Word of the Day: step (in music) (31A: It's one step down from an F = E FLAT) —
In the language of music theory, a step is the distance between notes of different pitches. A half step, or semitone, is the smallest interval between notes in Western music. Notes that are directly next to each other—such as E and F, or A sharp and B—are a half step apart. Two half steps equal one whole step. The notes G and A are one whole step apart, as are the notes B flat and C. (masterclass.com)
• • •
Solid but a bit flat. Is the puzzle IRONICALLY flat if it opens with COCA-COLAS? (1A: Some pops). There just weren't enough pleasing marquee answers today. Again, it's all fine, but I don't think I ever smiled or said "nice!" while I was solving. Well, I take that back; I definitely smiled at least once, not because of something that was in the puzzle, but because of something that was not in the puzzle, something I wrote in the grid that was absurdly, ridiculously wrong. It may be the dumbest wrong answer of all time. I dare you to beat it for dumbness. I had the SEAS- at the beginning of 9D: Creature with over 200 tiny eyes along its shell and wrote in SEA SERPENT (a dumb answer, to be sure, but not the dumb answer I'm talking about); thankfully, it didn't take me long to realize that SEA SERPENTs, in addition to being maybe fictional (?!), is almost certainly shell-less. So I left that answer and came back to it. When I came back to it, I had the -ALLO- part, and after a split second of wanting SEA SWALLOW, whatever that is, I thought "oh, no, it's the seafood thing, the thing you never order at restaurants ... what's it called? ... oh yeah, shallot! It's SEA SHALLOT! (it was not, in fact, SEA SHALLOT, as a shallot is a kind of onion, as you likely know). In my defense, a shallot is roughly the size of a scallop (I'm just kidding, I have no defense, I plead insanity).
[fearsome ... so many eyes ...]
I also wrote in ALT RAP instead of ALT POP (43D: Music genre that's experimental yet radio-friendly), which is not that great a wrong answer, but in its defense, all wrong answers are going to pale before SEA SHALLOT. Between SEA SHALLOT and ALT RAP, that's 90% of the difficulty I experienced today, and I think we can all agree, that difficulty was entirely (and extremely anomalously) self-imposed. I didn't know SNAP had STORYs, I thought just CHATs, so I needed some crosses there (59A: Certain ephemeral social media post, informally), and I whiffed at my first pass at the GROUP / BUN area (the only GRO- word that came to mind for [Party] was GROOVE, and having had no hair on my head to speak of since 2010 when I shaved it all off, I am not up on the latest BUN technology. I've got MAN BUN and then ... nothing. "Messy," you say? Cool).
Who is making pipes out of COBS? (1D: Makings of some homemade pipes). This feels folksy/mythical. "Some homemade pipes"? Besides Frosty the Snowman, who is smoking these? COBS could have been more ... relatably clued. Corn cores! Male swans! "A crudely struck old Spanish coin of irregular shape"! "A stocky short-legged riding horse"! OK, don't use those last two, they're pretty obscure, I only looked them up just now, but ... something non-pipe-ish! The plural brands kind of soured me on this one early. COCA-COLAS was tolerable, but when you chase it almost immediately with GI JOES, now we've entered a realm of plural unpleasantness—pluralizing brand names that are not normally pluralized. And while you might say GI JOES, you'd never say COCA-COLAS, you'd say COKES (if you pluralized it at all). A whole lot of other plurals follow, OCEANS and SLAM POETS and PAEANS and TUTUS and RESALES and SEXAHOLICS ... speaking of, who uses that term? It feels like what sex addiction might've been called in the '70s/'80s. back when we were -aholic'ing everything. Remember "chocoholic?" I think that answer is supposed to be fun and fresh, but it felt odd and dated to me. Some of the mid-range stuff was fun today: "I'LL WAIT..." and DARKEST and DEAD LAST, those all hold up. But overall there's just not enough SPARK in this one, for me, for a Friday.
Bullets:
2D: Fitting name for a girl born in October (OPAL) — October's birthstone
15A: Richard Nixon or Mao Zedong, in a 1987 premiere (OPERA ROLE) — look at me, remembering that Nixon in China was an opera. I did not remember that it was by John Adams, but I remembered it, somehow.
