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.)

An ACPT Thought Experiment

There's been flurries this year about the costs for ACPT being re-jiggered this year (I suppose the theme is "you thought you could save $50 by not choosing the banquet -- ha ha fooled you!"). So I thought about preparing a "bid" for bringing the thing down here. Obviously I won't be able to actually do a budget, because I don't know what the current budget really is, nor am I going to bother hotels for information about an event I don't have the authority (legal, moral, or otherwise) to negotiate for.

But I could at least gather information about what the event would "look like" from the contestants' perspective (getting here, events, perhaps relative prices for incidentals) and see how it compares. Then comes your part, dear reader(s): are the trade-offs for a non-New York setting worth saving (hypothetically) some money? I know what my answer is, but then I wouldn't have to travel. (And better yet, if you do one for your town, then presumably we might find the "best" place to do this, wherever it is.) Responses in the comments, or trackbacks I suppose.

So the details: The proposed site would be the Sheraton Norfolk (or, if we have some sort of contract with Marriott, I suppose we could move to the Norfolk Marriott three blocks down).

• Getting here: Norfolk International has the name-brand airlines (including Southwest). If you're an AirTran or Frontier partisan, you can fly into the Newport News airport, but that can be a heck of a ride down to Norfolk. Either way, you would need to do a shuttle service to get out of the airport (from NIA, it would be $22 to the hotel and from Newport News $55, near as I can tell). I don't know how well the competence of the shuttle company compares to Connecticut Limo, but I don't see how it could be worse.
• Stuff around: Well, you're in Norfolk. You've got a zoo, a nautical museum, the botanical garden, a mall, and a reasonable amount of water. There's a bus system that I've never used that can get you to all these places. There are a few concert arenas there, which may or may not have something going. And if you're willing to rent a car and go further afield, there's Colonial Williamsburg and some battlefields, plus some more museums. And there's Virginia Beach, but in February that may not necessarily be an asset. (Maybe if we go back to St. Patrick's Day....)
• Sleeping: The any-idiot-off-the-street room rate at the Sheraton for Feb 19-21, 2010 is $105. Presumably we could do even better on the group rate.
• Eating: I don't know that area at all, but Yahoo maps seems to indicate that there's some fast food type things down highway 460 (don't know how walkable that is, 'cause that's a big-deal road, but it's about five blocks) and some more normal restaurants to the NW, towards Scope Arena and the water (but that's more like ten to twenty blocks away).
• Facilities: The main ballroom is 12685 sq ft. The main ballroom at Brooklyn is 16000, if we used it all. My spatial visualization ability is notoriously non-existent, but my recollection would seem to be that we had ABCDE, but not FGHI (based on the floor plan on the Marriott site) meaning we were using about 12350 square feet for a capacity of 935. The hotel has about 470 rooms (the Marriott, a 14400 sq ft ballroom and about 400 sleeping rooms). The hotel bar closes at midnight, which is probably a concern to several.
  

The main difference I can imagine is that we are a more car-centered area; getting around without a car is just not as easy as in the Northeast, and I've not been on the water in Norfolk at all, let alone enough to know how pedestrian-friendly the territory is.

So there you are. Would it be worth it? You tell me.

List

1. The advantages of today's grocery run are (a) I got to get my car cleaned off in advance of tomorrow's 8am class and (b) I got to then park in the sun to let more melting happen.
2. Of course, the only problem was on the passenger side (and the front and back, naturally); the driver's side was completely free of any snow, ice, or other winter accoutrement.
3. It would be really nice if I could get, when I wanted, the third item of a numbered list to be labeled in the Monty Python and the Holy Grail stylee. My attempt here was not accepted by Blogger with a "Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tag is broken" message. My readers who know CSS (if I have any readers who know CSS) will have to tell me whether this is something that needs to be done in a style instead.
4. Less than two weeks to ACPT. Now I need to practice "sitting in a chair and doing things in pencil" (as opposed to "sitting in a chair and doing things on computer" and "lounging about doing things in pencil"). Also have started collecting estimates on bringing a large number of puzzles to Brooklyn.
   

