Lollapuzzoola 2008 -- by Michael Smith

I wonder what the comparison would be between the first modern Olympics and the stage set in Beijing China this year. One may be hard pressed to find the commonality. I wonder how the 2008 ACPT compared to the first one in Stamford, CT. Well, in ten years, I will be available to compare that Lollapuzzoola to the first one in 2008. The venue was the Community Church, Queens, New York in the church hall where Scrabble was invented and first played. From such humble beginnings as these some fun things have emerged. I should emphasize the word fun because Ryan and Brian, the organizers, have a knack for fun, both in this event and their other crossword activities. Their blog helps those learning to play and does so with a sense of humor. Their podcast is similarly humorous and instructive and you get a sense of that in their theme, "Come on brains, be more smarter."

I took an early morning Bolt Bus from Philadelphia to Penn Station and hoped on the E train to Jackson Heights. I was there plenty early and went straight o the venue, but I was so early that the only activity was the florist setting up for a wedding. I decided to stroll the neighborhood of Jackson Heights (and answer that showed up in one of the puzzles). There was a vibrant Hispanic community which evolved in into an Indian neighborhood that became a Slavic enclave. I do love America and all that is silently promised entwined in the lives of these pockets of immigration.  I eventually found a Peruvian place for lunch and lost track of time. I arrived at the Puzzle site just as the puzzles were to be handed out. 

I was greeted warmly by the truly nice spouses of the tournament organizers and I suspect that the event was given its sense of order from the better halves of our fine sponsors. Sitting at the head table was Ellen Ripstein, who is not only the best in the world at crosswords, but is a sharing woman, who test-solved the puzzles and scored most of the puzzles (sorry for all the wrong letters, Ellen). She also wore the tournament’s best necklace and I think she should share her jewelry secrets. The scoring system differed from the ACPT in many ways. For one thing, your lowest score was thrown out in the Olympic style. To make it more competitive, I think they should throw out all of the high scores, too. Employing a modern educational approach, correct letters were awarded one point and bonus points were given based on the order one finished the puzzle. The light-heartedness of the event was revealed in the rule discussion. Each player had a set of tickets that could serve as a Google inquiry. Not available for theme answers and starting about half way through the timed rounds, you could write down the clue you would like to Google (17A or 5D e.g.) and the Google Team would write down the answer. 

The puzzles came form some familiar names as seen in this list.

#1  Brian Cimmet - a solid puzzle named A Simple Trio. This being my first timed tournament I fell to the self imposed pressure and worried about the clock more than the puzzle. I think it was a 15 minute puzzle that a few people finished in a couple of minutes which only added to the pressure. While I have never been a speed solver, I am glad I took the plunge and tried it. I have to be able to improve on it now that I have tried it.

To calm down after the excitement of the round I went over to the refreshment area. In true crossword form, the table had Oreos and snacks galore. Oreo is now leading in the crossword answer race and I have the next clue ready. "The latest flavor is a banana crème center." I spoke to many interesting people at the breaks and would guess there were about 40 people who made it by at one time or another. I also expect that it will grow next year. From first place (the uncommonly good and charismatic Howard B) to also-rans, everyone had a great time.

#2  Doug Peterson - entitled Bite Me asked the solver to follow the instructions in the puzzle. I won’t spoil it, but I think everyone figured it out in the allotted time. The time factor was another neat thing. When the time was announced for each puzzle, it was open for discussion and when people were still working near the deadline, the time was extended. I think everyone completed the required action and did Bite One. You will have to provide your own supplies at home to complete the task and think you will be glad you did.

#3 Ashish Vengsarkar - Working under the title Reverse Lookup, the puzzle was replete with phrases with question marks. Once you get the theme, you will have some help, but not everyone finished this one.  Ashish was there and indicated Will thought it may have been too difficult in a few spots. I agree, but Ashish is a gentleman and apologized for the difficulties. I met Ashish at the ACPT and have since had trouble reconciling the soft spoken and caring man with his vexing puzzles.

Somewhere around the break for this puzzle, a surprise guest came into the puzzle hall. He was doing community service crossword editing to work off some old traffic violations and came by to see how we were doing. No seriously, Will Shortz checked in with us and he kindly spoke to everyone. I had just caught up with PuzzleGirl and found out about her relocation to the Washington DC area and talked about the ACPT. She is a lovely woman and helped Ellen with the scoring when she finished her puzzles. For her blogging tag, she can now claim to be the 15th greatest recreational crossword solver in the universe.