20A: Like Iceland's weather most of the year (WINDY) — tried to cram WINTRY in here.
31A: It's one step down from an F (E FLAT) — I ignorantly took "step" to mean "a single key away on the keyboard" and so couldn't figure out how I would be on a black key. One piano key down from F is E. But one "step" (as defined, above) is two keys, taking me (you, us) to E FLAT.
57A: Simple question written with two question marks ("¿COMO ESTAS?") — so "simple" that even I, a non-Spanish speaker, got it pretty easily. The "two question marks" is a dead giveaway for Spanish, and "¿COMO ESTAS?" is the first question that pops to mind when I think of Spanish questions (which is not often, but ... here we are!)
4D: One into modeling at school (ART MAJOR) — not sure I get this. Obviously the people who pose for art class, those models, are not (necessarily) ART MAJORs. Is this a reference to ... sculpting? Or are ART MAJORs "into" modeling because they ... paint (or sculpt) ... from models? Seems like a misdirection attempt gone slightly awry here.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to sea to hunt the Great Onion Leviathan, the SEA SHALLOT, on my onioning ship, The Leekquod).
THEME: diminutive suffixes — clues are normal-seeming words, but they have to be interpreted as "word" + [diminutive suffix] ... so the answers are all small versions of things (things that seem completely unrelated to the original word):
Theme answers:
GENTLE NUDGE (18A: Shoveling?) ("shove-ling" or little shove)
VENDING MACHINE (24A: Martini?) ("mart-ini" or little mart)
PINKY RING (35A: Bandito?) ("Band-ito" or little band)
FINGER SANDWICH (49A: Sublet?) ("Sub-let" or little sub)
GRAIN OF SAND (57A: Rockette?) ("Rock-ette" or little rock)
Word of the Day: ALDI (27D: International grocery chain founded in Germany) —
Aldi (stylised as ALDI) (German pronunciation: [ˈaldiː]ⓘ) is the common company brand name of two Germanmultinational family-owned discount supermarketchains operating over 12,000 stores in 18 countries. The chain was founded by brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht in 1946, when they took over their mother's store in Essen. The business was split into two separate groups in 1960 that later became Aldi Nord (initially Northern West Germany), headquartered in Essen, and Aldi Süd (initially Southern West Germany), headquartered in neighbouring Mülheim. [...] Aldi's German operations consist of Aldi Nord's 35 individual regional companies with about 2,200 stores in western, northern, and eastern Germany, and Aldi Süd's 32 regional companies with 2,000 stores in western and southern Germany. Internationally, Aldi Nord operates in Belgium, Netherlands, France, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal and Spain, while Aldi Süd operates in Australia, Austria, China, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Slovenia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In Austria and Slovenia, Aldi operates stores under the Hofer brand. Aldi Nord also owns the Trader Joe's grocery chain in the United States, which operates separately from the group. (wikipedia)
• • •
This is very clever, in retrospect, but it wasn't so much fun while solving, as I never had any idea what the theme was supposed to be, which meant that five long answers went into the grid as if they were unclued. Obviously they had clues, I just didn't understand how I was supposed to interpret them. Having every single themer be essentially unclued made the puzzle way more challenging than normal. I just had to infer ... something ... some plausible phrase ... to fill in those five answers. This was sometimes not that hard (not that much that can follow VEND- in a plausible phrase), and sometimes really hard (completely died somewhere in the middle of what ended up being PINKY RING and had to reboot in the SW). At one point I stopped my solving progression and just went hunting for a revealer ... of which there was none, which gave me a mild panic feeling ("you're not going to be able to explain the theme! what good are you?!"). So I was very conscious of the fact that even if I finished (which I assumed I would), I wouldn't be able to decode the themers. It took ... I don't know, probably a minute or so, to see the diminutive suffix gag, but it felt like an eternity. I could see that "Mart" and VENDING had something to do with each other, and that a NUDGE was a kind of "Shove," and that eventually tipped the whole theme. Out of their normal diminutive context, those suffixes just don't read as diminutive, which ... obviously is the point of the theme. The only suffix that really reads as diminutive to me is "-ette" and maybe "-ito." No way on "-ling" and "-let," and as for "-ini," that's always going to mean pasta to me. Tricky tricky. I wish the trick had been visible to me while I was solving—that's always more fun than discovering it after. But even though I didn't love the solving experience, I have to give credit to this once, conceptually. Very tricky, but very slick.
