A Saturday in August

• It felt really weird to be in my bathroom brushing my teeth at 7am when I had an 8am flight. The ideas of online checkin + not having to drive one (or four!) hours to an airport have still not really sunk in.
• Flight up non-eventful. Between waiting in the terminal plus on-flight, I got four more puzzles done in the book of Hook 'n' Hex Boston Globe Sundays. Eventually I will finish that book....
• Although the flight up didn't do good things to my back, for whatever reason; it took most of the walk through the terminal for me to get back to standing up straight.
  
• Got my expired MetroCard swapped for a working one. Somehow forgot that the machines in the airport don't take cash, so I guess I didn't have to be so finicky about making sure about cash the day before.
• The transportation the rest of the way went smoothly; no trouble getting off the M60 at the right place, or getting on the Metro. Although the bus ride did finish off the back pretty thoroughly.
• Missed the boat the first time past the church, as I was expecting to go in the big doors where the stairs were; except they were walled over. So, back to the courtyard, find the signs, and down to the basement.
• Got my registration packet and my index card for the team game: "Malia". We were warned to be looking for a team of four, so I figured my group was pretty obvious (and it was). I don't know whether this part was Only Connect-inspired, as there were quite a few generalities (like "Joe") and people who fit into multiple groups (but only one way to get everybody into a group of four, presumably).
• Did some mingling with the group, as always. Round tables with splinters this year, so no resting your hands on the edges. Ended up sitting with Al Sanders (as last year) plus Joon Pahk.
• The final tally appeared to be 172 people this year, and in fact they were still trickling in as 11:00 rolled around, so we started a bit late.
• The play-at-home people are working now, so no more about the puzzles other than JOY. Also, I managed to legitimately beat Joon at one puzzle, but I never finished before Al this year.
  
• The group of us at lunch were a little late coming back, so we missed the first bit of Todd McClary's game, which was apparently to come up with a set of names that fit a category that had no repeated letters anywhere (the more letters the better).
• More puzzles.
• The group game got off to an inauspicious start, as a large chunk of people had already gone home (we, the Obamas, were short one person, and several groups were down to two), so there was much "oh, just find some people to work with".
  
• The group game was straightforward as these sorts of things go; but then even your average crossworder doesn't go for these sorts of things very often, and both of my teammates were stuck at "where are the directions?" So they got the ones with explicit directions and I got the ones that didn't really have them, and between us we made out okay.
• That final puzzle was hard. And another tie in calling "done", but since Al had an error (one of these years, Al!) it ended up not mattering.
  
• The trophies were old ACPT trophies from Ellen Ripstein's closet, which was a nice touch (plus a mug for "Worst Handwriting"). There were a lot of books from Puzzlewright Press, which surprises nobody. There was also an award for "Best former host" which got a lot of applause.
• They handed out ten prizes for each skill division, so that means I did get to hear my name called. People still remembered to chant, too, which was nice.
• Some more chat over pizza and ice cream at the end.
• The trip back was less smooth. I was able to get on and off the subway with no problems. It took me five tries to find the bus stop back to LGA, which is surprising given that most intersections (and this one too) only have four corners at them. I went (twice!) down Lexington Ave instead of down 125th, which just goes to show how bad my sense of direction is after coming up out of a hole in the ground. (It's bad enough just normally.) Plus I was being rained on the whole time.
  
• The bus was rather crowded, but the instant we got into Queens it emptied enormously.
• Upon arrival at the airport, I had convinced myself that my upgrade voucher I had redeemed was usable from the kiosk, which turns out to be not actually true, although I did get a piece of paper telling me to present $49 to the ticket agent. I went up to the agent and told my story, and when he opened up my account, the boarding pass printed out. I gave two ticket agents a chance to take my money, but they both took the opinion "if the boarding pass printed out, it's your seat". I guess that was my prize for the day. That, plus the flight landing about 20 minutes early.
• I think they added a dollar to the daily parking charge since the last time I flew PHF.
• This is a large number of bullet points, but it was a large day.
  

AirTran is leaving PHF a week before the ACPT, so this may be my last trip out of PHF (I'm going to have to look quite a bit for travel plans, since I doubt any of them will be quite the automatic "win" that AirTran from PHF to LGA was, especially with AirTran losing what seems like all of its perks along the way with the merger).

