Across, down, and sideways
Mar. 21st, 2002 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saxikathYou'd think, given that my office is currently a 20-minute walk from my house, that I'd be capable of getting here by 9 a.m. I almost made it this morning; I was only 5 minutes past. (And it's not like anyone really cares, which is probably why I'm so loose about it; if it really mattered, I'd get out of bed and get here.) I suppose it doesn't help that I've been staying up till midnight regularly lately.
I think this rambling is going to get long, so I'm going to try this cut thing so I don't make anyone's friends page unwieldy!
So, Stamford was last weekend. For those not up on these things, "Stamford" is shorthand for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, which is held every year at the Marriott hotel in Stamford, Connecticut. This was the 25th anniversary of the tournament.
The place was packed. There were 401 contestants this year, if I remember right, which is up by at least 50 and maybe as much as 100 over last year. If it gets any bigger, they'll have to build a new wing on the hotel for us. The ballroom was about as full as I think it can be and still have room for the judges to get to people to pick up their papers.
It was also crawling with press. ABC World News Tonight ran a segment on it (click on "Olympics of the Mind" under "Video"), and there was supposedly something on CNN, though I don't know what. And "60 Minutes" is doing a show later on, so they were there. And I was interviewed on Connecticut Channel 12. And there were lots of newspaper reporters. The cameras were a bit distracting, but I guess the publicity is good, and most of it seems to have been reasonably respectful, rather than "gee, look at all the geeks!"
The puzzles were very good this year, I thought; I'm really provoked with myself for having made stupid, careless mistakes on puzzles 3 and 5, though. If I hadn't, I'd've come in 5th, by far my best finish ever. It's not even that they were crossings I didn't know; I just didn't check crossing answers and see that I had UONS where I should have had EONS! And I didn't notice that...
...hang on, this could be a spoiler if you want to do the puzzles, so don't read this next couple of paragraphs if you don't want to know details...
So, puzzle 3 had as its theme "near-palindromes" -- sort of. One answer was ABLE WAS I ERE I SAW JOSEPHINE, another was MADAM, I'M THAT NAKED GUY (rather than "Madam, I'm Adam"). Really cute, and a classic Merl Reagle approach. One of the relevant palindromes was "Drat such custard!" which I'd never run into. The intended answer was DRAT SUCH TAPIOCA. I got it into my head that it was mustard, not custard, and so I wound up with DRAT SUMO TAPIOCA. It made no sense, of course, but I was so attached to that M that I didn't check it. If I had, no doubt I'd've noticed the mistake and figured it out.
In the scoring system, your first mistake makes your score equivalent to finishing perfectly a full eight minutes slower. Ouch. And I'm really annoyed that I had a mistake on puzzle 5, because I really liked puzzle 5, and I solved it really fast (I think I finished third, judging by the scores). It was a clever creation by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon (then again, "clever" is redundant when you're talking about those two!). Instead of the usual clues, it had a story with words omitted and replaced by 52A, 13D, etc. And it was full of bad animal puns. "____ there'd be days like this," quips a monkey, and the answer? MARMOSET, of course. This is where I had TURN and UONS instead of TERN and EONS -- argh.
But, that aside, it was a great weekend, as always. I got to spend time with some of my favorite people -- the intelligent, creative, and somewhat warped puzzle people. We stayed up late Friday and Saturday nights playing games & such. Squonk (that's his nom de plume in the National Puzzlers' League created a brilliant little puzzle extravaganza for us to do after hours -- eight puzzles, none impossibly hard, and all enough to make me laugh, with a satisfying final answer.
That was Friday night. Saturday night I played Evo, which involves getting dinosaurs to evolve, and our own version of Pyramid (as in $25,000). People write up categories for the final round of the TV game, which other people then have to clue by giving examples of things in those categories. Of course, this being a group of intelligent, creative, and somewhat warped people, the categories are similarly creative and warped. "Alternate uses for bifocals" (the clues included "Starting a fire and not starting a fire," which led to the response "Zen arson," which broke everyone up), "Lines from Cool Hand Lucaoimhu" (Ucaoimhu, pronounced oo-kev-oo, is the nom de plume of one of the more devious members of the NPL), "Things that are flimsy," "Non-French French things" (this was guessed on one clue: "Fries.")... I can't remember the others now, but it's a great game for a bunch of up-too-late creative people.
Other random memories:
I actually beat Ellen Ripstein on a puzzle! Or I would have if I hadn't made any mistakes (that was puzzle 5). And I did beat Jon Delfin, the eventual champ, on puzzle 6. (Ellen won last year, and Jon's won six times now, so you can understand my glee.)
I wanted to throttle a person who shall remain unnamed (who knows who's reading this...) who used my mistake on puzzle 3 as his first example cluing the Pyramid category "Ways to make a fool of yourself at Stamford." Chalk it up to late night and his having a fair bit to drink; he's not usually so thoughtless.
Doug Hoylman, "The Iceman," who's the other six-time champion, simply didn't get the theme for puzzle 7, which is mind-blowing; I've never heard of him being stymied by a puzzle before. (Scary thing is, even with that, he still beat me...)
Driving back with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tahnan and thedan and Tanis in the car I borrowed from my semicousin Marc, whose NPL nom is Cramerica. We promptly christened his car "Carmerica," and Dan started and we all helped finish our own version of "Carmerica the Beautiful." ("Oh beautiful for dashboard lights, for leather seats and doors...") This is what happens when you put four slightly punchy puzzle people in a car for several hours.
Coming back to reality was hard. Work is blah comparatively; it's the end of the current textbook project, so it's all little picky bits and pieces -- index, map corrections, captions. And the people, while they're great, just don't have the same connection for me as the puzzle people do.
