Blog du Wren

Crossword Tournament 2023

This year represents my 8th appearance at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, again held in Stamford, CT. The trip has become rather routine, with lodging arrangements, eating plans, travel transfers, etc. all feeling comfortable and smooth. As you may have guessed, I find comfort in familiarity so this routineness is welcome. And, as part of the routine, I offer this recap blog post.

First, about the tournament: it was the largest to date with over 1000 crossword people packing the poor Stamford Marriott. It was easy to feel the largeness of it all in crowded tables and lobbies, but it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It meant more enthusiasm, more people to meet, and more people to compete with! Of the 771 official competitors, over 200 were there for the first time! As you might expect, there was a rather well delivered April Fool's Day prank at the beginning of Day 1 which set the mood for a fun tournament. But overall, it was...well...routine. I got what I was expecting and that was a good thing.

Secondly, I must log my performance. I did, well, well!! In the end, I placed out of 771 putting me in the 69th percentile which is my best showing to date. I had 6 clean puzzles (no errors) and was pleased with my solving time in each. As per usual, gave me some difficulty. But that's okay as it affords me something to improve on for next year (though, in all honesty, after time ran out on Puzzle 5 and I still had so much empty grid and no understanding of the theme, I wasn't as upbeat. But time offered a little perspective...)

Another occurrence of note was a somewhat amusing overlap of my worlds. At the hotel's continental breakfast Sunday morning, they had the local news on (we're talking really local—out of Norwalk, CT) and I saw they had a piece about the tournament. As is my wont, I kept my eyes peeled for myself in the background of the footage. Sure enough, I was! I've yet to decide whether that will go on my TV/Film Resume, but I imagine it will...you know, for posterity.

And that is that. I'm glad I went to the tournament and I had a good time. It's kind of hard not to have a good time while doing well-constructed puzzles among fellow enthusiasts. I'm hoping to put together a more analytical and statistical write-up of the event, but we'll see. I'm often hoping to do a lot of things...

Sunday April 2 2023

File under: crossword

Toggle Comments (4)

comment?

on Tue 04th Apr, 2023 04:36 pm CDT Sarah said:
How fun! Nice work on your performance and great job making an appearance on the news! I'm curious...what was the April Fool's Prank?
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on Tue 04th Apr, 2023 11:30 pm CDT Mom said:
Your hat was the giveaway on the group shot!
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on Wed 05th Apr, 2023 01:37 pm CDT Andrew said:
Is there a WORDLE tournament I can attend?
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on Fri 07th Apr, 2023 06:00 pm CDT Horge said:
Well done! Reminds me I just read the other day about some school Kanye apparently had opened and failed at, so it's now closed. Among the many random weird things about it (e.g. maybe he hates stairs?), it seems that for some reason he banned crosswords. So, I'd take that as a compliment to enjoy so much something that anti-semitic oddball dislikes :-)
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