ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ THEMELESS MONDAY]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
On Saturday morning my phone confidently told me I was in Tegucigalpa. It should have said East Rutherford, NJ, but no, instead, it thought I was in Honduras. Strange start to the day. I never really recovered from that shock.
So, Lollapuzzoola. Who won? That would be Jeffrey Harris of Nashville, TN, with a fairly commanding performance at that. He was the only one to finish the final puzzle before time ran out. A boggling achievement when you see how nasty hard Doug Peterson clued that baby. (Click here to see all the puzzles.) While it’s been a while since Jeffrey has competed in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, he’s owned the competition in the on-line solving category. Should he decide to compete in the senior tournament, look out. The log jam at the top might just be tighter.
As for two and three: Joon Pahk of Somerville, MA, placed and Jon Delfin of Noo Yawk took show. Jon is no stranger to the big boards. He holds the record for most ACPT victories. Joon, however, pretty much sewed up the Rookie of the Year award (if there was such a thing in speed solving). After his impressive first-time showing of 16th overall at the ACPT this past February, on Saturday he managed to show he isn’t slowing down, leaping over four other perennial top solvers: Amy Reynaldo of Chicago, Ellen Ripstein of NYC, Al Sanders of Fort Collins CO, and Francis Heaney of Brooklyn. Before we get ahead of ourselves, it should be noted that the top five solvers in the country weren’t competing.
One of those top five would happen to be a Tyler Hinman of San Francisco, CA. I like Tyler. He’s a stand up guy. We have a few beers whenever we’re in the other’s neck of the woods. He test solves my puzzles. It’s all good. Well, it was all good until I did his puzzle he made for Lollapuzzoola. Going into that puzzle I was in second place in my division. But after Tyler’s puzzle, I was eliminated. Kaput. Fini. Kayoed. I was so far out of it, I might as well have been in Tegucigalpa. It seems like I haven’t gotten any better at speed solving in the four years I took off. I’m in the mix with the easy/medium puzzles, but with the very difficult ones I stand no chance. None. My brain is just simply not wired that way to solve difficult puzzles fast. So, yeah, enough of my yapping, go do puzzle number 4 in that PDF I linked to above and see why now Tyler Hinman of San Francisco, CA, has become my mortal enemy. Brutal puzzle.
So whatever happened to my previous mortal enemy Jared Hersh of Santa Barbara, CA? I made quick work of him almost immediately after I met him. (See the above photograph taken by Jared’s lovely wife, Nicole.)
Still, the reason I go to these things is to enjoy the camaraderie with my puzzling family. Met up with Rex Parker the night before so we could do our Statler and Waldorf impersonations. Now that I think about it, we blew our chance to do that in the Statler and Waldorf hotels; next time. Good to talk shop with a few puzzle folks like Ashish Vengsarkar and Patrick Blindauer. And it was good to meet all of you who introduced yourselves as fans of the blog. Nice to put names to faces.
Okay. That’s it. Share the puzzle. New one on Thursday.
Boy do I like these hard Mondays. I had to cheat with “check” button after filling in ETRUSCA (wtf?) which caused havoc to wreak – loved “Stiff Crates”. Another great Monday offering.
thanks for another great monday, and for posting that pdf. i was set to attend and compete in the pairs division, just to see what that would be like, but an emergency kept me from attending. being able to do the puzzles anyway is a handsome consolation.
I almost never complete the Mondays without a little help at the end. Kudos to BEQ for a Natick-free super solid puzzle.
liked this one! not as hard as some, even though this one had some long names that were only 1% familiar.
Re: 8A. THANK YOU! I thought I was the only one.
Had never heard of Owl City before this puzzle. So, checked them out. Man, they really are a total rip off of the Postal Service.
Segue: Owl City has a song called “Hello Seattle”; I knew the answer to 17A because I lived on Etruria Street in Seattle (17 years ago, when the kids in Owl City were in preschool).
Great puzzle coming right after a trip to New York, the effort is much appreciated and the puzzle was definitely worth sharing . Really liked how both OWL CITY and BIRD BRAIN were in the puzzle. I wonder if there were some not so subliminal messages with both RUSSELL BRAND and (Andrew) BREITBART maybe too appropriately intersecting BIRD BRAIN. Hmm?
Caption: BEQ choking at puzzle tournament.
Just kidding – but check out the intensity in that pic!
Good times, good puzzling, and good to see ya again.
Jared & Nicole, also good to meet you. Hope Jared is recovering nicely.
Endnote: The people who attend are what make this a freaking great event, besides the hosts, the puzzles, and the teeming boxes of Oreos.
A couple of names that were unfamiliar to me kept me from finishing this one without outside help, the two B-boys. The rest of the puzzle moved nicely. Not sure about the two for tee answers but otherwise, good fun.
Anybody else try ERASERS instead of EDITORS for “They get the word out”?? (Maybe it was just me).
Lollapuzzoola sounded great. Maybe some day!
Slowpoke.jpg without even the excuse of being in NY this weekend. I hope to one day attend a tournament just to meet other crossnerds. 2 errors! The horror! The horror! I was sure that it was either ETRUSIA or ETRUCIA cuz of, you know, Etruscan. Didn’t think of Salt/SPY connection at all. Themeless? I think that “Axe to grind” fits pretty well given the clues for 8A and 61D! Quibble of the day: I would have used “his” rather than “its” for 8A. I think that Owl City is more of a person than a group. Regardless – he, or it, is too twee for my taste.
Had TDS instead of YDS and didn’t know OWLC— or what a Merch Table was (thought it was a scientific reference), so I ended up with any random letter where the T went. I thought something was wrong, but when I got the rest of the puzzle done without help, I was so happy to have finished a “hard” Monday that I forgot to go back and revisit that corner. Also had to Google after the fact to get the connection between SPY and Salt. Nice puzzle as usual BEQ!
I did the exact same thing. Wikipedia tells me the adjectival form of Etruria is Etruscan, so, hey, we’re not totally crazy.
Also, Breitbart is what passes for muckraking journalism these days? Sad state of affairs…
Brendan, I was soooo rooting for you in the Local Division during lunch. I talked to those who stayed behind (to catch up on judging), and thought how incredibly awesome it would be to see you up there for the finals. I even considered rigging the scores to make it happen. But Tyler had other plans for you.
NEXT YEAR. Lollapuzzoola 4: The Revenge of Quigley.
Thanks for your great write-up. It was so great having you there with us again this year. Can’t wait for the next one!