#4  Mike Nothnagel - offered Compromising Positions ( does that sound right?) in response to being asked to provide a Friday level puzzle. He obliged with a Friday the Thirteenth puzzle which was made more difficult by the twisted but clever cluing. From now on, be sure to thank Will for changing some of Mike’s clues so we can finish his puzzles with your sanity intact. Mike proved to be a very capable solver, but had to sit out this round. I had a discussion with him at the ACPT in February and he is another person who combines cleverness with kindness. Patrick Blindauer sat at the table with Mike and proved to be another capable solver. I just wonder what they may have cooked up together for us.

The four leaders were asked to come forward at the halfway point and have a bonus round where the point accumulations could be influenced. It was sort of like a Final Jeopardy round, except that the contest was not a puzzle. It was Twister. Yes, the 80’s fad game Twister. Some nimble minds were not as nimble of body.  I think that is fair.

#5 Daniel Feyer - created a clever multimedia puzzle with four clues coming from a keyboard played by Ryan. It was well received, but I am tone deaf. I swear all four tunes sounded the same to me. We were offered the assurance that Ellen completed the puzzle without the four musical clues. Of course she didn’t need the music. She doesn’t need clues either. I think everyone else found this one much easier than I. With the growing use of the internet I guess more of this type of puzzle will be developed. Click here and listen to a song. Click here and tell who painted this picture. Click here and tell me what this smells like. I am sure it will happen.

# 6 The final puzzle was written by Barry C. Silk and was an enjoyable way to finish the proceedings. The Texas area was impossible for me and I am going to solve it online and see what I messed up there. Since the title was Criss-Crosswords, maybe that was the trick, but for now it is a mystery.

Very funny and mostly inappropriate (in a good sense) prizes were awarded to the top four finishers:

1. Howard Barkin
2. Will Irving
3. Patty Buethe
4. Janet Siefert

Everyone was invited to dinner at a nearby restaurant after the event, but I had to catch the return bus back to Philly. I tried the last puzzle again on the way home. I nodded off without solving the problem area. I can say I really enjoyed the day. We got to solve six fun puzzles, eat snacks and converse with fellow solvers, witty bloggers and friendly constructors. You cannot beat that for $10.00. I think it should be $20.00 next year and include real trophies rather than the family’s white elephant gifts, but that isn’t a criticism. I also think there should be an opportunity to hire Howard as your co-solver if you finished in the last few places every round. See you next year.

PhillySolver

[JimH: I'm traveling now but I'll update this page later with photos and some improved formatting. In the mean time, you can view the XWord Info Archive Page for more info and of course, check out Ryan and Brian's blog.]

Comments

[Barry Silk]

PhillySolver - Thanks for your writeup. Due to other plans, I was unable to attend this year. I was informed that the church used for Lollapuzzoola was the site where the game of Scrabble was first played. So, I thought that a scrabble-themed puzzle would be appropriate for the contest. The inventor of the Scrabble game, Alfred Mosher Butts, called his game Criss-Crosswords before it became known as Scrabble. Hence, I chose that name for the puzzle's title. I didn't want the title to be too obvious and give away the theme, but I wonder if anyone who solved the puzzle understood the connection? See Scrabble Avenue article and Wikipedia article. Sounds like it was a fun day for all who attended!

[PhillySolver]

Barry,
We loved the puzzle and I heard several discussions about the its link to the venue. I didn't know the Criss-Crossword part, so thanks for the link. See you next year.

[Brian]

PhillySolver,

Thank you so much for the wonderful write-up! Not getting much (if any) time to chat with you was one of my regrets of the day. I have always admired your commentary on the crossword blogs I read, and I was delighted when Ryan told me you had signed up for the event. Again, thank you for coming, and for your wonderful write-up.

You were not alone in having difficulty recognizing the tunes for Dan Feyer's puzzle. Perhaps, if we were to do another similar idea, we could offer either a stanza of lyrics (perhaps disguised as prose, to stay somewhat secretive), or perhaps a better performance of the music than a keyboard left over from 1982.

(Incidentally, it was me [BRIAN] and not Ryan who played the keyboard -- I think maybe you arrived moments after we clarified which of us was which. This is further confused by our podcast, in which RYAN, inexplicably, plays the piano on a regular basis whereas BRIAN does not. We are a strange duo, that's for sure.)

I think that if we can somehow get Howard Barkin involved in a non-contestant manner, winning a chance to co-solve with him might be quite a coup of a prize. Howard, if you're reading this, you'll have to let us know what you think.

Anyway -- thanks again for your wonderful comments. We have already begun discussing ideas for another event, so we'll be sure to keep everyone posted on that development. Hope to see you at the ACPT in the spring if not sooner.

--Brian
--Ryan and Brian do Crosswords

[Ellen]

My necklace comes from the Linda Collection of Fine Jewels (hand-me-up from my sister), and the dress is also from the Linda Collection. My favorite store is Linda's closet in Miami.

