My second ACPT weekend came and went in a beat -- it was a whirlwind, a cyclone, an oe. I worked a lot, socialized some, drank a little, and barely slept. I was a tournament judge/referee again this year. Last year I (infamously) had a puzzle in the competition, so I got to be a judge, and that got me on the email list, I guess. Whatever the case, I jumped at the chance to do it again. It's a good role for me. I wouldn't mind competing, but I'm not
super into tournament solving. It's fine. I'd probably like it more if I was faster, but I'll never be faster, because I'm never going to practice to get faster. Plus, as a judge you get your room and board comped, and you get to wear a different color ID tag than the competitors, so, yeah, pretty sweet gig.
I carpooled to the tournament Friday afternoon with some members of my DC-area puzzle/trivia crew -- Brian Cross, Michael Berman, and Dan Felsenheld. I wasn't nearly as anxious this time around since I knew what to expect and since I had already met most the other judges last year. I was assigned to share a room with New York Times assistant puzzle editor Sam Ezersky. He was already there when I arrived, and
he was incredibly anxious... about college basketball. Last season his Virginia Cavaliers became the first 1-seed to lose to a 16-seed, and it looked like it was happening again. UVA was losing at halftime to some school named Gardner-Webb when I arrived. I'm pretty sure I barged in on Sam during his personal time. As a sports fan, I know the feeling -- when you want to watch a game alone, because you want to obsess over it without drawing innocent bystanders into your manic orbit. But Sam was welcoming and cordial, nevertheless, because that's just how he is -- one of the nicest people I've ever met.
I took a lap around the lobby and said "hi" to a few folks, but the festivities weren't in full effect yet, so I went back up to the room to kill some time before the judges' dinner. UVA had made a second half push and taken a comfortable lead, so Sam was in a calmer state. He said if they had lost again, he would have skipped the dinner, and I'm not sure if he was joking or not.
After dinner I went to the bar to see who would show up. I chatted with
Ben Zimmer for a few minutes, who I found out on the ride home is a prominent linguist and columnist. That's the best thing about this tournament -- so many interesting people. You'll talk to somebody, and when you finish, somebody else will come up and say something like, "You know, that guy invented fantasy baseball?" This is not a completely contrived example.
Daniel Okrent, the former New York Times editor credited with creating Rotisserie League Baseball, competed in the tournament. I didn't talk to him though. I didn't even know he was there until I scored his final puzzle. That's too bad I would have liked to have taken a picture with him. I'm not a big pic person, but I have a friend who's really into the Ken Burns
Baseball documentaries and the
30 for 30 doc
Silly Little Game, both of which feature Okrent heavily, so it would have been fun to send him a pic of us. Maybe next year.
I noticed quite a few other judges have family members join them and help out too, and it got me wondering if my family would ever want to come with me. My kids are too young now to serve in any official capacity, and I doubt my wife would ever have much interest in it -- even just hanging out as an observer. She wouldn't explicitly
not have fun, but she's not a puzzle person at all, and she would have no frame of reference for anything. Basic crossword lingo like "themeless" and "rebus" would be meaningless to her. I don't think she's ever read a single clue from one of my puzzles -- and I mean that literally. (I'm totally fine with it, by the way.) Sometimes if I'm doing a puzzle and she's around, I'll throw out a clue I think she might know (French phrases and African countries are her strong suits), and even if she knows the answer she'll sometimes get it wrong because she doesn't know the crossword puzzle conventions -- verb tenses, abbreviations, question mark clues, etc. We take these things for granted now, because they're so ingrained in us, but I remember being flummoxed by it all when I first started solving 20 years ago. I distinctly recall seeing the clue, "1972 Coppola movie, with 'The'", and being like, "
with 'The'"? What the fuck doesn't that mean?
So, the only way I can imagine my wife ever joining me is if the tournament goes back to NYC or some other major city where she has friends and other activities -- and that's not out of the question. The tournament is nearing capacity of the Stamford Marriott, and it's probably only going to get bigger. Will Shortz notably has not announced a date or location for the 2020 tournament yet. The hotel must know something is up because its manager read a proclamation from the mayor extolling the virtues of ACPT. Although it's possible that did more harm than good. The manager made several gaffes during his speech. He pronounced Erik Agard's last name "uh-guard" and said he was the first "American African" to win at ACPT. Then he said Will "Short" -- twice. That's such an oddly specific mistake (silent Z?) that I thought maybe the proclamation had it wrong, but I took a peek at it, and it was correct. It was pretty bad. I mean, anybody can make a few verbal miscues, but if you're trying to woo somebody, you should be sure you at least have their name right. In fact, go ahead and read the whole thing aloud a few times in the mirror before you get up to the podium -- basic public speaking tip.
