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Whew. What a weekend. Big tip of the cap to Dan Feyer on his four-peat at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. While I don’t think this was Dan’s most impressive win (that would be last year’s where he managed to win it all even with two errors), it’s still an awe-inspiring feat. Maybe Dan could chime in on the comments section, but from my perspective it felt like Dan was playing it conservatively. That is to say, he wasn’t going as fast as he was capable of going, but rather just fast enough to still comfortably take first. I could be wrong. Maybe the myth of Dan has supplanted the truth. Having said that, it looks like the way to maybe beat Dan is in the finals. If there’s a possibility that someone who can just annihilate themeless puzzles, I don’t know, say Francis Heaney or Joon Pahk, were able to get up on the boards maybe, just maybe. But then one of these wild cards would have to get over two other speed solving legends.
For the third year in a row, the A finals pitted Dan against those legends: Tyler Hinman and Anne Erdmann. And, like last year, it looked like Tyler might have reclaimed the crown. He had half of Kevin Der’s championship puzzle filled in before the others. Granted, it was the easier of the two sides of the grid. And “easy” is a relative term here. But still. A lead’s a lead. Didn’t matter though, as the left side was about as tough as you’re ever going to see in the ACPT finals, with no obvious entry points and unhelpful letters to build off. So once Tyler hit the wall, it was enough for Dan to sneak past him, as well as Anne who took second, her highest finish yet. It turned out to be an especially pleasant birthday present for her, as yesterday was her annual 29th birthday party. As for Tyler, his streak of 79 complete solves in a row without an error at the tournament is kaput.
If you’re curious about solving the puzzles, why not click here and do ’em at home?
So how’d the ole’ Biz Quig’s puzzle turn out? Well, it turned out to be one of the killers at the event. My biggest victim was Dr. Fill, the crossword solving A.I. who was “competing” in the event. Dr. Fill was clean through the first two, but then flummoxed by my theme, which was adding the phonetic sound “say” to the beginnings of words that had then altered the spelling. For example “say” + G-string = SEIJI STRING. Turns out that while Dr. Fill was programmed to read and understand phonetic changes by referencing the CMU pronouncing dictionary, my puzzle was riddled with proper names that weren’t necessarily in that list. Looks like I killed a few human solvers, too. May I bring to your attention this contestant’s entry.
As always, it was a blast to meet all the fans of BEQ.com. Thanks again to all who came up and said hi. To all our new fans, welcome. Enjoy the archives.
Share the puzzle. New one on Thursday.
UPDATE: Dan Feyer shot me a private email this afternoon. Here it is unedited:
Thanks, Brendan! Your puzzle gave me the lead for good. I was right on your wavelength, and knew those two eight-letter TV actresses immediately. I finished in about 5:05, just missing a two-minute advantage on the field.
Conservatively?? Only on Sunday morning’s Puzzle 7, when I just needed to avoid disaster to stay in the finals. In fact, handing in Puzzle 6 without looking it over was a bit reckless.
No, I legitimately had plenty of trouble with the final grid, as Will and Kevin intended. I never feel like I want to rush through a Puzzle 8 — don’t mark down many unsure letters, and make sure I grok all the clue/answer combos. When I hit a wall, I just remember that the others have to deal with these crazy clues too.
Enjoyed meeting you and everyone!
You dinged me for 2 or 3 minutes of speed, but I enjoyed them. Great seeing you as always. Hope you got an “I Beat Dr. Fill” pin too!
Contestant submission pic = awesome.
As a woman, I stand with Anna — she did great!!! But my heart ached for Tyler — I sat near him, and saw him zip through one to six. To watch him so stuck . . . wow . . .
Thank you, as always, for your wonderful puzzle!!
Dan called it his best Saturday ever, so I’m not sure how conservative he was playing it. His breaking the 4 minute mark on puzzle 6 was just stunning. That A final was just killer. Hearing Will mention how Kevin Der wanted to make it even harder earns Kevin my nomination for immediate induction to the Bob Klahn Constructor of Doom Hall of Fame!
I heard the most complaints about the atypical spelling of a certain actress’ name in your puzzle. I made up some time on your puzzle, after losing a bunch of time to Mike Shenk.
Tyler’s record of perfect scores is still awesome.
Your tournament puzzle was a lot of fun. Great photo — thanks for posting that! That damn puzzle 5, though. I needed just five more minutes on that one …
Great tournament. Highlight was the crowd’s celebrating Anne’s finally edging out Tyler for 2nd place, and then sweating it out with Tyler as he finished puzzle 8 (though a minute late). As for Tyler’s record, can’t we count puzzle 8 as post-season?
Thanks for defending us a little longer against the inevitable rise of the thinking machines.
Oh, so THAT was the theme in puzzle 3! I never did figure it out. 🙂 I’ll be doing all the tournament puzzles again, very slowly, this weekend, and will look forward to enjoying 3 then.
Kevin’s comment to me was, “I wanted to insert some drama into the finals”.
Your puzzle really clicked with me this year and I credit it (AND YOU) with my doing as well as I did this year! Thanks for the fun!
Really enjoyed your puzzle, Brendan. I am bad at TV actresses, and you can plainly see where I ran into trouble: http://www.crosswordtournament.com/2013/report.asp?id=182&p=3 . With respect to ANA ORTIZ, I just ran out of time to go back and correct it — but with respect to JORJA FOX, well — didn’t know her. I think I was also so sure that {Juicer} = DOPER, that I felt like I had warring right answers. But I had a blast solving!
Super congratulations on being one of the (dreaded) constructors. I am improving on solving your puzzles, but you know–a little Tabitha photo would cheer me along my torturous path.
Looks like your page was mismarked – the P is correct, but the O above it should be an I. That wouldn’t change your score though.
I did alright on puzzle 3, finished with 7 mins left but made one error (COn/DInSO instead of COP/DIPSO). Knew Jorja Fox (and of course you’d use those rare letters!), and was familiar enough with Ana Ortiz from past puzzles. Took me longer than it should have to grok the theme. SAJAKHAMMER was my favorite.