, for instance, one clue had something to do with a limo and the answer was IT'S A STRETCH. I'm not anti-pun, but they have to be done really well for me to appreciate them. They need to be at least mildly funny, and they need to feel "natural." These puns didn't quite land for me. They were amusing enough, but they felt too contrived. Also, could have done without the extended 17x17 grid, but whatever -- decent enough puzzle.
Puzzle 3: Sam Trabucco
This was the puzzle of the bunch that I didn't really care for, and, yet, ironically, it is the puzzle I scored the best on relative to the competition. I didn't make a single mistake (two in a row!), and I narrowly missed scoring in the top-10 in my division. I
would have finished in the top-10 easily, if I turned in my puzzle as soon as I finished (and gave it a quick error check). But I sat there for an extra 30 seconds or so trying to figure out if I missed something in the theme. I didn't; it's just that the theme doesn't really make sense to me.
The idea is that somebody has poor reception on a cell phone, and it is making their words that have silent letters be misinterpreted as different words pronounced as if they didn't have silent letters. For example, the clue for 1-Across was something like "Military unit (Hold on, I'm going through a tunnel...)." The answer is then CORPSE, because it is pronounced the way CORPS (a military unit) would be pronounced if it didn't have a silent S. Another example, is OTTOMAN was given a clue as if it is AUTUMN (again with the parenthetical reference to a bad connection), because the latter would be pronounced like the former if it didn't have a silent N. Then there was the revealer CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW in the middle of the grid.
The silent letter piece is clever, but I don't understand the connection to bad phone service. I guess it is supposed to be that in the call, the letter that should be pronounced is dropped making it sound like a different word. But if that's the case, doesn't it seem like the clues and entries are backward? It seems to me the constructor is playing the part of the caller, actively talking to us, the passively receiving solver (after all, we don't know what to say; it's not our puzzle). So since that's the case, it seems to me that the constructor should be providing the words with the non-silent letters (via clues), and we the solvers should be hearing the silent letter version (via entries in the grid). Or maybe I'm overthinking it or missing something completely. Whatever the case, if the theme is not immediately obvious to the solver even after it's revealed, then it should probably be reworked.
And I don't think I'm alone on feeling this way. Several people I spoke with expressed similar confusion. In fact, I heard one guy talking to the constructor about it, and it was a very strange conversation to overhear, because the guy said some unflattering things about the puzzle, but he did so in such a legitimately naive and good-natured way that the constructor couldn't (and didn't seem to) take offense.
None of this, of course, is written with any disrespect toward the constructor, Sam, who is a good constructor (and this puzzle was specifically chosen from multiple submissions to be in the competition, so some well-respected crossword puzzle people must have really liked it). It is just that not every puzzle hits the mark for every solver. This one missed for me. That's okay.
Puzzle 4: Erik Agard and Joanne Sullivan
This one was the longest and hardest of the bunch. But it was good-- almost really good. The revealer was a bit blah, and it didn't quite work for me to tie everything together. The theme idea is very clever: Each of the three across clues in certain rows must be proceeded by "One," "Two," and "Three" for them to make sense. For example, where it says PODUNK, BATMAN, and MONTE, the respective clues are "Horse town," "Face rival," and "Card ___." So the solver has to mentally add in, "one, two, three" to these clues. Like I said, clever. But the revealer COUNTINGOFF is... eh... kinda weak. I would have liked something livelier. The title of the puzzle referenced a waltz, and maybe it would have been better to use waltz somehow in the revealer instead. It's not a huge criticism, however, as the puzzle mostly works.
I also finished this one without errors -- just. There was under three minutes remaining on the clock out of 45 minutes total. My big issue was an incorrect answer that seemed absolutely right. (Hate it when this happens.) The clue was "Fencing partner?" and I had ART THEFT instead of the correct answer ART THIEF. Both work conceptually. The clue is a reference to the crime of fencing, and ART THEFT is a partner
of fencing (i.e., a crime related to fencing), and ART THIEF is a partner
in fencing (i.e, one who facilitates fencing). This mistake -- along with not knowing the chatspeak term TTFN (ta-ta for now) -- caused me to stroke my chin in confusion for a solid 15 minutes, literally. I was literally stroking my chin (see pic), and it literally took me 15 minutes (at least) to figure it out. But figure it out I did. And I was happy about that. Moral victories, see.
[Pic was posted to the Facebook profile of Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle. Big thanks to the photographer (Rex's/Michael's wife Penelope, I believe) for documenting this event so thoroughly. All the pics are great!]
Puzzle 5: Everybody
This one was a hodge-podge of theme entries from the previous four puzzles. It was super loosey-goosey, but it worked in the context for which it was created. It's like at the end of a show featuring several bands, when all the bands get up on stage together and rock out for a little while. The music created is probably inferior to that by each band individually, but the crowd still enjoys it because it is a final celebration of the experience they've just enjoyed together. That's how this puzzle played for me. It was fun.
Anyway, that was the tournament. There was the final puzzle, of course, and I actually solved it faster than the people on stage. Of course, I had a huge advantage that I was looking at both sets of clues (the final puzzle is the same for both divisions, but the clues are different). It is remarkable how much that helps. I watched the finals -- Christopher Stephens won the Outside Track and Roger Barkan won the Inside Track -- but then I split ASAP. Kids, remember?
Alright, that's all I got for the Indie 500 2016. Until next time...
*It's called this because the Indie 500 had a car theme last year. But this year, it had a prom theme, so I think they should have modified the divisions accordingly -- "Cool Kids" and "Wallflowers?" Something like that. Of course, it is still called the Indie 500, so maybe the track designation is still appropriate.
