6.18.2006
since you asked (fifth in a series)*
What do new parents do on their first Father's Day?
In our case, the answer was predetermined, in part: Baby wore her Brasil outfit and watched all three World Cup matches along with husband. Meanwhile, I had a date! My dear pal Wray brought me to a special screening of the documentary Wordplay. (I felt a bit like an elderly aunt being taken for a Sunday drive, truth be told, but I was very glad to get out of the house.)
The film is about Will Shortz, the Times crossword, and the annual crossword competition he runs. The interviews with famous people who like puzzling (Jon Stewart, Bill Clinton, Mike Mussina, among others) are nearly as compelling as those with the champion puzzlers themselves. Former Times ombud Dan Okrent has a few particularly nutty moments. All in all, it was very entertaining and impressively sweet, with the subcultural peculiarities you might expect, but much less of a freakshow than you might imagine.
Anyway, this being a festival, Will Shortz and the film's director were both on hand to answer questions afterward, and then we all repaired to the "cinema lounge" for a crossword competition of our own, run by Shortz. Wray and I hesitated, but decided to see what it was all about. Most of the rest of the audience showed up, too. We were given 20 minutes to solve next Tuesday's puzzle, with prizes for the first several people to finish fully and correctly.
Eyeing the room, I figured the competition would be fairly tough. The Q&A questions had been very good, very well-informed, and there were clearly a lot of New York Times types in the group. And while I do the puzzle every day, I didn't think of myself as a particularly fast solver. Anyway, they handed us the puzzles and we were off. I was really tense. Really really tense. But when I filled in the last square and raised my hand, Will Shortz was holding up a large card marked "2" and looking pointedly at me. At me!
Of course I then panicked, because I realized that I hadn't actually checked my work. But when the 20 minutes were up, and he announced the top two finishers, there I was! Number 2! I walked up and claimed my prize (the companion book to the film, pretty cool, actually) to hearty applause.
So who was number one? A ringer! He was a SEVEN-TIME CROSSWORD TOURNAMENT CHAMPION who lives in the area and happened to be in the audience! So unfair. He got the festival swag bag as his prize. That should have been mine!
There is no justice in this world, not even in the puzzler segment of this world.
Still, that couldn't detract from the thrill of victory. But it does raise two pressing questions. For one thing, why am I suddenly on an unintentional quiz-competition kick?
And, perhaps more troubling: Since I've already done the crossword, what will I do with myself on Tuesday??
*other entries in this series can be found here.
In our case, the answer was predetermined, in part: Baby wore her Brasil outfit and watched all three World Cup matches along with husband. Meanwhile, I had a date! My dear pal Wray brought me to a special screening of the documentary Wordplay. (I felt a bit like an elderly aunt being taken for a Sunday drive, truth be told, but I was very glad to get out of the house.)
The film is about Will Shortz, the Times crossword, and the annual crossword competition he runs. The interviews with famous people who like puzzling (Jon Stewart, Bill Clinton, Mike Mussina, among others) are nearly as compelling as those with the champion puzzlers themselves. Former Times ombud Dan Okrent has a few particularly nutty moments. All in all, it was very entertaining and impressively sweet, with the subcultural peculiarities you might expect, but much less of a freakshow than you might imagine.
Anyway, this being a festival, Will Shortz and the film's director were both on hand to answer questions afterward, and then we all repaired to the "cinema lounge" for a crossword competition of our own, run by Shortz. Wray and I hesitated, but decided to see what it was all about. Most of the rest of the audience showed up, too. We were given 20 minutes to solve next Tuesday's puzzle, with prizes for the first several people to finish fully and correctly.
Eyeing the room, I figured the competition would be fairly tough. The Q&A questions had been very good, very well-informed, and there were clearly a lot of New York Times types in the group. And while I do the puzzle every day, I didn't think of myself as a particularly fast solver. Anyway, they handed us the puzzles and we were off. I was really tense. Really really tense. But when I filled in the last square and raised my hand, Will Shortz was holding up a large card marked "2" and looking pointedly at me. At me!
Of course I then panicked, because I realized that I hadn't actually checked my work. But when the 20 minutes were up, and he announced the top two finishers, there I was! Number 2! I walked up and claimed my prize (the companion book to the film, pretty cool, actually) to hearty applause.
So who was number one? A ringer! He was a SEVEN-TIME CROSSWORD TOURNAMENT CHAMPION who lives in the area and happened to be in the audience! So unfair. He got the festival swag bag as his prize. That should have been mine!
There is no justice in this world, not even in the puzzler segment of this world.
Still, that couldn't detract from the thrill of victory. But it does raise two pressing questions. For one thing, why am I suddenly on an unintentional quiz-competition kick?
And, perhaps more troubling: Since I've already done the crossword, what will I do with myself on Tuesday??
*other entries in this series can be found here.
