This St. Patty's Day weekend, Brooklyn hosted the three-day American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and F. and C.P. from Team Delicatessen participated for the very first time!
This is THE tournament of "Wordplay" fame, the one run by New York Times crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz and featured in The Wall Street Journal's middle column.
Puzzlers compete to see who can finish 7 puzzles in the fastest amount of time with all the squares filled in correctly. You get 10 points for each correct word. Each puzzle has a time limit varying from 15 minutes to 45 minutes. If you finish early you raise your hand and a proctor comes to collect your paper and note the time. You get 25 bonus points for each minute before the deadline, but for each wrong answer you will get 25 points deducted from your bonus, but not beyond.
F. and C.P. did crosswords online every day beforehand.
F: "The crossword tournament was fun. I really lost out on game 5 which was the hardest, and the theme was hit songs so I could not take advantage of using the theme either. I did finish early on at least games 1 and 7. Don't remember if I did on any others."
F. sat next to a guy originally from Mumbai, India. This was his 4th tournament. He normally comes with his friend by the same name of F.
F: "People went into the hall early the first day to grab seats. We did not go in until 10 minutes or so before start time and most of the seats were already taken. We had a hard time finding ANY empty seats, let alone together!"
C.P.: "The puzzles were pretty much what I expected. F. almost made the top half. I was about 10 places behind her until the last puzzle on Sunday. It was the usual Sunday Times puzzle. Not difficult but I tanked on it, probably because I had the flu. The judges marked the entries in blue pencils and scanned into the computer. Results were posted in an hour or so in the ballroom as well as the tournament's website. Overall, no real surprises and an enjoyable trip."
According to the results posted online, F. finished in the top 30 among rookies, and C.P. was in the top 50 out of 139 rookies.
As for the big winner? If you've seen "Wordplay," you know Tyler Hinman is kind of like a whiz kid in crosswords, but he was defeated by Dan Feyer last year. Dan won again this year. Ben Zimmer posted videos of the final round. It won't take you long to watch because Dan flies through this final puzzle in less than 7 minutes.
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