Vacation Day 1: No Rain Yet

Fortunately the thunderstorms stopped yesterday around 5:30, so it was smooth sailing for the evening festivities. Saw The Importance of Being Earnest at the ASC and it was excellent. They do entertainment during the interludes there, and they were definitely working on tying the interludes into the show -- the first break had the cast doing the B-52's Love Shack (I was definitely amused by seeing the actor playing Lady Bracknell, still dressed as Lady Bracknell obviously, doing the Fred whats-his-name spoken parts of the song), and the second had the cast doing I Got You, Babe in pairs. The stage left on-stage seating was taken by a group of scenic females, who were alternately amused and horrified by the cast's attempts to use them in the story. It was a bit of a small house, but it was a Wednesday night in the beginning of July so that's probably expected.

This morning was some more wandering -- a lot of churches today, and a music studio (or at least something labeled a music studio; last night coming back from the play walking past what had appeared to be an abandoned garage next to the hotel, there was definitely a band playing there. Perhaps it's just a very exclusive club). It was pushing 90 I think, then cooled off rather suddenly and given yesterday I decided I should probably get while I was just sweating and not drenched. The rain hasn't showed up yet though, so it may have been just a false alarm. I'll probably go back out tonight and see if there's anything going on north of here.

Update: It never did rain. North of here are a few houses and then the actual library. I also walked out the road I believe I need to take to get out of here tomorrow (the directions I had, while correct in every detail, did not actually help much in getting me here).

Vacation Day 0: Rain

I am on vacation, which is easy to spot because I have internet access. (It's only been 37 days since I had internet at home, and I've only got 5 more to go!) The theme for today has definitely been rain: I woke up this morning to somebody spraying water at my window with a hose (which turned out to be Mother Nature), left in the rain, drove in the rain to Richmond where there was 10 minutes of sun (I even put on my sunglasses!) followed by clouds and intermittent rain until five miles from Staunton when the sun started shining again.

I did the rest and relax thing for a bit when I got here, then wandered off for a walk. We're at the edge of downtown here, it looks like, so I headed that way. Definitely a lot of old buildings that have "Valley Bank" and "Library" and "YMCA" etched into them but are now things like a BB&T and an apartment house and a hotel. Downtown had the usual: some shops, lots of trendy coffee stores and restaurants (including the Zynodoa of Matt Gaffney fame, which didn't look like it would appreciate me in a T-shirt and jeans even if the T-shirt had a parody of "The Scream" on it (which it does)). A zillion lawyers' offices, although since one of the streets (just shy of the courthouse) said Barristers' Row I guess we'll allow it. I'm not much of a picture taker, but there were a couple shots I might have liked to get, but the camera is in NN so never mind. I was out for about 45 minutes and was just getting back when the thunderstorm let loose. We'll see how long this one lasts.

The stated goal of the expedition was to find the ASC since I have tickets for tonight, which didn't actually happen. I suppose if I had looked it up on the map before I left I might have had better luck -- I was thrown off by the fact that, at least according to the map, it is not on the same street as its street address (the street address is Beverley St while the building appears to be on Market St).

We'll see what tomorrow holds -- I might go exploring the other way, depending on the how the weather shapes up (supposed to be hot, which is unfortunate, and not raining, which is fortunate). If worse comes to worst, there's always the Woodrow Wilson birthplace. (Never been a fan of such: even if you grant greatness to Wilson, and I don't know why you would, none of it would really attach to the building where he was born. I walked past it, and it is definitely a building (red brick); more than that I need not know.)

ACPT: The Numbers (2011)

This year I downloaded the full-version, extra-deluxe, double-the-cost version of the scores spreadsheet (thanks Doug Heller for making it available!) which has for everybody not just the points they scored but how they got there (wrong letters, wrong words, minutes on the clock). Granted they will still be making corrections (one of my errors was inexplicably un-highlighted, so I know there's at least one correction to make), but I can have some more confidence in my formulas. Maybe I'll make some pictures. (If you have some requests for pictures, then let me know.)

