Tag Archives: ACPT

Crossword / Puzzle News Roundup!

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It’s a good week to be a puzzle enthusiast. The Boswords Spring Themeless League kicked off on Monday, the same day one of my favorite puzzly people got her first puzzle published in The New York Times.

And we’ve got news on a crossword convention, upcoming tournaments, a worthwhile puzzle-fueled charity endeavor, and a new Hallmark puzzly mystery debuting tonight.

So, without further ado, let’s get to the puzzle news roundup!

Crossword Con

April 4th marks the second annual Crossword Con, presented by the puzzle app Puzzmo.

Crossword Con is all about bringing together crossword fans and constructors to discuss crosswords as a cultural touchstone and an art form.

For their second outing, the organizers are casting their eyes to the future, asking “what’s on the horizon for crosswords, and what changes are already bubbling just beneath the surface?”

Although it’s only a half-day event, it is certainly jam-packed with notable names with plenty to offer on the subject of crosswords! Speakers and guests include Kate Hawkins, Will Nediger, Ada Nicolle, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Laura Braunstein, Rob Dubbin, Natan Last, Adrienne Raphel, and Brooke Husic.

With Crossword Con in New York and the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament starting the same day in Stamford, April 4th is certainly an eventful day for crossword fans all over (and particularly those in New England).

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Crossword Tournaments

And speaking of crossword tournaments, if you’re a competitive crossword fan, the gears are already in motion for puzzly challenges all year long.

Registration for June’s Westwords Crossword Tournament is open right now.

The registration for October’s Midwest Crossword Tournament opens on April 2nd, just a few days before this year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (April 4th through the 6th) will be held.

Of course, physical tickets for the ACPT sold out a while ago, but you’re still welcome to register for the virtual tournament to participate!

And the activities alongside this year’s tournament are a doozy. There’s an event celebrating the 20th anniversary of the “Wordplay” documentary, a magical puzzly performance from David Kwong, and an acrostics event on Friday night!

Lots of competitive puzzle fun coming up!

These Puzzles Fund Abortion 5

There’s a long history of activism and advocacy through puzzles. Women of Letters, Grids for Good, Queer Qrosswords… these are just a few prominent examples of constructors and creators donating their time and puzzly efforts to benefit the world at large.

And for the fifth year in a row, cruciverbalists and editors have united to help fund safe and affordable abortion care.

These Puzzles Fund Abortion 5 contains 23 puzzles “centered around social and reproductive justice themes,” all for a minimum donation of $25.

If you donate $50 or more, you will also receive the puzzle packs for the previous four years of TPFA.

It’s a very worthy cause and I hope you find it in your heart to contribute to the health and safety of others.

Mystery Island: Winner Takes All

To close out today’s puzzle news roundup, I’m happy to spread the word about a new Hallmark original mystery movie.

Mystery Island: Winner Takes All returns to the setting of last year’s Mystery Island.

In the original, a luxury private island murder mystery experience turns real when a dead body is found during the event. It falls to psychologist Dr. Emilia Priestly and detective Jason Trent to unravel riddles, deceit, and shadowy motives to solve the murder.

In tonight’s sequel, we return to the island for another murder mystery game, this time created by our crime-solving duo of Emilia and Jason. With a cash prize on the line, tensions are already high, but things take a dark turn when an employee turns up dead during the game.

Anyone who enjoyed my recaps and reviews of Hallmark’s Crossword Mysteries will be happy to hear that I will be reviewing not only the new Mystery Island sequel, but the original as well!

Mystery Island: Winner Takes All debuts tonight at 8 PM Eastern on Hallmark Mystery.

Phew! So much puzzly goodness going on. Will you be attending any crossword events this year? Let us know in the comments below.

Happy puzzling, everyone!

Crossword News Roundup!

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In today’s blog post, we’ve got a trio of crossword-related news items for you!

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Welcome back, Will!

Earlier this week, The New York Times announced that Will Shortz was back at work editing the Times crossword (beginning with the December 30th puzzle).

This is wonderful news, as Will had to step back from his editing work in February to attend to his recovery.

For those who were unaware, Will suffered a stroke that affected his mobility — he offered details on both the stroke and his recovery to Brain & Life magazine — but he is back to editing and playing table tennis.

From the NYT article:

In addition to completing hours of physical therapy and rehab, Will slowly returned to puzzle making and editing throughout the year. He directed the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, returned as the creator of NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday Puzzle in April and resumed choosing puzzles for The Times in May.

We wish Will all the best in his continued recovery and return to puzzling. I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with Will a number of times — mostly at the ACPT, though I did interview him for the blog years ago — and I’m very glad to hear that he’s well enough to enjoy both of his favorite pastimes again.

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And speaking of Will Shortz news, registration is open for the 47th edition of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament!

