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It’s no surprise to me, having seen no fewer than two wild ukelele solos at the talent show during the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

Subscription is $10 per year, or $70 if you want the right to provide an entry for 1-Across in a future puzzle. Very much worth the money. Please subscribe — we want Peter to be subsidized to keep this effort up!

Fresno’s Fulton Mall pedestrianization project (which was originally planned to cover roughly a 20-square-block area) was the largest of its kind I’m aware of in any American city, and was hailed (in part by Gruen) as a transformative model. We all know what happened to those pedestrian malls, which were all the rage for about 10 years; their regravitation of their city centers was no match for the centrifugal force of suburbanization, and in any case (we know now) came too late. With very rare exceptions (like Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road and Santa Monica’s Third Street, both of which have been carefully curated and serve populations that include hundreds of thousands of strolling tourists), this kind of brutal pedestrianization has been a failure, at least on its own terms. (In contrast, more organic and porous pedestrianization and “auto diet” programs very often work well, like the new plazas along Broadway in Times and Herald Squares.) Only a force greater than urban renewal — namely, the organic reurbanization of America over the past fifteen or so years — has been able to start bringing the people back to places like these and reanimating them with some of the spirit they were originally intended to have.

This video is worth a watch if only to capture the sense of hopefulness in the narrator’s voice. There’s a wistfulness to the experience. Everyone was so sure this was going to solve everything! In Fresno, I can assure you (having stood on Fulton Mall myself roughly halfway through its current lifetime), it didn’t. Despite the blistering heat in the summer of 1986, I enjoyed my visit to Fresno, which had a sense of place and pride that was missing in the suburban neighborhood I grew up in; but it was in spite of, not because of, Fulton Mall. But oh, how I wanted to believe!

History and photos are on the excellent Downtown Association of Fresno Web site, which is also the source of the postcard photo you see above.

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What made it hard, I think, is that the way the clues and the theme combine to create the theme entries is a little different than in other puzzles. This threw me (along with a couple hundred of my friends), such that the theme took me a long time to start puzzling out, and I didn’t get it until it was too late. In fact, I realize now that I understood the theme logic a little incorrectly in competition — it’s only now as I re-solve that I have it right.

If anyone has a lock of Brendan Quigley’s hair, or a fingernail clipping, or anything I can use for some protective white magic in advance of next year’s tournament, please send it my way. I was originally in a somewhat less generous mood and thinking voodoo, but white magic is so much more in the spirit of the event. Besides, with crossword construction powers like his, he’s probably immune to black magic anyway. Along with my white magic, I plan to do every puzzle on Brendan’s Web site between now and next year’s tournament. Best to be prepared.

A Small-Sized Mystery
by Jane Hirshfield

Leave a door open long enough,
a cat will enter.
Leave food, it will stay.
Soon, on cold nights,
you’ll be saying “excuse me”
if you want to get out of your chair.
But one thing you’ll never hear from a cat
is “excuse me.”
Nor Einstein’s famous theorem.
Nor “The quality of mercy is not strained.”
In the dictionary of Cat, mercy is missing.
In this world where much is missing,
a cat fills only a cat-sized hole.
Yet your whole body turns toward it
again and again because it is there.

Reprinted without permission from The New Republic, February 18, 2010.

Jane Hirshfield on Wikipedia | Jane Hirshfield at the Poetry Foundation Web site

On the whole: solid and fair and emotionally rewarding puzzles, no real complaints about clueing, nothing out of the ordinary. An honorable set of puzzles, as is to be expected at the preeminent crossword event in the world.

Puzzle 1. “Flip-Flops,” by Stan Newman, editor of the Newsday crossword. 15 minutes, 78 words, 15 x 15. A solid warmup puzzle; lightly themed, as usual. Speed is necessary in Puzzle 1, and unfortunately (per gossip I heard, and my own experience) it was slow-and-steady going, which I think put a lot of us behind from the start. In NYT terms, a hard Wednesday or easy Thursday.

