Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

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.

 

 Fill Me In #043: Season Finale - The 2009 ACPT [64:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We are back.  We had a blast.  The weekend was full of drama and surprises.  We met and hung out with all kinds of great crossword people.  We recorded a bunch of audio that we will be cobbling together into a podcast and posting in the next couple of days.  There are some upgrades coming to the podcast and blog which we will detail in a little bit.

Hey, it’s Brian here, interjecting in some green text. I’ve also right-justified my paragraphs in keeping with our efforts to keep both the podcast and blog in proper stereo.

I just wanted to add that I had a blast this weekend. We so greatly appreciate the generosity of everyone who took the time to talk to us (as Ryan said, that podcast is coming soon). The bloggers’ panel was a lot of fun, and the support for both our blog and podcast from people at the tournament was quite wonderful. Thanks to everyone who made the bloggers’ panel a success, and for including us in the event.

Oh, and to anyone who met and put up with Xop and Xom during the weekend, thank you for distracting them long enough for me to escape for a few minutes here and there. I owe you.

But, for now, Sunday’s puzzle will have to wait.  Sleep, we must.

Next stop, Monday.

Hey everyone — or at least the one of you who isn’t already in Brooklyn at the ACPT. It’s both of us here, having just completed Frank Longo’s Saturday puzzle. It’s the wee hours of the morning, and we’re exhausted from all the fan-rushing we’ve experienced here in Brooklyn. No less than two people hooted at us during the panel, and one of them was not Brian’s wife. [Riddle: If one of them was not Brian's wife, who were the two women? Please show your work.]

Okay, first, Frank’s puzzle. (See? We’re calling him “Frank,” like we know him.) This continues Brian’s streak of Saturdays that were not as difficult as Fridays. The theme today was long answers that were rather gettable (as opposed to yesterday, which was almost entirely unsolvable). Some of our favorites:

• 20A. Summer cooler : ITALIAN ICE
• 27A. Hue similar to cyan : ELECTRIC BLUE. We’re not sure if Debbie Gibson had an album called “Electric Blue.” Or maybe she sang a song with that title? We’re not sure. One of us once worked as a pianist for Debbie Gibson (during her “Deborah” phase, which may still be in session). [Riddle: One of the people who worked for Debbie Gibson as a pianist was not Ryan. Who worked for Debbie Gibson as a pianist? Show your work.]
• 38A. Oscar winner for “Bridge on the River Kwai” : ALEC GUINNESS. We don’t care a whole lot for this clue, necessarily, but Alec Guinness in general was awesome.
• 56A. Epithet coined for the 2002 State of the Union address : AXIS OF EVIL. Boooooooooo — we hate George Bush.

Okay, now a few things we did not like:

• 19A. Magnitogorsk’s river : WHATEVER. Okay, fine. It’s URAL. But really. Magnitogorokokotorogkot?
• 45D. Like supermakets : AISLED. How would we use this in a sentence? “Wow, all of these grocery stores are just like supermarkets.” It just isn’t normal.
• 61A. Title aunt in a 1979 best seller : ERMA

We had heard that the Saturday puzzle during the ACPT was particularly difficult. But this one didn’t seem to follow that trend. We talked a bit about a few answers as we went, and Xom tossed out one answer for us (31D. Phil Rizzuto, on the Yankees : TEN), but it was fairly smooth sailing overall.

Now — as for the ACPT… The panel went well, although we might be holding auditions for more groupies (in case either of the wives become unavailable for our future engagements). Many people who knew nothing about us found some comfort in the notion that we are not (we repeat NOT) speed solvers. That is our thing. That is why you like us. We are you. We are Sparta.

Brian finished 38th in the Ken-Ken game, but then finished 1,736,229th in the whatever-the-rest was, and thus won absolutely nothing except some free cheese. Ryan tried to put a seven into a 6×6 Ken-Ken, and was quickly shipped off to Nagano for intensive training. (Currently, Brian is typing this while Ryan is laughing, debilitated by a lack of sleep and not enough Coca-Cola.)

This year, the ACPT has an entirely new flavor to it. Last year (to give you reference), we arrived knowing nothing, no one. We were completely forgettable. Over the course of this past year, we have “met” a number of people in the crossword community, though most of those “meetings” have come via comments, emails, occasional telephone interviews, but rarely face-to-face (the hordes of you at Lollapuzzoola notwithstanding). So this year, we arrived with a brain full of names but no faces, no lives. Ryan put it quite eloquently (WHAT?!) when he said that it was as if we had written a book, and all of the characters we read about were coming to life before our eyes.

That’s exactly what this has been. Today we put real people to names: Andrea Carla Michaels, Barry C. Silk, Doug Peterson, Tyler Hinman, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Amy Reynaldo, Michael Sharp, Jim Horne, Helene Hovanec, Vic Fleming, Anne Erdmann… There are more, and there will be more as the weekend progresses. We had hoped to do some podcasting while we were here, but it looks like we might have some trouble uploading audio on the micro-thin bandwidth offered by the hotel’s internet service. We’ll definitely be doing a big season finale after the tournament, so keep your ears peeled for viewing pleasure come Monday.

Now it’s off to bed, and we have 10+ hours until Puzzle #1. At this point (and for the next 10+ hours), we are all currently tied for first place with Tyler. [Riddle: If we are all tied for first with Tyler, are we all tied for last as well? What does that say about Tyler? What does that say about you? Are you Sparta? Is one of you not Brian's wife? Is any of you a nickel? Show your work.]

See you Sunday!

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.