Once again being hosted in Stamford, CT, the ACPT is a weekend-long puzzle extravaganza of solving, puzzle-themed events, fun, and community.

This year’s tournament runs from April 4th through the 6th, and you can click here for more details (and to register for this year’s event, should the spirit move you).

Are you planning on competing this year? Let us know in the comments below! We’d love to hear from you.

Our last bit of crossword news was brought to our attention by friend-of-the-blog DGhandcrafted.

The jewelry crafting supply website Lima Beads has a puzzly promotion going on that might interest the craftier members of the readership.

There is a crisscross grid featured on the site for the entire month of January, and the numbered answers correspond to what’s on sale that particular day!

There’s even a chance to win a bonus prize if you solve the entire puzzle early!

It’s a pretty clever way to bring solvers and crafters back to the site throughout the month, and hopefully it’s a success for both the customers and Lima Beads.

Happy puzzling (and crafting) everyone!

The Robots Have Come For Our Crosswords!

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Well, it was bound to happen. We’ve seen it in chess, and Go, and Scrabble. Now, crosswords are the latest pastime to fall to the inevitable machine takeover of civilization.

Okay, I’m being a tad hyperbolic here. Robots aren’t snatching crossword puzzles out of peoples’ hands and solving them, after all.

But we have reached a peculiar milestone in AI and crossword history: a computer program won the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Sorta.

Dr. Fill, the crossword-solving creation of Matt Ginsberg, was able to balance the occasional solving mistake with a blistering solving speed in order to overtake any human competitors in its total tournament score.

But not by much. Former ACPT champion Erik Agard was only 15 points behind Dr. Fill on the seven tournament puzzles. Dr. Fill then went on to solve the championship puzzle in 49 seconds (while actual winner Tyler Hinman did so in three minutes).

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But, as it turns out, this isn’t the old Dr. Fill that has been competing in the ACPT for years. No, this year’s Dr. Fill is a curious hybrid of the original programming and a neural network known as the Berkeley Crossword Solver.

And this Frankenstein’s monster of puzzle-solving machinery is what toppled the competition in the first-ever virtual edition of the tournament.

According to an article on Slate:

An alliance came naturally. Ginsberg and the Berkeley crew started working together just two weeks before the tournament, plugging the latter system into the former, and the centaur program finally ran with just days to go.

The result, hastily constructed though it was, was a marvel, its pieces working hand in glove to solve crosswords. Ginsberg’s system handled the grid and the colder, mathematical side of things, searching and placing answers, while the Berkeley team’s system unriddled the hazier, “human” side of the language of the clues, crosswords’ music.

You know, it’s kind of reassuring that it took TWO computer programs working in tandem to best the top puzzle solvers.

Also, it’s not like Dr. Fill can actually win a tournament. Not until it can hold a marker and solve in person in front of everybody while Greg Pliska and Ophira Eisenberg crack wise about it, at least.

It does make next year’s tournament more intriguing. Will Dr. Fill perform as well “in person”? Or will the master cruciverbalists retake the title?

And hey, if anyone is building a body for Dr. Fill, please stop. Stop, rewatch every sci-fi movie about AI and robots, and then rethink your life choices.

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The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament Returns This Weekend!

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Hello fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers!

Normally, this reminder post would go up on Friday, but since the deadline to register to participate in this year’s virtual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is noon tomorrow, we’re posting a day early.

Yes, the 43rd edition of the ACPT — jokingly referred to as the Nerd Olympics — has gone online this year (though some folks are still attending in person). But it’s not just the competition puzzles! Prizes, panels, and more are planned across the weekend.

A full slate of events has been scheduled for Friday through Sunday, including the Merl Reagle Award, puzzle workshops, trivia and games, and the live-solving finals, including commentary from Greg Pliska and Ophira Eisenberg!

But who is constructing this year’s puzzles, you ask? A fine question.

Constructors Sam Ezersky, Emily Carroll, Patrick Berry, Kevin Der, Lynn Lempel, Mike Shenk, Ruth Bloomfield Margolin, and Robyn Weintraub are all contributing puzzles to this year’s tournament.

You can click here to register and visit the ACPT website for full details!

Will you be competing, fellow puzzlers? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

A Crossword Roundup: 10,000 Days of Shortz, The Crossword Mysteries, and ACPT!

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Hello crossword fans! In today’s post I just wanted to offer a quick little roundup of crossword-related items and stories, so I’ve got three for you today.

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Firstly, I’d like to congratulate Will Shortz on editing his 10,000th crossword! (Approximately. It’s actually his 10,000th day as editor, which is still a very impressive number!)

Friend of the blog Deb Amlen interviewed Will to mark the occasion, and it offers a nice little snapshot of Will’s career as editor of The New York Times crossword, as well as some insight into the man behind the puzzle.