Puzzle 2. “Can We Tawk?” by Elizabeth Gorski, veteran constructor of over 1,500 crosswords. 25 minutes, 94 words, 17 x 17. Harder; more challenging theme, saucier clueing. One particular letter was misentered by many, many people, including some high rankers. A hard Thursday or easy Friday.

Puzzle 3. “The Sports Bar,” by Patrick Berry, one of the most creative and intricate constructors working today. 30 minutes, 118 words, 19 x 19. Trickier clueing; waggish theme; a few obscure entries.

Puzzle 4. “Without Fail,” by Mike Nothnagel, a beloved and thoughtful solo and team constructor. 20 minutes, 78 words, 15 x 15. Theme was subtle — in fact, I didn’t figure it out until after I finished.

Puzzle 5. “You’re Solving… With What?” by Brendan Emmett Quigley, one of the most active professional constructors working today. 25 minutes, 94 words, 17 x 17. Absolutely devilish. Not only did I not solve clean in 25 minutes, I left a zillion squares blank. I’ll have more to say about this later. (Not at all suggesting it wasn’t a fair puzzle — in fact, to stump so many of us, it was obviously a great one.)

Puzzle 6. “Misfilings,” by Maura Jacobson, constructor of the New York Magazine crossword and the only constructor to have had a puzzle in every ACPT for 33 years running. 30 minutes, 122 words, 19 x 19. Witty theme, light solve, just like the NY Mag puzzles themselves — but don’t be lulled into a false sense of security; you need to keep your time up if you want to keep your score up.

Puzzle 7. “Heads of State,” by Merl Reagle, punster extraordinaire. 45 minutes, 144 words, 21 x 21. Not as wicked as some of his previous contest puzzles (as I recall, he had a Puzzle 5 a few years back), but still a challenge. Many, many puns in the clues; keep your eyes open. As always, a couple of laugh-out-loud theme entries. Note: Buy Merl’s books; his style cannot be imitated and the puzzles are fantastic.

Puzzle 8. “Talent Show,” the championship puzzle, by Mike Shenk, crossword editor of the Wall Street Journal. Clues supplied in A (wicked), B (very difficult), and C (difficult) versions. 15 minutes, 70 words, 15 x 15. A rough, rough themeless puzzle, as the championship puzzles always are. As someone who was not in the final round, I solved this one for fun while the poor schnooks on stage (in Division C) solved it on the white board. They all finished before I did. I solved the B clues, which were very tricky; I don’t think I would have finished in the time allotted if I had been solving in competition. The person sitting next to me solved from the A clues and just plain could not complete it without help. So there you go.

• There’s a big digital minutes-and-seconds countdown clock in the corner of the room. Every puzzle has a time limit (e.g., 20 minutes). Everyone starts at the same time, and the clock starts counting down. When you finish, you put up your hand and a roving official picks up your paper and notes how many full minutes you have left on the clock (e.g., 11 minutes if the clock says “11:15″). The officials are usually quite fast and are aware of the time you put up your hand, and there are only very rare disagreements.
• Because early-completion bonuses are awarded based on full minutes left, handing in your paper at 11:55 and at 11:04 counts the same for your score, so we’re trained to use the full fractional minute we have left to check our work before putting up our hands. For some of us, taking an extra minute to try to find errors may be beneficial, if we finish near the minute boundary and/or it was a tough solve.
• The scoring (which is explained here) counterbalances the need for accuracy against the need for speed. On the whole, according to how the scoring system is calibrated, accuracy is worth a lot of time: one is better served to take up to seven minutes longer to produce a clean solve, rather than a puzzle with as few as two wrong letters handed in earlier. At the high end of the scale, even more arcane rules come into play; for example, in the on-stage finals, extra time (in the form of an early start, by a margin of a few seconds) may be awarded to one or another of the finalists based on nearly microscopic differentials in their scores.
• Whiteboard solving is hard. I’ve never done it, but I’ve seen a friend do it, and (to put it bluntly) he choked — I concurrently solved the same puzzle on paper faster than he could do it on the whiteboard, even though he’s a much better solver than I am. In the Division A finals, it probably doesn’t help that you have to wear headphones (pumping in God knows what) to prevent you from hearing the amplified play-by-play by Neal Conan and Merl Reagle that’s being broadcast to the audience sitting behind you.