655 people were there for at least one puzzle, so my current 59th (after making above correction) will still put me in the top 10%, so at least I didn't reach my anti-goal. I missed all of my actual goals though (11500, B finals, and/or no mistakes, which when it comes down to it are pretty much the same goal at this point). The puzzles themselves definitely had a broader difficulty range, but skewing harder rather than easier (much unlike last year). I felt there was only one real clunker (#6; sorry Maura, but don't lie to me in the blurb: those puns were neither names nor from tomorrowland).

Puzzle #1: median score 1130 (corresponding to finishing correctly with 8:xx on the clock); 84% solved this correctly. I finished with 12 on the clock and 1230 points, which was conveniently enough also the top score in the room for this puzzle.
Puzzle #2: median score 870 (the puzzle proper, with no bonuses, is 890 points, so this is equivalent to one blank square with no time on the clock); 38% solved this correctly. I finished with 17 on the clock and 1465 points; top score was 20 on the clock and 1540 points.
Puzzle #3: median score 1390 (corresponding to finishing correctly with 4:xx on the clock); 50% solved this correctly. I finished with 19 on the clock and 1765 points; top score was 25 on the clock and 1915 points.
Puzzle #4: median score 1135 (corresponding to finishing correctly with 9:xx on the clock); 73% solved this correctly. I finished with 15 on the clock and 1285 points; top score was 17 on the clock and 1335 points.
Puzzle #5: median score 380 (corresponding to getting 38 correct words during the time limit); 12% solved this correctly. I finished with 13 on the clock, but 2 errors, and 1155 points; top score was 21 on the clock and 1595 points.
Puzzle #6: median score 1715 (which is not a score you can get to by finishing correctly, but still requires finishing with plenty of time -- one error and 19:xx on the clock is the easiest way to get there); 55% solved this correctly. I finished with 22 on the clock, but 3(!) errors for only 1695 points; top score was 25 on the clock and 2035 points.
Puzzle #7: median score 1670 (again requires an error -- two errors (in one word) and 12:xx on the clock will do it); 32% solved this correctly. I finished with 32 on the clock, but an error, for 2155 points; top score was 37 on the clock and 2475 points.

Looking at this, that means the median solver (well, the median ACPT solver, at any rate) finished five puzzles (but made errors on two of those) and couldn't get through #2 or #5. In fact, going through gives the following almost-but-not-quite "completion" statistics (presumably this doesn't count people who finish in the last minute, as they will have a 0 for their time-remaining just like people who didn't finish. Arguably this is a flaw in the scoring but I doubt it's at the top of anybody's priority list):
Puzzle #1: 632/653 97%
Puzzle #2: 327/653 50%
Puzzle #3: 436/652 67%
Puzzle #4: 575/651 88%
Puzzle #5: 113/651 17%
Puzzle #6: 617/651 95%
Puzzle #7: 424/616 69%

As you can see puzzles 1-4 all had no more than a 15% "oops!" rate, in terms of the difference between percentage finishing and percentage being all correct. It was rather closer for puzzle 5, probably because of so few finishers (113 finishers, and 81 people correct). In contrast, the "oops!" rate for puzzle 6 is 40%, and for puzzle 7 37%. How much of that is fatigue, and how much to the quality/trickiness of the puzzles is a little hard to get at. (For comparison purposes, last year's "oops!" rates:
Puzzle #1: 13%
Puzzle #2: 19%
Puzzle #3: 16%
Puzzle #4: 18%
Puzzle #5: 4%
Puzzle #6: 24%
Puzzle #7: 24%
so a little larger for the beginning puzzles, and smaller for the last two.)

Things, ACPT and otherwise, in handy bullet format

• First good omen of the trip: when I arrive at LaGuardia and put my MetroCard in the machine, I have more money on it than I thought meaning I don't have to put any money in for the weekend.
• Second good omen of the trip: when I step outside, there is a bus already there.
• Early check-in worked again despite me not bothering to tell them, so hooray for the Brooklyn Bridge Marriott.
• Nap time! before the mingling (or in legal terminology "loitering").
  