I'm not sure I'd ever call a VENDING MACHINE a "mart," under any circumstances, so that one felt tenuous, for sure, but otherwise the themers all work pretty well, though man, getting from "band" to PINKY RING, oof—unlike "mart," "band" has a ton of different meanings. Even if I had understood the diminutive suffix gimmick during the solve, I'm not sure it would've helped there. Is the band a gang? Does it play music? No, it's a ring, like a wedding band, only not a wedding band, unless you wear your wedding band on your pinky, which, who am I to judge, do your thing. As for the fill, I have no real complaints, though bringing back both ORE (as clued) (14A: Hundredths of a Swedish krona) and TYR (33D: Norse god of war) on the same day made it feel a bit like Crosswordese Homecoming. TYR should only be allowed to appear on Tuesdays (his namesake day), and even then only twice a year, max). And then there was also JA RULE, holy cow (4A: Rapper with back-to-back triple-platinum albums in 2000 and 2001). I lived through the JA RULE era and even I had trouble parsing that one. He was turn-of-the-century huge and then I don't know what happened. Haven't heard his name outside crosswords in at least a decade.
Did not like NSFW the clue at all. "R" is an official rating of the MMPA, whereas NSFW is just a string of letters you might attach to an email warning the receiver that the content is Not Suitable/Safe For Work. The non-suitability might be due to all kinds of things, not necessarily the kinds of things that would get a movie an "R" rating. Sometimes it might be "PG," and sometimes it might be "X." The two things are not-equivalent in too many ways for this clue to work. It sends the solver (me) looking for an actual rating, not some letter string that is only ever applied at the individual writer/sender's discretion. Boo.
["It took me four days to hitchhike from 12-Down"]
Bullets:
43A: Button often pressed moments before noticing a typo (SEND) — again, the context was just lost on me. I don't think of "SEND" as a "button" that I "press." Keyboards have buttons. Well, keys. "It's often clicked" or "... hit," that language might have gotten me to the email / texting context. But "buttons" to me are ESC and TAB and CTRL.
1D: ___ Hennessy Louis Vuitton, French luxury goods holding company (MOËT) — what a Frankenstein's monster of a company. I saw the "Vuitton" and thought fashion, but later, after I got a cross or two, I noticed the Hennessy, and thought "beverage" ... and then thought MOËT (the champagne makers).
8D: Diminutive, diminutively (LIL) — this is the puzzle winking at you
45D: Titular solver of many a medical mystery in 2000s TV (DR. HOUSE) — why someone mentioned DR. HOUSE to me this past weekend at the ACPT, I don't know, but I do know he was still kicking around my brain somewhere when I read this clue, for which I was grateful. I don't think I ever watched more than one or two episodes of House (a woman had rabies in one, iirc ... it featured the actress who played Jack Bauer's wife in "24" ... it is weird that I can remember these hyperspecific things about a single episode of TV that I saw once, twenty years ago). Very popular, not my thing.
26D: Tabloid talk show host Povich (MAURY) — I think he films in Stamford?? There's def. a TV studio there with his giant mug plastered on it. Looks like it was filmed there until the show ended a few years ago. His face is still there, though, I promise.
32D: Moves in a left-left-right-right pattern (SKIPS) — absolutely brutal clue. I was looking for maybe a dance? And then I was physically kinda trying to act out what the hell such a movement could be. Needed almost every cross to get SKIPS—an activity in which the lefts and rights do not get the SAME aMOUNT of EMphaSIS, which makes the clue, yeah, confusing as hell.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. after two days of ACPT write-ups (Tuesday, Wednesday), I can't believe I forgot to mention one of the most important things that happened to me, which is: I met Malaika Handa and Rafael Musa (both of whom write for me on a regular basis) for the first time, At (practically) The Same Time! The tournament is a good way to remind yourself (myself) that people are real! 3 dimensional! And (more often than not) delightful. Again, go to a tournament some time. You won't regret it. No one regrets it. Who knows? You might even win ... a trophy! Like this (last time, I promise!!!)
