Tuesday, April 1 – 16:30

This is a pitiful time for a Tuesday.  My only excuse is that the April 1st puzzles are usually harder than normal.  This was puzzle #2 in the AAUW tournament, btw.  My downfall was I got hopelessly stuck in the SW corner.  I just had such a hard time seeing MIASMA and ATRIA (I kept thinking “why doesn’t AORTAS/AORTAE fit???).  I had MIT, SHARK and ASSAY, but also had a terrible time getting the OKAY in FEELINGOKAY.  I also couldn’t see ” as INCHES or “News groups” as MEDIA.  Ugh, I must have erased SHARK half a dozen times trying to make sense of that corner.  I went through the rest of the puzzle relatively easily, but it was like every clue in the SW was conspiring against me.  I’d say I spent at least a third of my time on that corner.  It was very satisfying to finally get through it though.  I’ll be interested to see how Orange’s time today compares with her more usual Tuesday times.

Update on Monday’s puzzle: after seeing how easy every other blogger in the world found Monday’s puzzle, I was thinking about my 6:20 time.  I’ve been working through all the 2007 Monday NYT puzzles, and I range from 4:38 to 7:56.  So it surprises me that my time wasn’t closer to my faster times.  I can’t think of any particular reason though.  I wasn’t tired, not nervous about playing in competition, didn’t get stuck on anything.  Dunno.

Monday, March 31 – 6:20

AKA puzzle #1 from the AAUW tournament.  I’m not crazy about my time, but I really liked the theme on this one.

Tyler hits the big time!

I decided this deserved its own post, rather than buried at the end of the AAUW report.  Tyler Hinman got a whole column in Parade Magazine today.  On page 15, it mentions his win in the ACPT and then has some Q&A.  Good to see crosswords and the people who do them getting some notice.

Sunday, March 30 – 21:34

I must have a letter or two wrong, as the applet won’t accept my solution, but I can’t figure out what. Also, the tab key refuses to advance me to the next word in the applet, I am so sure that completely threw off my time (as if). Nothing jumps out at me to comment on as far as the puzzle, but I’m kind of tired…

Ok, I had to go over a look at Rex Parker’s solution, and now I’m kind of annoyed. The two letters I had wrong were both places where a name crossed another name.  Where TREO crossed AKEEM I had TRIO and AKIEM, which both sounded right to me, and I probably should have known the correct spelling of TREO, being a geek and all, but it’s still a bit subtle.  However what I really didn’t like was figure skater Irina SLUTSKAYA crossing with composer ERIK Satie.  I had a C instead of a K.  I’d vaguely heard the skater’s name before and definitely knew the composer, but knowing C vs. K?  Seems sub par to me.    Or perhaps I’m just a big whiner.  I’m willing to entertain both possibilities.

The Second Annual AAUW Tournament

My wife and I were at the AAUW Crossword Puzzle Tournament this afternoon. It consisted of three 20-minute puzzles with a 25-minute final for the top three people. Marilynn managed to finagle the actual ACPT whiteboards from Will Shortz for use in the final. She had to promise him her firstborn if anything happened to them, and she said she was meeting Will at some rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike tomorrow to return them.

I miss the good old days of the tournament, before it got so big, when it was still possible for someone like me, who isn’t in the upper echelons, to win a prize. This year there were maybe 40 people instead of 30. Not only that, but there were some quite good players there as well. When we first got there, we learned that John (Hogan, I think) would not be there, and we breathed a sigh of relief. He won this tournament last year, and had never been to the ACPT before. He was at this year’s ACPT and came in 75th, as a rookie, pretty respectable. In any case, we though maybe we had a chance this year.

Unfortunately for us, some other really good players were there. Susan Hoffman, who came in 29th at this year’s ACPT and was a finalist in Wordplay, won. Todd Dashoff (93rd at ACPT) came in second, and Michael Putterman (130th) came in third. We got to watch them
compete on the whiteboards, and Susan completed the puzzle with plenty of time to spare, while Todd and Michael were still incomplete when time ran out. Michael didn’t catch on to the theme until very late and as a result had less of the puzzle completed, giving Todd second place.