• The loitering was made more difficult by the fact that the rent-a-cop seemingly couldn't decide where we weren't supposed to be, so every so often he'd clear us out of wherever we had congregated from the last time we moved. Eventually he did decide that we shouldn't be in front of the escalators or around the big table in the lobby, although by that point we were numerous enough that there was always someone in front of the escalators or around the big table in the lobby.
• Although by that point it was dinner time. This year I wandered off with Peter Gordon et al for Indian food and a very good chicken tandoori (which was not the only item of the menu that I was sure to recognize when it arrived, as they also had kebabs).
• Friday night festivities. I don't know (and I doubt that Wz will ever tell) the paid attendance here; my not-very-good estimating sense guesses 250. I was surprised how many people were there while still maintaining a sworn conviction that they didn't like cryptic crosswords, since the main event was a US/UK cryptic crossword tournament -- not that they had never done them, but that they had done them and didn't like them.
• For the Saturday main event, I do what I always do, which is get there a fair bit early, sit two seats in from the aisle, and see who shows up. This year I was around two rookies, an retiree who has been doing puzzles for a while (and was actually more of a cryptic fan, as he had entered many (and won several) of the English newspaper puzzle weekly contests) and who came back for Sunday, and a younger office manager from Brooklyn, who didn't (but insisted she was having fun on Saturday).
• I made many errors (as in six or so) over the last three puzzles (5,6,7) ranging from "understandable" to "I wasn't even thinking of that letter how did it get in my puzzle", which made for a very disappointing day all told.
• There was a one-act crossword-"themed" play presented, that had originally been done for some sort of playwright's playhouse/community theater organization in upstate New York. My reaction at the time was negative. Upon further review, I guess that any one sub-piece of the play was good; however, they were all mutually inconsistent so stringing them all together led to a not-very-good sum total.
• And then there was the "ACPT-zing [pronounced 'amazing'] race", which was a puzzle fest put together by Pliska'n'Chaneski. It appeared to be a very amazing piece of work, although I had volunteered to be a "judge", also known as "Canada", so I only got to see a very small portion of the thing as it happened. It was fun to see people looking for some flag they didn't really know (like Tanzania, or Nigeria, or the Marshall Islands), realizing that I was a country and scooting around to see my flag, and then saying "Oh. Canada." How they made a national anthem out of that I'll never know.
• Speaking of, I thought being a country would be rather restful, but I was just as excited as the players were watching them scurry around.
• The variety show was certainly varied, with a blues theme.
• The B finals had a really very interesting finish -- you should go look for it to watch.
• Dan smoked through the A finals as expected.

Riichi GMT Round 4

And we end not with a bang, but with an anguished cry of despair. I managed to pay for six of the first five hands, since my I-really-shouldn't-do-this-but-I've-lost-the-last-five-hands-and-this-makes-my-hand-able-to-go-out discard gave two of my opponents mahjong, and in RCR they both win. I had a couple good hands towards the end, but it was far too little. I managed to come in last at the table, even losing to the player who wasn't even there. Ugh.

Riichi GMT Round 3

A lot of self-drawn, a lot of dealer winning and keeping the deal -- in 50 minutes and 12 or so hands, we never did get all the way around as dealer once. I won the first three (two as dealer), then there was a draw, then my RHO won six in a row (five self-drawn so that we all had to pay) and was the winner by far. Still, two points, and I've now moved to the right side of the middle to 17th place.

Riichi GMT Round 2

Ooh now I'm upset. I managed to forget to declare riichi on the first hand (and didn't feel like letting my winning tile go by so I would get the chance on my next turn), so +3200 turned into +1600 right away. Building up a 17000 point lead in the first three hands felt great, though. But then I paid a couple big hands, and was down by a lot. Then I won a big hand back, but I was down 900 points with a minute on the clock and then I was upset again. (I ended up down by 4900 since the last hand was drawn and there was only one tenpai player which we all paid 1000 points to.) Third place at the table, so only 1 point puts me right at 19th of 36 players at halfway.

Riichi GMT Round 1

It's still really weird to me to play 50 minute rounds, rather than the traditional 90 minutes. Had a fair few good hands this go round, and actually won three without discarding for any, which for me is an exceptional go of defense. The last one was a really quick win with about :50 on the clock to get back into second place after East had self drawn a mangan hand, so two points so far.