Add your times here.
Crosswords LA was held Saturday, May 12, 2012, at Loyola Marymount University. Elissa Grossman, director; Tyler Hinman, puzzle editor. Buy the puzzles here; all proceeds benefit Reading to Kids.
Share your times, and discuss the puzzles (and the tournament action, if you were there) in the comments!
10 comments:
I assume most people will be posting paper times, but I didn't have access to a printer when the puzzles were released, and I wanted to solve them ASAP in case of spoilers.
Since these are 'tournament' puzzles, I should also disclose that I had an error in puzzle 2 that I only noticed (and corrected) because the happy pencil didn't appear. On paper, I most likely would have missed it.
Aw, that's too bad - the Across Lite, not the error. I'm still waiting for access to a printer...
Printer problems here to, so AL it was. Error on the final puzzle that I'm sure to have not caught on paper, either -- 1D/30A. I had the male counterpart on 1D early on and never changed to the female, and since 30A was a name (thinking Beverly Hillbillies), didn't think twice. Unfortunate for me, because I think I did pretty good with the rest of the puzzle.
I'm guessing they're in a different order than they were at Crosswords LA? If you had 2 minutes on Trip's puzzle I'm just gonna quit now.
I believe the puzzle order was 1-Donna, 2-Byron, 3-Trip, 4-Aimee/Zoe, 5-BEQ, Final-Todd. At least that's how I entered them. Got off to a good start on the final by nailing 1D, but got majorly stuck in the NE.
BTW, I thought Trip's puzzle was brilliant.
Yes, Trip's puzzle was easily the best of the bunch. Great stuff.
The Finals puzzle was killer! Even harder on the whiteboard. :) I filled in a few short ones, but I couldn't get any traction for what seemed like forever. I honestly thought I wasn't going to finish the darn thing. But everything fell eventually, even though I filled in and erased numerous wrong entries.
I finished first! But I didn't check my board carefully enough and left a $%#&* blank square in the NE. I don't have the puzzle in front of me, but it was at the crossing of the 2nd Across and the 1st Down in that NE corner. Apparently Eric LaVasseur stared at that square for a good two or three minutes before he figured it out. So I had a frustrating finish, but it was still great day of puzzly goodness.
!*$# did I get the order wrong in the puzzle pack? Oh well, at least the constructors' names are right.
It appears that Trip's was really Puzzle 4. I adjusted the spreadsheet for posterity.
Byron's was my favorite overall. Trip's theme was cool (and I always enjoy his cluing), but otherwise it wasn't that interesting.
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