The luminaries of the crossword puzzle world who made it onto the leaderboard yet again — including Howard Barkin, Tyler Hinman, Trip Payne, Kiran Kedlaya, Stella Zawistowski, Francis Heaney, Al Sanders, and Ellen Ripstein — all deserve our respect. As easy as the competition seems for them (unfortunately, I always sit near Trip, who seems to put up his hand at just about the time I break into the puzzle), they work as hard as any of us to perfect their craft, and many of them additionally construct, edit, or otherwise work in the world of puzzles. They’re an example for all of us, and certainly for me, inspiring me to work harder, solve faster, and practice more.

I’ll have more to say later, along with photos and additional links, but here are some initial thoughts about this year’s event.

Thanks to Will Shortz, Helene Hovanec, and this year’s officials, constructors, and staff for a terrific event — good mojo, a fair competition, and plenty of fun and frolic around the edges. And thanks to the staff of the Marriott Brooklyn Bridge. This is the third year in Brooklyn (after decades in Stamford), and after a couple of rough years, the hotel has adjusted to us (and we’ve adjusted to it): service in the restaurant and bar has improved; we’re used to the room; spillover social activity has moved out of the hotel lobby into nearby bars and nightspots. I think a lot of the frustration with the hotel (and there still is some) is a matter of simple resistance to change; objectively, the hotel is fine and the staff seem to be doing their part to make it work well for us.

The social events were a hit. Sure, they were schmaltzy, but that’s kind of the point — getting the community together to celebrate with one another in our quirky way. All things considered, I think we all enjoyed the talent show and hope it’s done again next year, and ditto for the Friday games despite their unevenness.

This year’s puzzle #5 was a killer; or, at the level I’m solving at, it’s a time game — take your pick. I had six clean solves in what I thought was fairly good time (bombing on puzzle #5, about which you’ve already heard, and I’ll have more to say) — but I still dropped more than 40 places. Comparing myself (at 232 this year) with the contestants in the 180s where I ranked last year, there’s a gap of less than 350 points. Either a clean solve of puzzle #5 (and not necessarily a fast one, either), or an average of 2 minutes’ advantage in each of the other 6 puzzles, would have ranked me up in the 180s again. And achieving both of those would have earned me the additional 300 points I needed to reach the target rank of 150 that I was shooting for going in. And wIthout a doubt, once you get above roughly 100 in the rankings, it’s all about solve time — at that point you can take for granted that virtually everyone has a clean solve of all seven puzzles.

Much of the fun in this whole enterprise revolves around meeting and schmoozing with the constructors. Puzzle constructing is a small, small world; something like 100 people alive have ever done it for a prominent outlet, and most of them were at the tournament. It’s surprising what a varied group it is, in terms of ages, personalities, and so forth. After a few years I’m used to most of them, but rarely do you meet a crossword constructor and think, “Why, that’s exactly what I would have expected him/her to look like; I’d have recognized him/her anywhere!” I’ll refrain from embarrassing myself by pointing out exactly which constructors I pegged totally wrong, based on no particular evidence, before I eventually met them at the tournament.

As a corollary to that: I should try constructing. Part of the fun of the puzzle world is making it all happen. The solver skillset and the constructor skillset aren’t exactly the same, but there’s a fair amount of overlap. Chatting at the bar on Saturday afternoon with an aspiring constructor (I forget your name, but if you’re reading this, say hi — you’ll recognize the code word “COLD FRAME”) about constructing got me excited about it again — and now that I have Parallels working I needn’t be afraid of Windows constructor software anymore.

Plenty more to come, including a list of crossword events, a puzzle-by-puzzle rundown (but no spoilers here!), some hallway gossip, and a lot of photos. Stay tuned.

For the record: my tournament buddy held steady in the 120s, for the 3rd year in a row, coming up 2 places — this despite having almost as much trouble on puzzle #5 as I did. This tends to confirm the “it’s a time game” theory of tournament play. Also for the record: you can see scans of my filled-in puzzle sheets here, but don’t click if you plan to do the puzzles yourself — you’ll see the answers!

