Crossworld by Marc Romano

Author:Marc Romano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780767921602
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2005-06-14T04:00:00+00:00

The Ordeal: A First Taste

Again a competitor in a crossword tournament has three enemies to face: the genius of puzzle constructors; the vagaries, vicissitudes, and inconstancy of his own mind; and the clock. At the 2003 tournament, a big problem was the clock: The Stamford Marriott staff had misplaced the gigantic analog one that had been used to time heats for umpteen previous tournaments, and it took some minutes—and much impatient grumbling on the part of the assembled contestants—for it to be located in whatever storeroom the hotel used to house Brobdingnagian timepieces that were pulled out only one weekend a year.

In 2004 the old analog device had been replaced by a digital one, which as we filed in and took our places ominously read 15:00, the time limit for the day's first puzzle. Once the room quieted down, Will Shortz launched into the annual ritual of reciting the scoring rules, whose central importance has been internalized by all seasoned competitors, but whose significance is generally lost on a rookie attendee.

A first-timer at the competition who overlooks the basic rules is making a big mistake, however, since managing your time is perhaps the single most important thing you have to do if you wish to place anywhere near the top of the puzzling heap at Stamford. You get 10 points for every correctly filled-in answer across and down. You get 25 points for every full minute you complete a puzzle before time runs out; however, you also lose 10 points for every incorrect or unfilled-in letter in the puzzle. (There's no such things as negative points, though; if you make more mistakes than the time you post under the limit, you simply score 0.) A complete and error-free solution to a puzzle earns you another 150 points. In the day's first puzzle, for instance, there were seventy-eight answers; if you got all those correct, you'd score 780, plus the 150-point complete accuracy bonus, plus 25 points for every full minute you solved the puzzle under the fifteen-minute limit, for an eventual score of anywhere between 930 (if you used the whole fifteen minutes) and 1,330 (if you solved the puzzle correctly in under three minutes). Puzzle four in the tournament also featured a bonus answer worth 100 points.

What this means—and what I didn't fully realize in the heat of competition—is that, at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, you're better off striving for a full and complete solution than going for the time bonus. The trade-off between time and accuracy is a somewhat counterintuitive concept to master, especially when you see the fastest solvers turning in their puzzles before you've even got your pencil properly sharpened. But you'll never have a hope of doing well at Stamford if you don't keep it in mind at all times. Since a complete and correct solution is worth 150 points, if you finish filling in a grid with, say, six minutes still left on the clock, you're better off spending up to five minutes

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