Fill Me In #043: Season Finale – The 2009 ACPT
Welcome to the last episode of the first season of the universe’s favorite crosshouse trainwreck, Fill Me In. This is Episode 43, and it’s jumbo-sized for your viewing pleasure. We’ve strayed a bit from our standard format, and in this episode, we offer a journey through the 2009 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.
We arrived on Friday night, stayed through the awards luncheon on Sunday, and in addition to competing in the tournament, managed to find an assortment of obviously oblivious folks foolish enough to let us talk to them while holding a functional microphone. The result is our inane banter sprinkled with interviews, discussions, predictions and recaps with the biggest names the weekend had to offer.
(The photo at right was taken by Nancy Shack. Brian and Ryan are interviewing Dan Feyer [L] as Amanda Yesnowitz [R] looks on. The rest of Nancy’s photos can be found here.)
Special guest stars include:
- Tyler Hinman, [insert kickass nickname here]
- Dan Feyer, Winner of the C Division
- Mark Dixon, you’ll find out why if you listen to the whole show
- Mike Nothnagel, Pen Pal Extraordinaire and Constructor of the Friday Puzzle
- Tony Orbach, XTC Aficionado
- The Great Howard Barkin, Knower of All Things
- Barry C. Silk, Friend and Confidante of Doug Peterson, Crossword Gentleman and Man About Town
- Doug Peterson, Crossword Gentleman and Man About Town
- Amanda Yesnowitz, The Unparalleled Parallel Verse Engineer
- and Will Shortz, attendant
We collected a tremendous amount of footage over the weekend, but there was no way to include everyone. We had some wonderful discussions with Jim Horne, Kevin G. Der, Patrick Blindauer, Peter Gordon, Stephen Grant and Merl Reagle (among others), and plan to include some of these segments in our next several episodes.
Here are a few ACPT links that might be of interest:
- Complete standings of the 2009 tournament (and the general ACPT site as well)
- YouTube video of Tyler during the A Division Finals
- A great collection of photos by Jeremy Zilar on Jim Horne’s Wordplay blog site here and here.
- Amanda Yesnowitz’s fantastic lyrics to “KenKen,” sung to the tune of Cole Porter’s “Can-Can.”
- Other ACPT wrapup blogs: Jim Horne, Rex Parker, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Trip Payne, Dan Feyer, and… well, if you blogged the ACPT and we left you out, please email us, and we’ll add you to the blog roll.
A warning: The podcast contains clue/entry spoilers. We talk about answers. If you haven’t done the puzzles yet and don’t want to know, it’s best that you save this episode for later. But do save it, and listen when you can.
Thanks to everyone who helped make Season One a big success. We’re looking forward to the start of Season Two sometime in the next couple weeks. Please stay in touch — we’d love to hear from you.
Zambezi and oat.