There are also some intriguing stats included in the interview. This one caught my eye:

The Times is publishing more teen constructors than ever before. In the whole history of the Times Crossword up to me, only six teenagers are known to have had crosswords in the paper. I’ve published 46 teens so far, with two more coming up this month.

46 teens! That’s amazing.

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Of course, the part that’s getting a lot of traction online is this quote: “I read all but one of the daily crossword blogs”

Now, I hesitate to bring this part up, because there’s virtually no way to discuss it without sounding like I’m picking a side. It’s not hard to deduce what daily blog Will is referring to here — plenty of others have made the connection already — and the presumed writer of that blog responded to the comment in typically salty fashion, as did his many fans and readers.

I choose not to wade into that particularly turbulent Internet space, which is why I’m not naming names or providing links. If you are that interested, it’s not hard to find them.

But I DO want to say that there are plenty of terrific crossword blogs out there, big and small, that all add to the daily crossword discussion in important ways. Some are more critical than others. Some are acerbic to the point of being fairly unpleasant to read regularly. But there’s definitely a blog out there about the Times daily crossword for you.

In any case, congratulations to Will Shortz on 10,000 days as the most recognizable name in crosswords. Other than Brian Eno, Yoko Ono, Bobby Orr, Mel Ott, Rip Torn, Oona Chaplin…

Anyway, congrats on being A recognizable name in crosswords. =)

Speaking of recognizable names and crosswords, the fifth Crossword Mysteries movie will be premiering Sunday night, April 11th, at 8 PM Eastern! It is entitled Riddle Me Dead, and here’s the plot synopsis:

Tess gets invited to be part of a popular game show, but when the host is unexpectedly murdered, she and Detective Logan O’Connor try to discover who was behind it all.

Not only that, but Hallmark Movies & Mysteries is running a Crossword Mysteries marathon all day, starting at noon, so you can catch up on all things Tess Harper and Logan O’Connor before the newest entry in the series debuts that night!

Of course, you could also just read the four posts about the movies that I’ve written for the blog here, here, here, and here. Just saying.

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Finally, I’ll cap off this trifecta of crossword-related notes by reminding you that registration is open for this year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament! The tournament is running from April 23rd through the 25th, complete with all sorts of events!

The tournament has gone virtual this year, so if you’ve ever thought about entering the tournament and testing your puzzly skills, this is the perfect opportunity for you. The deadline to register is Friday, April 23rd, noon Eastern.

There are sample puzzles to try out as well!

Will you be attending ACPT this year, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers? Or tuning in for the latest Crossword Mysteries film? What do you think of 10,000 days of Will Shortz-edited NYT crosswords? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

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You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

Upcoming Puzzle Events! The Spring Themeless League, Plus ACPT Going Virtual!

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Most years, the puzzle event season starts with the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in late March/early April, but 2021 is different. We already had the Boswords Winter Wondersolve event last month, and there are plenty of exciting puzzle events on the horizon!

Did you know that there’s still time to sign up for the Boswords 2021 Spring Themeless League? It starts Monday night, and you should check it out!

Last year, Boswords launched the Fall Themeless League, a clever weekly spin on traditional crossword tournament-style solving. Instead of cracking through a number of puzzles in a single day (or two), the Fall Themeless League consisted of one themeless crossword each week, scored based on your accuracy and how fast you completed the grid.

Each week’s puzzle only had one grid, but there were three sets of clues, each representing a different difficulty level for solvers. Smooth was the least challenging, Choppy was the middle ground, and Stormy was the most challenging.

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The Spring Themeless League follows the same format. Every Monday in March and April, a themeless puzzle awaits you!

Not only is there some serious talent among the constructors — Brooke Husic, Aimee Lucido, Rachel Fabi, Patti Varol, Ryan McCarty, Kevin Der, Peter Wentz, Ricky Cruz, and the duo of Brynn Diehl and Mark Diehl — but there’s a great community of solvers out there participating in after-puzzle chats and Twitch streams.

The Fall Themeless League gave me a new appreciation for what themeless crosswords are capable of, and I’m happy to be signed up for the Spring edition!

The Spring Themeless League will conclude with the championship puzzle on April 26th, which will make for a busy few days of puzzle solving, since another puzzle event is set for that very weekend!

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Yes, you might’ve heard that the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament will be hosted online this year.

The 43rd annual edition of the granddaddy of all crossword tournaments will take place April 23rd through the 25th. We’re awaiting further details, but hopefully we’ll know more soon!

So there you go, the next two months of puzzles all planned and set for you, with more to come this summer.

Will you be participating in either the Spring Themeless League or ACPT’s virtual event this year, fellow puzzlers? Let us know in the comment section below! We’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!