ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ DO OR DIE TIME]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ DO OR DIE TIME]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
T-minus three days until the start of the ACPT. Where’d the time go? Well anyway, let’s continue what’s sure to be a short-lived series of interviews on the ole’ BEQ.com site. This one’s with the guy who’s been to all 33 ACPTs, probably because he came up with the idea in the first place: Will Shortz. It’s come a long way, for sure. But it sounds like he’s just getting warmed up. Let’s do this.
BEQ: Thirty-three years. Put that in perspective.
Will: I directed the first tournament when I was 25 and never expect to get to year two. So 33 of course is amazing.
BEQ: You did this all by yourself at 25?
Will: Yeah, the director at this new hotel in Stamford [CT], the Marriott, was looking for someone to direct a crossword tournament. My understanding is that he called [Dr. Eugene T.] Maleska at the Times, and Gene wasn’t interested. But he referred this Marriott guy to Norton Rhoades, who was one of the great old constructors who happened to live in Stamford. And Norton recommneded me. I had just the previous fall founded the Fairfield County Puzzlers Group because it was so important to me to have friends in the puzzling world and have friends get together. So that’s how I knew Norton.
That first year was wild. There hadn’t been a crossword contest in the U.S. since the 1930s. And in 1978 I wasn’t even aware of those, so I thought this was the first time it was being done. There was no model to go on, we were just winging it. I asked five top constructors to make puzzles for the Tournament. Jordan Lasher was one. Maura Jacobson. Got together some friends, Doug and Jan Heller, Norton and Ann Rhoades, Stephanie Spadaccini, Jordan Lasher and his wife. Altogether, there was eight of us. This was in the pre-computer era. Not only did every puzzle have to be scored by hand, and we had to add up the scores by hand, and add up the columns of figures by hand in order to rank everybody.
BEQ: How many contestants did you have?
Will: There were 149 contestants the first year.
BEQ: God! This must have taken forever.
Will:It was just exhausting. We didn’t sleep at all Saturday night. The Tournament ended Sunday afternoon and the hotel was so pleased with the number of people who came and the publicity they got that they let Doug, Jan and me stay an extra night. So we all went to our rooms, slept for a couple hours. And then around 5:30 or 6:00. Doug and Jan came into my room, we plopped down on the bed and watched the Evening News.
We had a fantastic amount of publicity. It was on ABC and CBS Evening News that Sunday night. There was a great article in the New York Times. AP, UPI, Sports Illustrated. It was syndicated all over the country.
BEQ: You probably got the press because of the novelty factor.
Will: Right.
BEQ: So, the “E” in “ESPN” stands for “Entertainment.” And they already cover poker tournaments. Why isn’t this event covered by anybody nowadays?
Will: I think this could make great TV. If you watch last year’s finals from 2009. That’s a gripping show. Especially when the playoffs came down to an amazing finale.
I guess some reasons it’s not covered: it’s too cerebral. Too egg-head-y. Maybe some people think it’s nerdy. I don’t know. I think a bigger problem is there isn’t a crossword circuit. If crosswords are going to be successful on TV, it feels like there ought to be an ongoing program, not just once a year. I dunno, then you watch the National Spelling Bee. That pops up once a year that’s on network television and it gets pretty good ratings.
There’s no other competitive activity that I can think of where people at home can compete in real-time against the people watching. You watch your heroes from golf, football or basketball. You admire their skill but you can’t compare yourself with what you’re seeing on TV. With crosswords you actually could.
BEQ: Maybe we should start training Tyler Hinman so he can be the battle-scarred veteran to do color announcement. I guess you already have Neal Conan and Merl Reagle doing that.
Will: My idea when we started the finals with the announcers: you have a professional announcer who is Neal and then you got your expert in the puz biz who is Merl. They’re both funny and they’re both knowledgeable about puzzles. They report to everybody what’s going on in the finals. If you’re seated in the back of the room you can still follow what’s going on. They bring added value to the playoffs. Merl can explain how the puzzle was constructed. Difficult parts of it And they’re both funny as hell. It’s a great show.
BEQ: Why are crosswords so overwhelming popular/concentrated in the Northeast corridor of the county?
Will: It’s probably that there’s more people concentrated here than anywhere else in the country. New York is also the cultural and intellectual capital of the country. And it’s the influence of the New York Times.
BEQ: But you’re from Indiana. Obviously puzzles must have reached you somehow.
Will: I never really dreamed of becoming the New York Times crossword editor. The opportunity became available in 1993 and so I went for it. My early years in the puzzle business never dreamed of being the crossword editor because I thought it was too intellectual and too cultural for me.
BEQ: So where do you see the ACPT in the future?
Will: I never want to lose the camaraderie. I’d love for it to be on TV. But I’m not going to change the rules or wrench the format to make it TV-friendly. TV would have to adapt to the tournament. I’d love for it to be larger. I’d like to bring crosswords to more people.
I think the long winters are a factor in why crosswords are so popular in the Northeast. It’s too cold to go outside, and you have to do SOMETHING to stave off cabin fever.
Not sure I buy New York being the cultural or intellectual capital of the country. It used to be, I think, but I don’t think we have one anymore. On account of the internet and all. [Insert additional sociological opining bullshit here.]
If crosswords are more popular in the Northeast (which I have no reason to dispute, being a guy who doesn’t leave his garage), I’d guess it’s because people ride trains up there. Right? Y’all ride a lot of trains, don’t you? It looks that way on TV shows, and John Cheever always had people riding trains in his stories. Down here, we drive, and it’s hard to drive and do a crossword and shoot at stuff all at the same time.