MIXED RESULTS, true. Two out of five of these feel like actual review phrases with precisely written clues. I have smiley faces written on my puzzle print-out next to HIT OR MISS and IT'S JUST OK. MIXED RESULTS doesn't quite hit as a review phrase and stands out for being a noun phrase where the rest ... aren't. PASSABLE is definitely a review phrase, but the clue on that one is botched all to heck. Just because a class is PASSABLE doesn't mean it's "no-stress." A "D" is passing, and no one wants a "D." If you were taking the class Pass/Fail (which is what I wanted to write in here, despite the fact that it's not a plausible review phrase), then ... even then, it's just PASSABLE. All classes are PASSABLE. The only class that's "no-stress" is an EASY A. So the clue clunked there. And GOOD NOT GREAT is something you might say in a review, but something about giving the crucifixion a meh rating feels ... off, even to me (not exactly a committed Christian). I like IT'S JUST OK because the wordplay is kind of funny and though I've never been to Tulsa (that I can recall), that review feels accurate (feel free to insult the place where I live—Binghamton, NY—I won't mind; you won't be the first). I should ding IT'S JUST OK for fudging things by adding the "IT'S" part (for symmetry purposes) (the "IT'S" is merely implied in three of the other themers—god knows what's implied as the lead-in to MIXED RESULTS). I think of three stars as a good review. I mean, if it's GOOD NOT GREAT ... that's not the same as "JUST OK" or "PASSABLE." Still, I like the attempt to make them all middling reviews; it gives the theme some needed coherence. But I swear I'm not doing a bit when I say that the execution of this theme was so-so.
The long Downs today are winners. Strong, solid, in-the-language, no weaknesses. Some of the mid-length stuff is nice as well. Not that fond of plural EARFULS (earsful?) but I liked seeing CALYPSO (esp. as clued) (37D: Odysseus' captor), and there's some good action in there as well (DWINDLE, NOURISH, WIGGLE). Unfortunately, the shorter fill is a bit on the dismal side again today. ILIUM ILOSE AGRA ATTN SRA LSAT ISTO ... the entire NE corner (well, HTTP OHSO REPO), more UMA, more NIA, more REA ... the oddly formal "SEE YOU" (if you are shortening "I'll see you later" to two words, the phrase is "SEE YA"). The only thing that made me really wince (and kind of wretch) was OLEATO (66A: Starbucks drink made with olive oil). Where's my "Not All Debuts Are Good" sign ... I know it's around here somewhere ... anyway, imagine that I'm tapping it. I love coffee (like, Love coffee), and I've been in and around many a Starbucks over the past 30+ years or however long they've been around, and I kid you not when I tell you this is the first time I've ever heard of an OLEATO. Am I just not looking at the menu close enough? Is it regional? Here's the thing: I don't actually care, as I don't go to Starbucks unless I'm traveling and desperate, and even if I did I wouldn't put olive oil in my damned coffee. Does the olive oil cover up the fact that Starbucks coffee is just PASSABLE (at best)? Please, constructors, don't get it in your head that some niche proper noun that's really just a concatenation of vowels with a consonant or two thrown in counts as "good" fill. It looks desperate and is decidedly not good. We already have to know all the damn Starbucks sizes (VENTI, GRANDE ... the absurd TALL...) OLEATO is an oily bridge too far. Though now I know it, so ... at least I won't be caught off guard next time, I guess. (Apparently this drink was intro'd in 2023 and is "a revolutionary new coffee ritual" ... pass)
Bullets:
24A: Sell/buy-back agreement, for short (REPO) — I thought REPO was when they take back (i.e. REPOssess) the car (or whatever) because you couldn't make payments. I don't really know what this particular REPO is getting at. Maybe it's the same thing? [it’s a finance term: “repurchase agreement”— 🤷🏻]
4A: Sorghum relative (MILLET) — I know sorghum is a crop of some kind ... that is all I know about sorghum. MILLET is a grain ... popular with the gluten-free folks, I think. According to wikipedia, sorghum is also known as "Great MILLET." The MILLET taxonomy is extensive and confusing. Too deep in the cereal grass weeds for me.