Anyway...
[This is the only picture I took the entire weekend -- a random shot of the main ballroom prior to Puzzle 4 (I think).]
Friday night I stayed up late hanging out and playing games. I didn't go back to my room until after 1:30 am. Partly this is because I was having fun; partly it's because I was scared of having a repeat of last year's sleepless Friday night. It turned out to be a well-founded fear. It was a dreadful night once again. I toss and turned in bed for hours, caught in that hellish circle, in which you can't sleep because you can't calm down, but you can't calm down, because you're not yet sleeping. My mind and emotions go to uncomfortable places when this happens. It's the worst thing in my life that occurs on a regular (if infrequent) basis. I don't know if such episodes are best described as mini freak-outs or full-blown panic attacks, or if there's any distinction to be drawn at 5:30 am. I start wondering what will happen if I literally don't sleep at all. Can I just get up and start my day? Do people do that? Will I be able to think coherent thoughts and form coherent sentences? Will I collapse from exhaustion by lunchtime? Thankfully, I've never gotten the answer because at some point I jolt awake, which means I slept, perhaps only for a short time, but I slept, and that's enough. It's over. I'm good. Tired, but good.
On Saturday, I made a great decision: I volunteered to be the puzzle runner between the judge's room, where the scoring is done, and the tech room, where the results are update online. Instead of sitting all day in a room hunched over a stack of puzzles with a highlighter in my hand, I only did that for
part of the day. The rest of the time I walked a 100-foot hallway over and over again. It got a little tedious, and I was running on fumes, but I got in 21,000 steps according to the app on my phone.
As the first wave of puzzles came in, I got wind that Mr. Agard had filled in a square incorrectly. "Well, he's out of the finals then," I announced to whomever happened to be near me. I was perhaps a bit too dismissive of his chances -- he impressively climbed back into fourth place prior to the penultimate puzzle on Sunday -- but ultimately I was correct. He couldn't quite overtake David Plotkin for third place. It's a shame. No disrespect to Mr. Plotkin, but I want to see the three best solvers in the finals, and Erik is one of the three best solvers. He and Dan Feyer are 1A and 1B, in my opinion (and then there's like a five-way tie for third). Erik is unquestionably the fastest solver in Crossword, but perhaps he's a bit reckless. Dan has an unparalleled combination of speed and accuracy.
And that's why Mr. Feyer is now an eight-time (!) champion. On Sunday
*, I watched him win it again -- pretty handily. The finals itself wasn't too exciting. Dan, finishing the "regular season" with the high score, got a few seconds head start and only increased his lead as he solved. Joon Pahk came in second and Plotkin third. Even though there wasn't much drama, I was happy to see Dan win. He told me last year that he likes this blog, and I've been a fan of his ever since. That's how vain I am. I pull for anybody who gives me a compliment.
*I slept decently Saturday night, if you were wondering.
Also, the B Division provided plenty of drama. The finals was relatively close with Brian Fodera edging out Matthew Gritzmacher on the big boards, but the real story came after everybody had gone home. Apparently, Brian noticed his score on the last puzzle before the finals was impossibly high, and he laudably reported it as such. A scoring error was confirmed and a correction was made. However, after the adjustment, Brian fell to fourth place in the B Division, meaning he should not have even qualified for the finals. According to the ACPT
website, the B Division playoff has been "nullified." I don't know if this means there is no winner this year, or if Matthew is declared the winner for finishing with the highest score pre-finals. And the prize money has already been awarded, so I'm not sure how it's all playing out.
I can, however, say this about the error: It wasn't me. It sounds like it wasn't anybody. As I understand it, the program that scans the puzzles mistook a write-over in Brian's puzzle for a black square, changing the word count of the puzzle, inflating his score (each correct answer is worth points). The judges take painstaking care to ensure the grids of the top competitors are marked totally correctly. But the computation is left to the computer program, and that's what made the mistake. It's like if you put a bunch of correct data into a spreadsheet, and set up all your formulas correctly, and still get the wrong answer because there's a bug in the program.
With all the said, it's still unfortunate and embarrassing, and there are things that can be done to safeguard against it in the future. For one thing, the computer program should probably be strengthened to try to catch outliers. I won't speak to that any further since I don't know anything about how it's coded. On the human side, we judges should probably perform "sanity checks" on the scores (not just the grids) of each of the top competitors. Had we done that, we might have caught the error. But this is all post-hoc analysis. The next big error will be something else entirely -- and there will be another big error someday, because you can't foresee every potential problem. Humans are fallible, and so are the machines on which we rely. Shit happens.
Well, that was my blur of an ACTP weekend. Until next time...
