THEMELESS MONDAY: [ ACROSS LITE][ PDF]
PROGRAMS: [Across Lite] [Adobe Reader]
It's not often that you get to start a write-up about the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament with a math joke, but hey, when you can, you have to do it. So, on Friday, when I'd bumped into the eventual winner Tyler Hinman in the hotel lobby he was uncharacteristically upbeat. The now seven-time champ tends to get a little Eeyorish at these things, always thinking he has no shot despite being one of the GOATs. Anyway, the math thing: Tyler's contestant number was #170. He told me, a math-illiterate, that the prime factorization of that number is 2x5x17, and if you convert those numbers to letters you get "BEQ." Supposedly he took this as a sign. I don't know how your brain thinks of this shit, Tyler, let alone I don't know how you can do these puzzles with that speed and accuracy, but I raise my glass to you, buddy. While I'm hear let's raise another set of glassware to Tyler's competition: another GOAT Dan Feyer (second place) and David Plotkin, who will eventually get the hardware. You can just sort of feel it. Unless the champion of the B-Finals (Paolo Pasco) cleans up his act. Even with two errors, he came in 6th overall and just demolished the B-clues in Wyna Liu's championship puzzle. I weep for the room if Paolo improves on accuracy.
I guess I could really just post photos that I took this weekend as a pictorial review, but this is a word-related site, not an art one. So I'll just share one more with the aforementioned Wyna here.
No spoilers today about the Tournament puzzles, just a friendly reminder that if you'd like to pick up the batch of puzzles, you can do that here. I don't think there's a dud in the batch. My personal favorite was by Christina "The Answer" Iverson, one of those puzzles with such a watertight and elegant theme that I wished I'd come up with it. By now you know that I was responsible for the back-breaking Puzzle #5. I might do a "how the sausage was made" post on Thursday, but for now I'll just say that there were some truly funny reactions to how hard it was. My favorite being from Chandi Deitmer who basically gave up and turned her solution grid into a comedy routine.
As always, it was great to see all of you again, and meet new faces. Three years is too long, so let's do it again soon, shall we?
Looking for more puzzles? The Hub Crossword (Sunday puzzles by me and Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon, and soon: Joon Pahk) and Marching Bands year seven have begun. So if that To Do list needs even more puzzles, you know what to do.
Share the puzzle. New one on Thursday.
Brendan Emmett Quigley creates custom-made puzzles for all occasions: birthdays and bar mitzvahs, anniversaries and retirements. You name it. Need a puzzle for your website or your publication? He can do that, too.
Brendan's custom work clients have included The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, BeerAdvocate, Boston Magazine, De Beers, The Decemberists, ESPN, The Improper Bostonian, Lollapuzzoola, McSweeney's, Phish, Reflexive, The Smithsonian Magazine, St. Martin's Press, Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, and Andrew Weil.
Call (617) 2-999-BEQ or click 
