Monday, February 22, 2010

ACPT: The Words

The numbers will come in a later post. (A spoiler is involved! Danger!)
  1. "Sales pitch" was probably the most talked-about clue over the weekend. Everybody said to me, "That was a very clever and original clue!" I said to all of them, "But this is the third time I've seen it this week!" Since no one else seemed to have heard of it recently, it must have been in my book of Hook 'n' Hex Boston Globe Sundays that I've been doing. (Logic!) I'm not going to go look through several dozen 21x21 puzzles for a three-letter word, though. But maybe you can consider this a pro-tip for next year's studying.
  2. I find it interesting that the only color pen that the rules stated you shouldn't use (green) turns out to be the only color in the standard Sharpie highlighter 4-color assortment that wasn't used (yellow for wrong, blue for right (as well as what the judges had to write your time on your paper), pink for "yes--no---wait I don't know"). The person next to me was using his favorite 49¢ Bic blue pen and got into a lot of trouble for it. (Do they use the scan system for the at-homes? Probably not.) I would bet you could get a green highlighter from Helene Hovanec at bargain prices right about now.
  3. I somehow watched the entire slide-show for Eric Berlin's first puzzle twice (after turning in the grid) without ever seeing the clue for ENT (something-down, hooking off the first E in SPEED).
  4. I got some motivation for continuing to work on a potential Friday night game of my own. Now I just have to learn how to construct some other variety puzzles (like diagramlesses), as well as puzzle suites. (I have no idea whether Will would consider a Friday night game with a diagramless and/or a cryptic in it as suitable for the crowd, but that's academic unless I actually manage to make one.)

2 comments:

Jan said...

Enjoyed meeting you this weekend. Thanks for the statistical rundown; it's exactly the information I've wondered about without having the initiative to work out myself!
As for a Friday night game, I think we did have a diagramless last year or the year before - or maybe it was the choice of a diagramless or another kind of puzzle. The NYT runs them as Sunday bonus puzzles, so it's not like they're not universally available to solvers. A cryptic should also be fair game, just not a 300-letter acrostic! (I haven't yet started the one you had available for everyone, but I am looking forward to it.) So, as for the Friday suite, go for it!

Ellen said...

The at-home puzzles are manually graded.