67A: M&M color replaced in 1995 (TAN) — I miss TAN. Bring back TAN.
37A: Sea ___ (COW) — hardest of the three-letters, for me. Even with the -OW I was like "See ... HOW?" As in, "you can see how this clue might be confusing." A Sea COW is another name for a manatee.
22D: Sage-colored sage (YODA) — I guess that is his color. My brain had trouble processing this clue. Differentiating "sage" meanings at speed ... apparently it's too early for that.
A little bit more about this past weekend's ACPT, as I didn't really talk about the puzzle side of it all (you go for the people, but yes, there are puzzles!). I can't / won't talk about individual puzzles in any detail, as some people will have ordered the puzzle pack and won't have solved them all yet, but I can say that the solving takes place over two days, most of it on Saturday, when you solve six puzzles in two three-puzzle chunks (Puzzles 1, 2, 3, then lunch, then 4, 5, 6). Puzzle 7 is on Sunday morning, and it is (appropriately) Sunday-sized (the others range from the standard 15-wide to 19-wide, typically, I think). Most solvers are in the main ballroom, a cavernous place. If you've seen the movie Wordplay, you have seen the ballroom. Because there were so many solvers this year (a record number, I think: over 1000 total), solvers had to be put into overflow rooms downstairs. That's where all the pairs were located too, so that's where my wife and I were. These rooms hold maybe 50 people each (I'm guessing). We had a video link to the main ballroom so we could hear Shortz making announcements and introducing the puzzles. Once you start solving, there's a big official timer on the screen up front so you know how long you have left.
[Angela Olson, Christina Iverson, Katie Hale, unintentionally color-coordinated]
Solving as a pair is an odd experience, as there is some talking involved (you gotta communicate with your partner!). You'd think it would be a distraction, but I honestly didn't notice anyone else's talking. Everyone was very good about whispering. I was probably the talkiest one, as I found myself kind of whispering my way through the whole thing in a way I'd never have done, or been tempted to do, solving solo. The trickiest bit is getting the actual letters into the grid. Every pair got two puzzles, one for each team member, and some teams worked separately and then combined their work at some point, but this seemed like the sloooow option, so we both worked on the same grid directly—she worked from the NW down, I worked from the SE up, and eventually we met up in a chaotic flurry of lead. You have to trust your partner a lot (we never checked each other's work) and you have to make sure you're not blocking your partner's view of the clues any more than you absolutely have to. No one really tells you how to do this; you just learn as you go. I think we'll actually be better next time. Less awkward, anyway.
[The "A" Finals: Will Nediger, Paolo Pasco, Dan Feyer—spoilers for the final puzzle!]
You get a bonus for every minute you finish early, so the minute marks are all that matter. If you finish and look up and the clock reads 9:50, then you absolutely take all those 50 seconds to check over your grid, make sure there are no blank squares (leaving blanks is the worst feeling! I know from experience!) and that everything written in the grid looks like a real thing. You might also have flagged iffy / awkward areas for review at the end. If you finish and look up and the clock reads, say, 9:07, that is somewhat more stressful because you have to decide "do I eat the extra minute to check my grid thoroughly or do I just give it a quick scan for blanks and turn it in before 9:00!?" My advice for most people is "Eat The Minute!" but if you're gunning for a top finish, you might throw caution to the wind. I've seen too many crushed solvers to recommend throwing caution anywhere, but it's easy to get caught up in the moment and do rash things.
[a blurry selfie with the great Wyna Liu]
If you finish early, you can leave the room. Most people go out and process their post-solve feelings with other solvers. Or go to the bathroom, whatever. Without giving away puzzle specifics, I will say that the puzzles were particularly well made this year. I had a few moments of "ugh, what?" but only a very few. The caliber of puzzle was generally a notch higher than the average NYTXW, I'd say—but then all the constructors were top-tier (here's the list), and the puzzles were probably tested within an inch of their lives. If I seem a little disappointed in the puzzles this week, it's probably (in part) because they're suffering by comparison. To sum up: it was great fun and we won! Should I post the picture again? No? Sorry, can't resist.