Image credit: Don Christensen, source here

Surprisingly, this doesn’t seem so hard. Not to say I’ll actually do it — I don’t anticipate finding the time anytime soon — but I now realize that I could, if I wanted to, learn how to develop the equivalent of

10 PRINT “HELLO WORLD”
20 GOTO 10

or whatever, upload it to the iPhone App Store, and make my fortune!

Incidentally, the half a dozen programming languages I noted above include Perl and PHP — both of which I could probably manage to make a living at if I absolutely had to — so I shouldn’t sell myself so short. But I’ve never studied any variant of C, and even if I had, I’m still a long distance away from being able to bang out the next runaway-hit iPhone game in a weekend and quit my job. Nice dream, though…

1. Dan Feyer
2. Howard Barkin
3. Anne Erdmann
4. Tyler Hinman, 4-time-running champ
5. Kiran Kedlaya
6. Trip Payne, the most recent running champ before Tyler
7. Stella Zawistowski
8. Francis Heaney
9. Al Sanders
10. Ellen Ripstein

See what I mean? Anything could happen. It’s especially exciting to see the well-liked Anne Erdmann so high up. But note that these people are all very close together; what will determine the final leaderboard is finish order in puzzle #7. Exciting!!

On the upside, I think I had a clean solve of Merl Reagle’s puzzle #7 in fairly good time, so I should come up at least a few positions when they lock the rankings.

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After puzzle #4, I’d dropped from #189 last year back into the 200s; after puzzle #6 (propelled down into the sewer by the horrific puzzle #5) I’m down even further, in the 220s, roughly where I was 2 years ago.

This is a disaster, awful, horrible, perhaps portending the end of the world as we know it!

Seriously — given that only a few hundred points are separating me from the 120s (squarely in B Division territory), there’s really nothing for me to be ashamed of. A slightly better time on all the puzzles I finished correctly, or an incrementally better showing on puzzle #5, would have put me up in the 150s where I was shooting for. (And a good #7 in the morning will pull ne up a little bit.)

I’m also cheered that I had a clean solve of #3 and (apparently, based on the scores) a clean solve of #6. So it mostly comes down to a few minutes of finish time — plus that devilish Brendan Quigley!

Meanwhile, my tournament buddy is crowing. He rose from the 120s last year all the way into the 80s after puzzle #4, and even after a rough #5 and #6 he’s still squarely in the 120s where he always seems to end up. (He just did the math — if he’d had a perfect solve of #2 as I did, rather than one error, he’d be alllll the way up at 103.)

I’m trying not to think about the fact that I’ve dropped from the top quintile of Division C down into the lower half, or that I’ve been outsolved by a whole mess of D’s and an E or two. Ugh.

More handicapping later — our pizza is here.

No standings are up, so it’s really hard to know how I’m doing — if everyone else was hit as hard as I was by 5, my performance just might have been par for my level.

At the breaks, everyone was trying to handicap what the incrementally reduced attendance (due to the economy) would mean for the standings. This is especially important for people like me, who rank near a division boundary.

Last year, out of a field of 800 or so, I was in the top quintile or so of C division, in the 180s. In a field of the same size, all other things being equal, I’d only have to improve 25 places or so to cross into B division (and, in theory, if I had a great year I could conceivably have had a shot at the C championship round this year).

But with attendance down 10-15 percent, what does that mean for me? The sense of the group (and here I’m reproducing gossip from the smoking clique from the front steps, most of whom are high B’s and low A’s, which is passed to me by my high-B tournament buddy): the dropoff will mostly be in C and below, since A’s and B’s are the ones most likely to figure out a way to make it to the tournament no matter what. (If you’re an A, and you’ve been coming for 10 years; or if you’re a puzzle constructor; or if you’re Jim Jenista who starts working on his costumes for next year as soon as he gets home, dude, you’re coming.) This doesn’t bode well for me, since it just incrementally biases the field as a whole toward the top of the scale. (We’ll see…)

For those who are joining us late, I ranked 364th in the world in 2007, 257th in 2008, and 189th in 2009. My goal this year is to break 150. I’m afraid rising much closer to 100 will be very difficult, as at that point you start to enter the range of the brilliant misfits who dominate the world of puzzling, which (for all my many charms) I am afraid I am not one of. (Or am I?)