This Recent Time Period in Puzzles

1. OMG OMG two P&A metas in a row. Either Foggy is slipping or I, after 10 years of this, have started to not suck at these. They both seem vanishingly unlikely.
2. My ACPT training: I started working on the big book of Boston Globe puzzles when I got to the auto shop today at 9:30. My hand started to hurt around 12:15, so that's not bad I guess. I took a break and started in again at 12:30 and then the car was ready at about 1. I was unable to solve one of the HH puzzles. :( Bonus observation: Not even Henry Hook can make a Sunday-size quote puzzle anything but insipid, or obscure. It was a bit of a shock to the system to do a "real" HH puzzle after several quote puzzles in a row.
3. Next part of ACPT training: print out Fireball 2, find the Official ACPT Pencil And Eraser, set the kitchen timer to 20:00, and go. It won't be a complete reproduction , because I won't be sitting at the junction of two of those long industrial tables which are at different heights, meaning I have to sit at an angle (because I'm right at the legs of the table) and add some padding underneath the puzzle (so that the puzzle lies flat). Maybe I should just sit on the aisle this year.
4. OMGOMG two P&A metas
5. I got seduced by a quote for my next acrostic, and didn't originally realize that it had 452 characters in it. I have since edited it, and now it's at 294 characters (IIRC). It still might be too much.
6. I have made 0 progress on my idea for an ACPT puzzle suite.
7. I won't be able to bring Matt Gaffney pencils (plural) to Brooklyn, since I've only got one and I'm already dead for this month. (Well, technically the book prizes now include a pencil too, but those odds aren't usually very good.)
   

P&A Progress Post

This is here mainly to remind myself, when I want to throw this entire stack of papers out a window, that I've actually done something with this set. Also, to help me keep track of which ones of these I want to look at sooner rather than later. (And of course all the finished puzzles are implicitly "unless I've done something stupid".)

Shadow of the Vampire: sure looks nice, though
Day Watch: ding! (the hint here was the needed inspiration, so hooray!)
Space Vampires: 0 done, should get to quick
Billy the Kid vs. Dracula: ding!
Let the Right One In: ding!
From Dusk till Dawn: ding!
Monster Squad: ding!
Dracula: ding! (Tell you what: starting in the lower left, combined with the flavortext, originally sent me in a far different direction from where I was supposed to go.)
Queen of the Damned: ding! (currently: favorite puzzle) (and re-ding! because my original answer was (5 8) instead of (7 9) as the hints claim it should be) (and now un-ding! since this answer can't fit in the meta grid now:( )
Cronos: ding!
Scream, Blacula, Scream: ding!
The Hunger: 0.5 done I will always be able to solve the -0ku part and never ever solve the bit where you actually get the answer
The Wisdom of Crocodiles: ding!
Count Dracula: ding! (Used the hint rather than figure out what the total number was supposed to be)
Metas: Mirrors fixed in Being Human, and one word revealed. I have taken a reasonable guess and submitted it (hence making Vamp forever out-of-bounds).

Ten-to-eleven puzzles done already, using a total of three hints: I don't know what's wrong with me.

AND FINALLY: ding ding ding! So back to the original answer for QotD, which made my guess, while correct, even more outlandish (since I had fewer letters now, rather than more). Oh well.

ACPT Questions and Reckless Answers

1. What interesting things are going to happen Friday evening? Good question. There will be a huge crush of humanity trying to meet and greet and set up plans for Friday after the games and Saturday lunch and Saturday night and Sunday lunch and Sunday after the awards. One group getting together Saturday noon will discover that none of them actually knew each other previously, and three romantic couples will form in the protoplasm. Eric Berlin will come up with something interesting, specifically awarding Tyler Hinman and Merl Reagle a free drink from the hotel bar. The rest of the time will be filled with an old tape featuring news reports of the ACPT from 1984, incorrectly indignant letters-to-the-editor from Will's pile, and a pick-your-poison contest where everyone will do the cryptic (as they always do), despite the alternatives of (1) a page of 4x4 Kenken(TM)(R)(K)(P), (2) guessing what's in Henry Hook's pocket, (3) a page of 6x6 Kenken(TM)(R)(K)(P), and (4) a diagramless.

2. What's up with Saturday night? Pliska and Chaneski will come up with something, and will stretch it too far because nobody else will have volunteered something, although this year we'll be able to legitimately do 1 vs. 100 on Saturday night because only 100 people will have bothered to show up.

3. Aren't there some crossword puzzles? Yes.

3a. Well? Byron Walden will make his triumphant return to puzzle #5, which will be a rebus theme involving two Greek letters, two Cyrillic letters, and two Hebrew letters. The subsequent applause after announcing Maura Jacobson's name for puzzle #6 will delay the tournament for ten minutes. Merl will have the Sunday puzzle, and will manage to get 21 puns in a 21x21. Five contestants will break 2:00 on puzzle #1, and Trip Payne will pull a muscle trying to break 2:00 on puzzle #4.