I forgot to thank Mike Nothnagel for making me a Manhattan (he brought his own booze!) and bringing it to me in the lobby on both Friday and Saturday night during the tourney weekend. That's a good friend right there. Thanks, Mike.
The theme works just fine. All the chips are different (chocolate, poker, etc.), and the revealer takes "chips" in a different direction still (since it's a verb and not a noun), so the core of this puzzle is very solid. "Good bones," I think, is the expression. But the non-bones? That was rougher. Much, much rougher. The whole grid felt thick with the kind of fill that was pretty standard 30+ years ago but now feels like sludge. Most of it was easy for me to get through, since I started solving 30+ years ago, but oof, if you are under 50, I don't know how you know T. Boone Pickens. I barely know him. The only reason I know him is because of crosswords. Pretty sure he was my Word of the Day, way back when. The very term "OILMAN" feels like it's from the time when Dallas was on the air (and earlier). But if that were the only throwback, I wouldn't care. It's all the other stuff, the ordinary but regrettable stuff that you're supposed to minimize, not strew far and wide a la Johnny Appleseed (whoever that is). From EST ROO right up top to "USE ME" (?) down below, wow, it's a lot. And the quaintness—it burns! EKE! ERE! EENSY!? (at least it's not TEENTSY, I guess, but that's cold comfort). And then the quaintest of them all: TROTH. Argh, TROTH. TROTH was somehow worse than TROTH needed to be in that it was clued in a way that even I, an erstwhile medievalist who knows very well what the phrase "to plight one's TROTH" means, could not make sense of it. You can see the definition, above (Word of the Day). I know the term as "one's pledged faithfulness," or "one's word." It's only at the bottom of the definition that you get "see also: BETROTHAL" ... which obviously has "TROTH" right in it, but that didn't help. It didn't help because the word "Engagement" is deeply ambiguous. I was thinking "appointment," and then "interaction" (as in when you engage with other people, or reading material, or an app, or whatever). Was *not* thinking wedding. So it's got the quaintness (which we're already drowning in) plus the "bottom of the definition" aspect, plus the ambiguous clue word—you're not supposed to call attention to your regrettable fill this way.
OPINES over SENT (as clued) over ERE over DAS—the whole grid was full of this dreariness. ININK, sigh. MII, pfft. TSK! So many TSKs! (well, just the one, but I am TSKing quite a bit, just sitting here at my non-DESKTOP COMPUTER). Bette Midler is very talented and famous, but MISS M will always be olden fill of the not-great variety (also, like T. Boone, not a name that most younger solvers are going to have seen a ton). They even brought the formerly ever-present ELIE back for this one. There seemed to be one sop thrown to the present moment—ERIKA Sánchez (15A: Sánchez who wrote "I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter"). I would not call ERIKA a good answer per se, but at least that clue is trying to be current (not that I knew who ERIKA Sánchez was—she'll probably be the least generally-known answer in the grid, but she's gettable from crosses and she brings at least a touch of younger energy to the puzzle (b. 1984)). That's right, the 40-year-old is bringing the young energy today. I'm looking at you, too, Taylor Swift! (1A: Taylor Swift's ___ Tour, record-breaking series of 2023-24 concerts) (actually Taylor's only in her mid-30s, but you see what I mean).
