Crossworld News & Notes from ACPT Weekend
ACPT Congratulations and more
It was a blast to return to the Stamford Marriott this weekend and meet many of you for the first time at ACPT 2022. Congratulations to Tyler Hinman, winner of the 2022 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and to second- and third- place finishers Dan Feyer and David Plotkin, as well as all other award winners. See full results here.
Constructors were, in order of the tournament: Gary Cee, Joel Fagliano, Christina Iverson, Tracy Gray, Brendan Emmett Quigley (with a killer puzzle 5), Robyn Weintraub, Mike Shenk, and Wyna Liu.
If you want some more of their puzzles, here is just a quick snapshot: Joel writes the NYT minis, Christina is now Assistant Editor at L.A. Times, BEQ writes puzzles for his blog and the HUB Crosswords, Mike is the editor of the Wall Street Journal crossword, Robyn makes puzzles for The New Yorker, Wyna is Associate Editor at The New York Times, and Gary and Tracy have both made puzzles for The New York Times. Most of them have also appeared in various outlets.
In other tournament news, Boswords will hold their summer event, a one-day in person and virtual tournament, on July 24 in Boston, and Brian Cimmet is tentatively planning on both in-person and virtual options for Lollapuzzoola in New York City on 27 August (a Saturday).
If you missed the Kickstarter a few months back, Hayley Gold's Letters to Margaret comic is now on sale, and there's a discount code (ACPT22, active until April 9th) to get the ACPT bundle for $30. This book includes puzzles by with puzzles by Andy Kravis and Mike Selinker, and a sequel with puzzles edited by Will Nediger is in the works, and the team has shared a cryptic puzzle to celebrate the release.
We’ve highlighted the “Just The Grids” projects from Rachel and clr at Just Gridding before, but for the first time last week I (Matt) tuned into to their Twitch stream in which they review the submitted clues and talk through the process of finishing up the puzzle. Having a peek into that process was really enlightening. We both had the pleasure of contributing and would love for you to check it out when the puzzle becomes available online later this week.
In a related project, hopefully you took a look this past week at the Tabula Rasa pack coordinated by meatdaddy at The Deli Counter. We included a small description on the day most puzzles ran, but more from meat:
"Tabua Rasa is a project where I constructed a 15x themeless grid with fun, flexible fill and sent it out to whoever for them to clue however their little freakazoid heart desired. The three rules I had for this project were this: there needs to be basic grammatical agreement between your clue and the fill (no, I don't really care about spelling or typos), no needless bummers, and any bigotry will result in your puzzle being entirely excluded from this project. It was also important to me that people who've never constructed a puzzle got in on this, even if it's just the cluing portion. I think this endeavor was successful in both of those regards, and ALL the results are truly bangers. Thank you to everyone involved!"
It was great to flip through the puzzles and see the different approaches, as well as generally to keep seeing the ways in which the community tries new things with puzzles. This project reflects the growing community in other ways, as well; meatdaddy notes on the blog post that a number of participants do not have their own sites, many of whom are active in the scene as Twitch streamers.
Fun news from one of the few 21x21 outlets this week, as Joon Pahk announced he’s joining HUB Crosswords, a Patreon-based subscription that makes the Boston Globe puzzles by Emily Cox & Henry Rathvon and Brendan Emmett Quigley available to a wider audience, on a slight delay. Emily and Henry are stepping back, and BEQ recruited Joon to the team.
Joon is a prolific Rows Garden and variety constructor - his Outside the Box subscriptions are a must if you’re interested in either - but hasn’t made many “American” crosswords recently, so it will be great to see what he puts out.
Ricky at Lexicon Devil has released a pay-what-you-want pack of midi puzzles called Midi Controller on Gumroad.
We asked Ricky to share a bit about his site: Monthly contest meta puzzles alternate with tough themelesses and occasional themed, cryptic and variety puzzles. Humor alternates between dark and goofy. Above average number of references to 90s-00s music and other Oregon Trail Generation cultural detritus.
Parker Higgins and Ross Trudeau’s Honeypot Puzzle Fragments zine which recently completed a successful Kickstarter will be available to nonbackers for purchase later this week.
Since the last News & Notes Elizabeth Goodney (3/28) and Jasmine Lin (4/1) made their USA Today debuts. Congrats to everyone!