4. Who gets the money? I think it's just reckless enough to answer: Dan Feyer, 2010 ACPT champion.

5. A talent show? Again? Not a talent show: a "variety program", just like Milton Berle used to do. Guests will include Ed Wynn, Martha Raye, and Francis Heaney, who will be so vaguely discomfited at being unable to boycott the awards banquet this year that he will write and perform a self-mocking parody of "Howl".

6. What will be the biggest surprise of the weekend? Will not announcing time/location of the next tournament, as he will be investigating taking the show on the road rather than continue to pay the extortionate fees charged by the Brooklyn site. [Who am I kidding; that will never happen. The real surprise: the hotel security team not kicking puzzlers out of the lobby at the stroke of midnight this year.]

This Fortnight in Puzzles

• Some great crosswords in the NYTimes recently; the all-name puzzle from last week, and today's Heaney/Blindauer construction was great. (It was interesting: I figured out what the gimmick was going to be, and then only once did I consciously use that gimmick when solving the puzzle, since I ended up getting most of the "theme" entries the other way in the end.)
• Although, the most fantastic crossword of the year was Matt Gaffney's most recent contest puzzle. Even though the contest is over, if you haven't done it go there now. (Granted the meta is hard. You will still like it, and if you don't figure it out you will be amazed when you read the writeup.)
• The Puzzle Boat puzzles are progressing, which I didn't think six months ago I would ever say again. I managed to get through ring three in less than a week. I still don't have ring two done, nor have I even yet figured out the basic conceit of the metapuzzle, let alone solve the thing. I'm temporarily stopped in ring four, as puzzle #1 has gone completely by me, and puzzle #3 involves getting what appears to be some '90s version of WoW (which is therefore presumably a '90s version of D&D) and playing a specially-crafted world/level/whatever. I'm filing that one in "do only if necessary" (along with the Paper Folder puzzle and the one with all the images to sort in ring two).
  
• And in a shock, I have the contest in this week's Fill Me In. Please, somebody, do this puzzle, so that I am not the first person to have a contest go completely dead. Please?
  

Walmart Juxtapositions

Seen next to each other at WalMart today: (1) a bag of "Bliss" mint-and-chocolate candy; (2) a can of generic-brand sliced beets.

Wonders of an Alumni Magazine

1. The article about social networking refers several times to "[and several other percussion video hosting sites]". I am frankly amazed there's even one "percussion video hosting site".
2. From the "please give us money" article:
   

   "My parents helped pay for my first year, then I told them I would pay the rest. I don't want my parents to help," he says, as if it's a point of independence and pride.

   
   "As if"? As if? Do the writers/editors not recognize it as such? What do they believe are independence and pride?
   

Things that are Happening

1. I am running another tournament at apterous.org; calling this one the Winter Closed because (a) it's close enough to winter for me and (b) it's a closed tournament (based on rating). A little smaller than the Summer Open was (45 total, compared to I believe 48 for the Summer Open, counting only distinct entrants). The side speed event is another 30 (but pretty much the same people). I deliberately made these as self-running as I could (hello Holland system!), and you can watch them vicariously at their own website (thanks Google sites!). Yes I did do that with the championship division pool names, thanks.
2. Speaking of tournaments, the World Mahjong Championship is coming up in about ten months. I haven't qualified here (there are 20 spots for "the rest of the world" -- non-Europe and non-Asia) and am not even sure who is verifying those qualifiers. (The official site says that the "national mahjong organizations" are setting the standards. What the national mahjong organization is for "the rest of the world" I'm still working on. The US mahjong association doesn't seem to have anything up at the moment.) There are also 5 spots for online qualifiers, which might be more likely; although even there I haven't played a serious game of mahjong for about ... four or five months? I'm not sure my membership at MahjongTime is still valid. (Checks... I was able to log in just now so that's good.)
3. The hybrid class is progressing, slightly. I was not at all surprised when a grand total of one person appeared to have done the hybrid work for the off day last week (out of a class of 20-ish, depending on how many people have (been) dropped). Why some of these people agreed to a hybrid class when they don't have a computer or internet access I'm not sure.
4. Did not die in the storm this weekend, even though I was in Virginia Beach at the time. We all got caught in a game of chicken (IMO) since the site of the awards banquet didn't want to lose a lot of money by canceling on us, despite the fact that they were flooded at the time (we had to drive out via the golf cart track, since the road was gone) and we didn't want to lose a lot of money by not showing, despite the fact that it was sheer lunacy to go (since they were flooded at the time). I think I will continue to resist promotion so I don't have to do this again next year.
5. I now have a new debit card to replace the one that got misappropriated over Halloween.