Ah yes, the puzzles. The puzzles were the NYT puzzles for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this coming week. Will generously gave the AAUW tournament advance copies to use — very cool in my book. I won’t be posting anything about those puzzles until they’ve been published in the Times, except to say that I found them harder than usual.

Update: I should mention that the tournament took place at Bucks County Community College.  The college is located in Newtown, a suburb northeast of Philadelphia, and is nestled in a corner of Tyler State Park.  Tyler Hinman, though, was not at this tournament, but, wow, he got a whole column in Parade Magazine today!

I’d like to thank all the little people

Square Times is one week old today, and I’m having fun doing it.  I’d like to thank my loyal readership, except I don’t have one yet.   But am I daunted?  I don’t feel daunted.  What have I learned so far?  Always be sure to start the timer.  I need to get better at writing puzzle commentary, and hopefully I won’t end up just repeating the same stuff as Orange and Rex and Ryan and Brian.  I write my posts without looking at theirs first, so any duplication is happenstance.

I wonder if Across Lite is the best way to do NYT crosswords.  Maybe I’ll try the applet for week and see how I like that.

Tomorrow I’m off to Bucks County, PA to compete in Marylinn Huret’s AAUW crossword tournament.  I went last year and it was pleasantly different than ACPT (not that I don’t like ACPT too).  Only about 30 people last year, and instead of being 266th, I was fourth or fifth, which is a nice ego boost!

Saturday, March 29 – 22:35

I feel very good about this time.  I had a couple of incorrect letters that I was able to find and correct, and it was a good hard Saturday.  The puzzle had a whole bunch of clues where I didn’t know the sense they were asking until I had a few letters, but which then fell into place – very nicely clued.

“Children’s Bargain Town, today” for TOYSRUS was excellent.  I’m sure Rex will have a good picture.  “Point and click, e.g.” for VERBS was another really nice one.  For “Son and successor of Seti I”, I was thinking in the sense of Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence for a long time – what, me geek?  Several reason why that was a stupid assumption, but I don’t think it slowed me down – until I had enough letters to to realize that error, I didn’t have enough letters to figure out the answer anyway.  “Indy sights since 1911″ was another great clue.  I had no idea what that might be, but once I had a few letters, I was able to deduce it must be PACECARS.

Friday, March 28 – 18:10

I got two letters wrong on this one. I had no idea what “Bander ___ Begawan, capital of Brunei” was, and for “Best substitute on the court”, I had “SI_THMAN”, and I just didn’t see the X! For “Strike marks”, which crossed those two I put “NOS”, thinking of the signs strikers carry. “NOS” was the last thing I filled in, making “SINTHMAN” and “SORI”, both wrong of course, and I knew they couldn’t be right. How frustrating.

Clues I liked include “What seeds may be found in” (TOURNEY), “Time to burn?” (SUMMER), “Person lifting” (SWIPER), “Where to order a cheesesteak “wit” or “witout”" (SOUTHPHILLY) (I live near Philly), “Not loco” (SANO).

Clues I had no idea about include “___ Highway, old auto route from New York City to San Francisco” (LEE), “Reading rhythm” (METRE), “Capital of Upper Austria” (LINZ), MARINO (Miami Dolphins clue), “Silas Marner girl” (EPPIE), and the aformentioned SORI.

So what have I learned today? I should bone up on capitals, since I didn’t know two of them today.

Thursday, March 27 – B:AH!

I managed to do 2/3 of today’s puzzle without noticing I didn’t start the timer.  Once I did, I finished the rest in 3:46, but that’s pretty meaningless.  I thought I was doing pretty well though, except I got tripped up for a little while because I put ONETOONES instead of ONEONEONES for “Private chats”, and BEATIT for “Leave in a hurry, slangily”, crossing the T in ONETOONES.  ONETOONES was also crossed by a song from “A Star is Born” and a sports figure, not my strong areas.  So that all combined to make it hard to realize my mistake.

Other than that, I didn’t figure out “CRANE”, the key to the three long theme answers, until late in the game.   But once I did, I got the themes pretty quick.

Wednesday, March 26 – 7:47

Nothing particularly tricky in this one.  I liked “Rubber hub” and “Docent’s offering” as clues.