After an informal social puzzle competition on Friday night, the winnowing begins in earnest on Saturday, with 6 competitive, timed puzzles (in a hotel ballroom set up like the room you took the SATs in), scored according to an arcane formula (which every single participant could explain to you from memory) that balances speed against accuracy. One final qualifying puzzle follows on Sunday. By convention, puzzle 2 is difficult, puzzle 5 is absolute and obscene torture, and puzzle 6 is an entertaining schmaltzfest by New York magazine crossword constructor Maura Jacobson, who has had a puzzle in every competition since the very first. Interim rankings are posted two or three times during the day on Saturday, so that the obsessives in the competition (i.e., everybody) can micro-obsess about their micro-standings throughout the whole damn weekend.

The top three by rank in each of Divisions A and B will competitively solve an eighth championship puzzle on a whiteboard up on a stage on Sunday beginning around noon, with live play-by-play announcing by NPR’s Neal Conan and crossword constructor Merl Reagle. The championship puzzle has three different sets of clues, of different levels of difficulty, for the three divisions. In Division A, college prodigy Tyler Hinman, professional crossword puzzle contestant Trip Payne, bookish “Wordplay” star/fashion plate Ellen Ripstein, and eternal Catholic schoolboy/crossword constructor Francis Heaney are all favored. (Yes, there is such a thing as crossword tournament VIPs; see “briliant misfit,” above, which most of them would consider a compliment.) This event is not technically open to the public, but security is not tight by that point in the tournament — if you’re in New York, adventurous, and up early on Sunday, it’s quite an experience. (Just don’t expect to see me on the stage.)

Perhaps not surprisingly, crossword puzzle people are very heavy drinkers — I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow was the busiest night of the year in the hotel bar.

If you’d like to try your luck, puzzle #1 from last year’s tournament (PDF) is here. If you think you’re good enough to place in the top half of the Tournament pack, you should be able to complete this puzzle with no errors within about 10 minutes without breaking a sweat.

We stayed in the Liberty Hotel on Beacon Hill, which is built around and into the old Charles Street Jail, closed in 1991. They did a nice job in the conversion — historically and architecturally respectful, accessible, whimsical without being cheeseball. They named the bar “Clink.” How cool is that?

About Montreal, not much to say except that it still rocks, and it’s even more fun when it isn’t all slushy (as now) than it is when it is (as when we were there a year ago).

I don’t believe in “viral videos.” The “post ‘n’ pray” fantasy of putting a video on YouTube and having it magically spread to a zillion users ignores the importance of engagement and placement. I guarantee you that the million-views-a-day video has good content and at least one of three other elements: a channel with an existing audience, a strategic placement (paid or earned), and the appropriate level of engagement.

Hear, hear. Dear Interweb: more of this kind of sensibleness, please…

hat tip: Chris Royalty

Making things with the hands provides a different kind of pride than you get from making things with the brain (or from managing other people, from afar, who are making things with their hands). Handcrafting — even in the context of a factory assembly line — gives you an indisputable sense of accomplishment. You can argue about whether your novel is finished or whether your painting is good enough, but once your factory has produced a pallet of Johnson rods, they’re done, no question — and you did it. The analogy from my own professional life is direct mail (as compared to online fundraising and other channels that don’t produce anything tangible). Mail is physical, it has a look and a feel and a smell, and the responses pile up in a heap where they can be visually assessed and counted and held in the hand. I miss that sometimes.

I don’t want to handwave about the ease of “bringing manufacturing back,” or even about whether it’s feasible to an old-timey degree, in a globalized economy driven by the pursuit of tiny incremental efficiencies. But wherever it is feasible (due to some accident of geographic protectionism, or a tiny quality advantage that the market is willing to support, or just a bullheaded determination to buy local), it should be encouraged — because in leaving behind the old-fashioned ways of making physical things, we’ve left behind something psychological, too.

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