Must start saving up for the NPL convention in July, which is in Vancouver this year... money, money, it's only money, right?
Okay, I better go look at these maps now and quit my babbling.
I think this rambling is going to get long, so I'm going to try this cut thing so I don't make anyone's friends page unwieldy!
So, Stamford was last weekend. For those not up on these things, "Stamford" is shorthand for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, which is held every year at the Marriott hotel in Stamford, Connecticut. This was the 25th anniversary of the tournament.
The place was packed. There were 401 contestants this year, if I remember right, which is up by at least 50 and maybe as much as 100 over last year. If it gets any bigger, they'll have to build a new wing on the hotel for us. The ballroom was about as full as I think it can be and still have room for the judges to get to people to pick up their papers.
It was also crawling with press. ABC World News Tonight ran a segment on it (click on "Olympics of the Mind" under "Video"), and there was supposedly something on CNN, though I don't know what. And "60 Minutes" is doing a show later on, so they were there. And I was interviewed on Connecticut Channel 12. And there were lots of newspaper reporters. The cameras were a bit distracting, but I guess the publicity is good, and most of it seems to have been reasonably respectful, rather than "gee, look at all the geeks!"
The puzzles were very good this year, I thought; I'm really provoked with myself for having made stupid, careless mistakes on puzzles 3 and 5, though. If I hadn't, I'd've come in 5th, by far my best finish ever. It's not even that they were crossings I didn't know; I just didn't check crossing answers and see that I had UONS where I should have had EONS! And I didn't notice that...
...hang on, this could be a spoiler if you want to do the puzzles, so don't read this next couple of paragraphs if you don't want to know details...
So, puzzle 3 had as its theme "near-palindromes" -- sort of. One answer was ABLE WAS I ERE I SAW JOSEPHINE, another was MADAM, I'M THAT NAKED GUY (rather than "Madam, I'm Adam"). Really cute, and a classic Merl Reagle approach. One of the relevant palindromes was "Drat such custard!" which I'd never run into. The intended answer was DRAT SUCH TAPIOCA. I got it into my head that it was mustard, not custard, and so I wound up with DRAT SUMO TAPIOCA. It made no sense, of course, but I was so attached to that M that I didn't check it. If I had, no doubt I'd've noticed the mistake and figured it out.
In the scoring system, your first mistake makes your score equivalent to finishing perfectly a full eight minutes slower. Ouch. And I'm really annoyed that I had a mistake on puzzle 5, because I really liked puzzle 5, and I solved it really fast (I think I finished third, judging by the scores). It was a clever creation by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon (then again, "clever" is redundant when you're talking about those two!). Instead of the usual clues, it had a story with words omitted and replaced by 52A, 13D, etc. And it was full of bad animal puns. "____ there'd be days like this," quips a monkey, and the answer? MARMOSET, of course. This is where I had TURN and UONS instead of TERN and EONS -- argh.
But, that aside, it was a great weekend, as always. I got to spend time with some of my favorite people -- the intelligent, creative, and somewhat warped puzzle people. We stayed up late Friday and Saturday nights playing games & such. Squonk (that's his nom de plume in the National Puzzlers' League created a brilliant little puzzle extravaganza for us to do after hours -- eight puzzles, none impossibly hard, and all enough to make me laugh, with a satisfying final answer.
That was Friday night. Saturday night I played Evo, which involves getting dinosaurs to evolve, and our own version of Pyramid (as in $25,000). People write up categories for the final round of the TV game, which other people then have to clue by giving examples of things in those categories. Of course, this being a group of intelligent, creative, and somewhat warped people, the categories are similarly creative and warped. "Alternate uses for bifocals" (the clues included "Starting a fire and not starting a fire," which led to the response "Zen arson," which broke everyone up), "Lines from Cool Hand Lucaoimhu" (Ucaoimhu, pronounced oo-kev-oo, is the nom de plume of one of the more devious members of the NPL), "Things that are flimsy," "Non-French French things" (this was guessed on one clue: "Fries.")... I can't remember the others now, but it's a great game for a bunch of up-too-late creative people.
Other random memories:
I actually beat Ellen Ripstein on a puzzle! Or I would have if I hadn't made any mistakes (that was puzzle 5). And I did beat Jon Delfin, the eventual champ, on puzzle 6. (Ellen won last year, and Jon's won six times now, so you can understand my glee.)
I wanted to throttle a person who shall remain unnamed (who knows who's reading this...) who used my mistake on puzzle 3 as his first example cluing the Pyramid category "Ways to make a fool of yourself at Stamford." Chalk it up to late night and his having a fair bit to drink; he's not usually so thoughtless.
Doug Hoylman, "The Iceman," who's the other six-time champion, simply didn't get the theme for puzzle 7, which is mind-blowing; I've never heard of him being stymied by a puzzle before. (Scary thing is, even with that, he still beat me...)
Driving back with
tahnan and thedan and Tanis in the car I borrowed from my semicousin Marc, whose NPL nom is Cramerica. We promptly christened his car "Carmerica," and Dan started and we all helped finish our own version of "Carmerica the Beautiful." ("Oh beautiful for dashboard lights, for leather seats and doors...") This is what happens when you put four slightly punchy puzzle people in a car for several hours.Coming back to reality was hard. Work is blah comparatively; it's the end of the current textbook project, so it's all little picky bits and pieces -- index, map corrections, captions. And the people, while they're great, just don't have the same connection for me as the puzzle people do.
Must start saving up for the NPL convention in July, which is in Vancouver this year... money, money, it's only money, right?
Okay, I better go look at these maps now and quit my babbling.