Mike Nothnagel finished 4th.
SPOILER: Mike's puzzle had words which were used to start the game that followed.

One way the first ACPT (which I attended) differed from 2008 was that the scoring counted correct letters instead of words (technically, grid entries, since an entry could be more than one word). This was a nightmare for the judges, who did not get to have actual nightmares as they stayed up all night grading papers. People put in random letters (usually E's) hoping to get credit, and judges had to see if some of these letters were actually right. This doesn't happen if you're counting correct words since chances are excellent a word isn't ZOLAEEEEE or whatever.

Letters were used in Lolla scoring, and I would have advised against this had I known (I advocated Pleasantville scoring of first correct puzzle wins the round, and then you can stop grading). I might have run screaming when I found out we were counting letters, but luckily there weren't a huge number of contestants and I had help from Mike, Angela and Howard so we were able to finish (Brian graded the last 3 puzzles at home). If a grid is complete, letters vs. words makes no difference, but many puzzles were incomplete.

While the idea of having Howard (or any A-level solver) co-solve after a certain point is cute, it might end up with the expert solver just filling in the rest of the puzzle so some constraint would be needed.

[PhillySolver]

Ellen,
Thanks for your insightful post and revealing the secret shop in Miami. I noted that Mike N did place but my notes didn't have him getting one of the 'inappropriate' prizes. Was that out of respect or fear of some demented puzzle showing up some Saturday revealing the truth about Brian's and Ryan's scheme to lower the price of gasoline until after the election?

[Dan]

Thank you Philly for the report! Maybe Brian can make a quick and dirty recording of the musical cues, to be posted with the puzzle. Hope people enjoyed my debut constructing effort. (This guy didn't, but he wasn't expecting all the gimmickry. Some spoilers at that link.)

[Pat Manzo]

@PhillySolver: sorry I didn't have a chance to chat with you. You were my runner at my rookie ACPT this year. I must confess to worrying about accusations of attempting to influence the judges, should you serve in the same capacity next year. ;-)

[joon]

hey dan--i know that guy, i think, from a non-crossword context. i liked your puzzle, but maybe it was easier to do without the tunes themselves? it wasn't very hard to put them all together from crosses.

[PhillySolver]

Dan,
I liked your puzzle and completed it recently without the music. I appreciate that new things were tried and thought it was a fun idea. I think it was the musician's fault. It always is. No, seriously, I will have to tell you somethings about my musical non-talent when I see you next time. I am Legend.

Pat,
Sorry we didn't get a chance to talk more also. I will plan to stay overnight next year and find out more about the interesting people who made it to Queens.

[Brian]

Pat,

HEY! The musician's fault?!

Seriously -- it was a crappy keyboard, but really the best we could do on our budget.

Mike Nothnagel won a dictionary. It was one of the new not-horrible prizes.

- Brian

[Pat Manzo]

Brian, bubbala, I have no quarrel with musicians. Take another look at the posting. ;-)

[Howard B]

Be happy to help in any way that I can, of course.

By the way, there was only one tune that I couldn't figure out after two playings (is that a kosher noun?). Two of them I was able to write in directly off the first play. But then again, I grew up in the 80s playing a 2 1/2-octave Casio keyboard while taking piano lessons, so maybe there's a bias there.

[Pauer]

Fun write-up! Thanks for the nod (and thanks to ACME for the tip about the post). I've been bad about blog reading lately - not as bad about blog posting, but I hope to devote some time to both in the near future.

I like this blog-sharing that's going on lately. From people guest hosting to posting write-ups of books and events, the web has certainly made the world a different place.

Getting back to LPZ, I love how the lowest score was thrown out, especially since it allowed Nothnagel to compete. Tho I do note that the puzzle *he* had thrown out (his own) was the hardest one, cluing-wise. So it might be argued that it was to his advantage to crank up the difficulty as much as possible. Not that he would do that; he certainly doesn't need to cheat. I'm just saying. Okay, fine - I think I'm just sore that I fell for [Knuckle head?]. Curse you, 'Nagel! :-)>

Best,
Patrick

[Brian]

Whoops... Pat, I didn't mean you. I misread. It was PHILLYSOLVER! You demon. Accusing the musician of faulty cluing. How dare you??? :)

@ Patrick: Nothnagel's puzzle, while quite difficult, had plenty of points available to solvers, especially considering the potential for 100 bonus points if you won Twister. By taking a zero on his own puzzle, he probably suffered a fall from at least 3rd place, if not possibly 2nd.

- Brian

[PuzzleGirl]

Just wanted to chime in to say, again, what an awesome time I had at the big puzzle event. Can't wait for the next one. Ryan and Brian have the most adorable wives ever.