| PUZZLED IN STAMFORD By Susannah Sears CONT'D..... |
| "Puzzling keeps the mind young," he says. "Although it doesn't stop the hair from receding." Perhaps not, but Shortz, 49, appears no older than he does in photos from the first competition, organized when he was 25. A soft spoken man with a face made less boyish only by a moustache, he seems too young to be the undisputed king of crosswords. "It was always a dream of mine to have a crossword puzzle tournament," he says. "I lived in Stamford at the time, and was approached by... staff at the Marriott, who saw it as a good way to fill rooms in the mid-winter season." Though the hotel has been home to the tournament ever since, its future as the venue is uncertain as the event grows in popularity. This year the tournament attracts nearly as many first-timers as the total 149 competitors in its inaugural year. Back inside the ballroom, I have only slightly better luck with the second and third puzzles. Each involves a gimmick -- a common element in tournament level crosswords -- that further complicates solving. Puzzle Two uses roman numerals in contemporary phrases, like "MC Hammer" as the answer for "Early second millennium tool." Puzzle Three is even more difficult, employing phrases that fall short of being palindromes. For example, "Madam, I'm that naked guy," a play on the familiar palindrome "Madam, I'm Adam," is the answer to the clue at 89 Across, which reads only "Near miss palindrome # 6." While arriving at a solution like this may seem impossible, there is a trick on which expert solvers rely -- pattern recognition. "After a while, you start to look at even two letters in a string, and you already have in your head what you think the probable answer is," says Josh Weinstein, a 36-year-old advertising copywriter from Brooklyn, New York. "So all you're looking at the clue for is confirmation." Weinstein, a stylish man who sports three earrings, and looks like he'd be more at ease in a New York nightclub than at a crossword contest, is attending for the first time. "I've known about the tournament for a long time. I noticed over the last year that I was pretty quick, and thought I might be at least a little competitive here." |
| His suspicions prove correct. After three more puzzles, one of which includes animal-related puns like "Marmoset there'd be days like this," the scores are tallied and posted in the lobby Sunday morning. Weinstein is 89th among 401 contestants, an impressive ranking for a rookie. I find my name at number 391. Having met my goal, I switch to spectator mode for the seventh and last puzzle before the finals, and face the end of the 40-minute time limit with a quarter of my grid filled. Judges collect papers from the few stragglers, and hotel staff move in to set the scene for the finals. The media have grown in anticipation. A friendly man with a familiar face approaches, and offers to take my picture. After the flash, I realize he's Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes. An hour later, the ballroom is transformed, the rows of tables removed and all chairs facing forward. On the podium, three large easels supporting crossword grids on erasable white boards await the top three scorers in each of the A, B and C skill levels. The contestants don headsets to block the noise and pick up their markers, while puzzle constructor Merl Reagle and radio personality Neal Conan launch into a play-by-play worthy of Hockey Night in Canada. Janet Bradlow is under scrutiny in the B division. She finishes third in the round, and 25th overall. Having come a long way since her near last place position at the first tournament in 1978, she accepts the runner-up ranking with delight. "I never expected to be in the finals," she says. "I didn't think I was fast enough, but it was the accuracy that helped me -- no mistakes. I usually make at least one." As the B team bows and leaves the stage, crowd noise lowers to a murmur and photographers line up for the top three crossword contenders. In the race for first place, Delfin is joined by Vermont roboticist Zack Butler and Colorado project manager Al Sanders. All three get off to a good start but the contest turns anticlimactic as Delfin completes the crossword almost without pause. He takes a seat and watches his challengers work toward the second-place title, the only real drama of the finals. Sanders moves methodically, while Butler fills in nearly every entry. However, he's written "modest" instead of "merest" as the answer to "minimal." He raises his hands in frustration as he tries to understand why his other answers won't fit. Moments before the deadline, Butler spots his error, finishes the puzzle, and is awarded the loudest applause of the weekend. Media focus turns quickly back to Delfin, however, who's tied a tournament record of six wins. "The best advice I can give anybody about learning to do crosswords is to approach it as a language," he tells me. "Once you've learned the idioms of that language, which you do through repetition, you see that different editors have their own dialects." O'Keefe, who ends up in 124th place, is disappointed that he's failed to reach his top 100 target, but he's consoled somewhat by a prize for his second-place finish in the Foreign Division. "Grandma will be proud," he says. I'm shocked to find my position is unchanged after the half-hearted attempt at solving the seventh puzzle, and am further pleased to discover I'm ranked number eight out of nine in the Foreign Division, ahead of an author from London, England. On the way out of the hotel, I pick up a crossword book, and make plans to pay Shortz his favourite compliment -- I'll be coming back next year, to try to solve my way into the top 300. |
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| IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO FIND OUT HOW YOU CAN COMPETE, OR FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE AMERICAN CROSSWORD PUZZLE TOURNAMENT, JUST CLICK HERE! |
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