Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

That’s right, I met my goal and finished ahead of at least one person. As a matter of fact I finished ahead of 92 people. That’s right, I place 607th out of 699 entrants. Oy, I didn’t really know how I’d stack up to everyone else. I do know I was hoping to place a little better than that. On the upside I did finish in the top 87%. On the downside, that’s not very good.

The puzzles broke down like this:

1. Mon-Tues difficulty – Scored 860 points. (Tyler’s score: 1230) I finished it with about 6 minutes to go but my score tells me I made some sort of mistake which cost me the additional 150 points for a 100% correct puzzle. If I had those extra points I probably would have broken into the 500s.
2. Wed-Thurs difficulty – Scored 440 points. (Tyler’s score: 1565) I had a lot of trouble with this one and couldn’t finish.
3. This was a Merl Reagle puzzle. Scored 1040 points. (Tyler’s score: 1950) I almost finished this one. But not quite.
4. I can barely remember which one this was. Scored 560 points. (Tyler’s score: 1950) I think that was the one that had a number of long answers with the same clue, “Digs”. Just couldn’t get going with it. I think I needed to take a Rock Band break.
5. Oy! Forget about it. Scored 120 points. (Tyler’s score: 1615) See that score? That means I got 12 words right. 12! I did a lot of staring at empty boxes.
6. Scored 1265 points. (Tyler’s score: 1990) This might have been the Elmer Fudd one. Can’t remember much about it. Did ok but didn’t finish.
7. Sunday-style. Scored 1435 points. (Tyler’s score: 2450) This was the only other one I finished. I did make a few errors though.

Unfortunately I did not complete any puzzles 100% correctly. That’s a disappointment. Brian and I did have a great time though. It was a little intimidating to be around so many smart word nerds. So now I have a whole year to get better. My new goal is to finish ahead of 14% of the entrants. I think I’m going to set some crazy goal like finishing 5,000 or so puzzles before next years tourney. I haven’t decided on a number yet. Plus, I’m probably going to move all this crossword stuff onto a separate blog. I’ve been neglecting keeping up with my personal stuff on here.

Here’s a picture taken by someone unknown to me. Brian and I just happen to be in it.