This puzzle went from "Easy" to "Medium" due to one smallish section of the grid: the part where the bottom half of KINESTHESIA (!?!?!) meets ... whatever it meets (24D: Awareness of body position, scientifically). TROTH, for instance. Yes, where KINESTHESIA meets TROTH is pretty much the epicenter of all my "struggles" today. The only "Kines-" words I know are KINESTHETIC and then the word I actually had here for a time: KINESIOLOGY. That's the college major that I had to look up when I was a college student because I had no idea what it could be about. To be clear, my college did not offer this major, I think I just saw that college athletes had this major (they used to announce their majors—they don't still do this, do they?). So I knew it was the study of bodies in motion, something like that. This is why the KINES- was easyish but the rest, hoo boy no. KINESIOLOGY made me retract ONE CUP, and then the whole corner seized up. Mistakenly thought "KHAN" was the non-Star Trek, Wrath of spelling, so wrote it in KAHN. Could not get a handle on RACKET as clued (44D: Hullabaloo). All this on top of not getting the DESKTOP part of DESKTOP COMPUTER right away. Rest of the puzzle was no trouble at all, but I definitely slipped and fell and got up and slipped again in this corner.
One thing in this grid that did make me smile was [New York's Mario CUOMOBridge] (née Tappan Zee). Do you know how improbable it is that the word CUOMO would make me smile!? Extremely improbable. The only reason that answer brought a smile to my face was that I just drove across it (twice) on my way to (and from) Stamford, Connecticut for this past weekend's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, which, as you know (or are now finding out), I won. Well, we won. Me and my wife, Penelope Harper, us. We won. Yes, I am being serious. Pairs Division Champions. A trophy, a check, the whole nine. Here's proof:
[The Sharpers!]
And here's proof:
[yeah, I posted this yesterday, gonna keep posting it, obnoxiously, forever]
But winning, great as it was, was not even the best part of the weekend. It was the people. It's always the people. I am a not-so-secret introvert, but this tournament is the one place where social interaction actually feels energizing and inspiring, because there are so many people just happy to see each other and hang out and talk shop and meet new people, put names with faces, etc. It's so easy to interact with people here and (you'll get tired of hearing about it if you ask people about the tournament, but it's true), everyone is So Nice. It's like people weirdly become the best versions of themselves at this tournament. I know I did. I had more conversations this past weekend than I have had (save my wife, cats and students) in probably the past year. Full-on. Non-stop. But always fun. I cannot recommend the experience enough, no matter what level you're at. If you're committed enough (and dorky enough) to be reading this blog post, you're ready. And don't say "I won't know anyone." That will change instantly. You've never met a warmer, more welcoming group of people, I promise. The Pairs Division solvers were not in the main ballroom, but were divided among several different basement rooms, and I cannot tell you how much fun our room was (I keep saying "fun," sorry). We hit it off right away with the teams sitting both behind and directly in front of us (hi Shannon, Brad, Pam, Casey). Kristian House and NarayanVenkatasubramanyan ran our room (distributing / collecting puzzles etc.) and the vibe was so loose and low-key and friendly. I already miss my Pairs room. A lot! Then I met other teams from other rooms, like Zhou and Mallory, who had matching Hawaiian shirts so you could not miss them:
[nicely posed]
[less composed]
So happy to see so many people. We met this couple in the bar (Melinda, Rob) and liked them so much that we just stayed and ate dinner in the bar with them and then later I practically begged them to be our friends irl. We'll see how that goes over, LOL. But the whole weekend was like this. Met (or re-met) so many constructors: Adrian Johnson, Alina Abidi, Kareem Ayas, Adam Wagner, John Lieb, Claire Rimkus, Sid Sivakumar, Tracy Gray, Sarah Sinclair, Paolo Pasco (who repeated as Champion!), and on and on. Oh, and the great Wyna Liu (if you play Connections, you know ...). I'd met her before, but I hadn't seen her in many years and it was beyond lovely to see her again (and see her getting attention from adoring fans). Sorry to gush, but it was the greatest weekend I've had in some time. Maybe the best social experience since before COVID, no joke. Apologies to everyone I didn't mention (so many people I didn't mention, including all of my *actual* longtime friends, lol, hi guys). Doug Peterson! Angela Olson! Rachel Fabi! Aimee Lucido! Robyn Weintraub! Dan Feyer! Tony Orbach! Lauren Muse Smith!!!! Now I'm just shouting names! But seriously, you should go. If you like xwords enough to read a damned blog about them, you should go. Or go to a different tournament closer to you. There are at least three more major tournaments in other parts of the country between now and next year's ACPT. I'll be sure to promote them. OK bye!
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