I am a crossword nerd
I’ve been a New York Times crossword puzzle addict for as long as I can remember — at least since high school, and maybe before that. For the past few years, I’ve been tempted to enter the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, CT, which you might know from last year’s movie Word Play. Not that I’m a competitive puzzler; it would just be fun to be around other crossword nerds. It would have been especially fun this year to see faces I knew from the movie, and to watch the finals in person.
I didn’t have time to go to Stamford this year, but for the first time I am playing informally online. I entered in the “rookie” category, which is for people who have never participated in person. For twenty bucks you get access to the same puzzles as the real participants, at the same time they do, which today was six puzzles, once an hour. You solve the puzzles in your web browser, and it tells you your score based on how quickly and accurately you filled out the puzzle.
Here’s how I did:
My times ranged from 7 to 15 minutes. I solved each puzzle perfectly until the last one, in which I made one mistake. I’m kicking myself, because I knew the answer. I had simply mistyped one letter.
From what I saw in the movie, conventional wisdom is that you should check every letter of every answer. One year, one of the top contenders blew his chance at a victory because he missed a square. I knew this, but I was too lazy to take the extra five minutes to be that thorough. All I did was skim each puzzle to make sure I hadn’t left any blank squares.
The finals will be tomorrow, Sunday. I’m looking forward to playing along with the finalists. After the final competitive round, there will be a just-for-fun round that everybody can play in. That strikes me as a very nice way to end the tournament.
Taking a minute to re-read the puzzle is highly worthwhile. I got the first six puzzles all right — no uncaught typos — so I’m leading you. Somebody else was faster, though, so I’m not on top.
I’ll be a little late getting to the last puzzle. I’m driving my son back to school in NH this AM, returning early afternoon.
Gotta see Word Play some day.
Comment by Ephraim — March 25, 2007 @ March 25, 2007 5:55 am
Yeah, I wish now I had invested one minute, which would only have cost me 25 bonus points. Because of the mistake, I lost 20 correct-word points (10 for each incorrect word), 25 points for the incorrect letter, a whopping 150 bonus points for a perfect puzzle, and worst of all the annoyance of screwing up a perfect run.
I had thought of checking my answers as a laborious process of rechecking each clue, but I think I can get away with much less work than that. I just need to look at each answer and make sure it’s spelled right; I’ll remember the clue when I see the answer. Also, I’m confident enough in my proofreading that I think I can just look at the Across answers.
Guess I’ll have to wait till next year to test the theory.
Comment by snoozology — March 25, 2007 @ March 25, 2007 1:17 pm
I think this is the first year I’ve been error-free (after proof-reading, that is). I’m all done now and still clinging to second place.
My proof-reading strategy is just as you suggest. I read through the across words, make sure I recognize each one and can recall the clue for any funny-looking ones. In the last tournament puzzle today I only realized how the theme worked as I got the last theme answer, so proof-reading gave me a chance to check the other theme answers.
Comment by Ephraim — March 25, 2007 @ March 25, 2007 2:25 pm
Nice blog, Ephraim! I like the initial story about “accidentally” losing all that weight. I could stand to lose a few pounds myself.
I see you’re still at second place. I heard back from a tournament admistrator, who allowed me to restore my score for puzzle #2, so now I show up on the top ten list, six below you.
Comment by snoozology — March 28, 2007 @ March 28, 2007 1:13 pm