Ingenious little puzzle today. I enjoyed it mightily.
awesome. loved this one. and nice interview, too.
Great, symmetrical rebus theme, and not a junker in the bunch. Impressive and fun. Don’t do SU(DO)KU often, so I learned something today on top of that.
What Wade said. Although here in Detroit we don’t shoot at stuff while we drive. Oh wait a minute…
I really liked the theme today.
Brilliant puzzle, my friend! Very cool concept, extremely well executed!! See you on Friday … at the bar, as usual.
This puzzle was good enough for me to actually figure out how to post comments here and say so! As mentioned, the symmetry was a plus.
A rebus, yay!! A very cool rebus at that. Obviously the symmetry helped to solve it, as did the fact that DIE was the down answer and DO was the across. Definitely made it a touch easier than it could have been, so thanks 😉 Would it be completely unheard of to have them going every which way? Good interview, too. I agree that it would be nice to have a crossword circuit so that people from all over could participate. I’ve said it before, we need a tournament in Portland! Thanks BEQ.
I really enjoy rebus puzzles, and this is one of the best I’ve done. And perfectly symmetrical, too (which actually made me a little nervous, given who the constructor was, so I was expecting some sort of curve-ball along the way).
Clue of the Day goes to “Some speculations about Ronald Reagan”. Very cool.
The only spot I have reservations about was where RICK was crossed by BOCA and by ZOOKS. A person I’ve never heard of crossed both by a retailer I’ve never heard of and by characters from an extremely obscure Dr. Seuss book (I learned to read with Dr. Seuss, but). I guessed the C and K correctly, as nothing else I could think of made the crosses even look like words, but they were guesses.
Enjoyed Monday’s and today’s interviews a lot. Have fun at ACPT.
How do you do it? An amazing puzzle. I bet you will notice a spike in the tip jar today.
Awesome puzzle, BEQ. Five stars! (And I’m usually pretty chintzy with the stars.)
Will:I’d love for it to be on TV. But I’m not going to change the rules or wrench the format to make it TV-friendly.
I think TV coverage would work great if it were filmed the way Creadon filmed the 2005 tourney for Wordplay. (Puzzles, interviews, personal cameras on the major contenders, etc.) Then add the final in real time with all commentary intact.
It wouldn’t air live, of course. But film it that way and edit it to an entertaining hour-long program (or even two hours) and it’d be an outstanding show, I think.
alright–just for the sake of starting a discussion:
–the only American theater worth mentioning: NY
–ditto for opera: NY
–home of every major American book publisher: NY
–home of every major TV network and a number of the cable ones: NY
–home to most major magazine publishers: NY
etc.
–home to largest US art and gallery community: NY
–home to (alas) almost all American finance: NY (which is after all a major source of intellectual innovation. too bad it’s intellectual innovation that’s destroyed our economy)
–home to nine major sports teams: NY area
LA has movie industry
Boston has higher education
Chicago is second in everything. 🙂
But “cultural/intellectual” capital is still NY.
anyway, fun (tough) puzzle today!
Excellent! Your title help make it a little easier but it still felt like a tough Thurs.
Every day with BEQ is a tough Thurs. That’s what makes Mondays bearable :=))
Eric,
Were you a camper at Interlochen in 1976?
Tom Gilson
Brendan, you need a different clue (e.g., [Barcelona babies]) at 3-Down, as the plural of NENE in the sense you used is NENE.
Very good rebus, BEAR of a puzzle. If the rebus hadn’t been symetric, it would hve bordered on impossible for me. As it was for awhile you and I were on different planets!
my dictionary lists both nene and nenes as acceptable plurals.
I don’t think that TV is the right medium for this. As Will pointed out, with today’s Internet technology it is possible for viewers to actually participate in real time. When the on-site participants turn over their puzzles, the puzzle could be made available on the web in scrambled .puz format. When time is up, the solution key could be made available. It would be trivial to have a web app that lets remote users compute their score.
you can already compete on the ACPT puzzles online (in “real time”):
http://www.crosswordtournament.com/online/index.htm
Thanks. I recently paid for paper versions of the four previous tournaments and the 2010 tournament with the provision that I would be mailed the 2010 puzzles when the tournament was over. However, I was able to log onto the URL that you gave above so I guess that I am already registered and don’t have to wait for the paper version.
So, how stoked was Will Shortz to get to have an interview on your blog?
For once, knew exactly where this was going off the title! So then it was just a “find the rebus square” quest… Until I met the area below the second diagonal row of black squares… Where a few things I hadn’t heard of met things I had heard of clued in ways I had no idea about… Quite a time puzzling that out! Love love SAN(DIE)GOZOO and YOYO(DIE)TS as entries!! Didn’t notice symmetry till reading these comments – extra cool!
Not sure what was intended by the comment about the concentration of puzzles in the Northeast corridor. (Backed by some market data, perhaps?) If the ACPT were to rotate between New York, Chicago, Denver, Miami and Los Angeles each year you would see a higher density of locals at any one of those venues. Careful what you ask for.
… For instance, if the ACPT were held in a small town like Springfield Missouri — every sixth year, say — you’d probably get attendance by such locals as this guy from nearby Marshfield:
http://www.marshfieldmail.com/articles/2010/02/23/opinion/doc4b84a89a5a93b894231557.txt