Month: January 2024

Happy New Year!

Cutting right to the chase: Registration for this year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament opens at noon Eastern today.

This year’s ACPT remains at the Stamford Marriott in Stamford, CT and is set for Friday, 5 April to Sunday, 7 April. Competition sessions run Saturday and Sunday, but there’s programming on Friday evening, and you can count on plenty of ad hoc puzzling and chitchat in the hotel lobby and bar through the whole weekend, as well.

The whole weekend is a grand old time, full of crossword lovers, old and new friends, etc etc. Would love to see you there, but if you can’t make it, an online competition runs concurrently.

Details for the hotel block aren’t on the tournament website as I write this, but I expect will be when registration opens. While neither the tournament nor the hotel block is likely to fill up super quickly, the hotel does usually fill up while tournament registration is still open.

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If you’re looking for a ACPT tune-up, the next event in the Boswords calendar is the annual Winter Wondersolve, online on Sunday, 4 February. Past Wondersolves have featured five puzzles in a one-day event. Registration opens on Saturday, 13 January.

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Looking past the ACPT, we’re very excited to share two new tournaments spinning up in 2024:

The first West Coast tournament in several years arrives on Sunday, 24 June: Westwords in Berkeley, CA will feature seven puzzles — a mix of themed and themeless grids — for in-person and online solving. Under the lead of Tournament Directors Rebecca Goldstein, Kate Chin Park, Stan Park, and John Lieb, the tournament is a much-needed option for solvers unable to travel to the Northeast and fills a hole in the calendar left by Washington, DC’s Indie 500 tournament.

Registration for Westwords opens on 27 January. In-person attendance is limited to 150.

Tournament action returns to the Midwest this year, as well. Saturday, 5 October will see the Midwest Crossword Tournament in Chicago, IL, featuring six puzzles from Midwest-based constructors under the leadership of Sally Hoelscher and Shannon Rapp. More information to come.

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For fans of variety word puzzles, as in the Wall Street Journal on Saturdays or at Joon Pahk’s Outside the Box subscriptions, Grant Fikes is starting up a subscription of his own; Outside the Fox Puzzles. Each Tuesday in 2024, Grant will deliver three puzzles weekly: A touchword, a crossword variation Grant invented (which will be familiar to Outside the Box subscribers), a “gridded logic puzzle,” and another variety word puzzle. Touchwords are my favorite crossword variant, so this news is particularly exciting at DCL headquarters.

A subscription to Outside the Fox puzzles starts at $10. Visit Grant’s announcement at that link for more information.

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The New York Times’ Puzzle Mania was the big news story in our last edition. Days later, the New Yorker’s Cartoons & Puzzles issue dropped, featuring crossword, cryptic, and variety puzzles from Patrick Berry, Brooke Husic & Adam Wager, Fred Piscop, and Neville Fogarty & Lily Geller, and other puzzles from other New Yorker Puzzles & Games staff.

Canada’s The Globe and Mail also runs a jumbo puzzle section each year, with a big crossword from legendary cryptic setter Fraser Simpson. This year’s features a straight crossword in a cryptic-ish grid to go with a good chunk of additional puzzles.

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We’ve seen plenty of articles on inclusivity in crosswords in recent years, for the most part treading the same ground. In addition to the puzzles, The New Yorker’s Cartoons & Puzzles issue featured an essay from Natan Last; “Can Crosswords Be More Inclusive?” Treading on topics, names, and phenomena likely familiar to the crossword fans who subscribe here, Natan nevertheless better captures the question than anything I’ve read before. I would grab a pull quote, but I can’t decide on one; the whole piece is worth a read, and is in fact an excerpt from Natan’s forthcoming book, The Electric Grid, “about the history, politics, and modern revitalization of the crossword.” Can’t come soon enough.

Vanity Fair profiled the New York Times Games team and the ecosystem the paper has been around the crossword with games like Spelling Bee, Wordle, and Connections. There’s more discussion of the strategic decisions than we’ve seen before — notably, this is the first time I can recall Jonathan Knight stepping out of press-release language and into a more public eye alongside the Games editing staff — and it’s a good read.

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Ending this edition with a moment of appreciation for the Inkubator, which delivered the last puzzle of a five-year run last week. I could say so much, but not better than the note from founding editors Laura Braunstein and Tracy Bennett that accompanied the final puzzle, which I’ll reproduce in its entirety:

When we launched our Kickstarter campaign five years ago, there was a clear need and enthusiasm for an outlet like the Inkubator, one dedicated to publishing puzzles by women and nonbinary constructors. In the years since we launched, we focused on nurturing and debuting new talent as well as featuring indie puzzles by veteran constructors; we published numerous bonus puzzles, including some cryptics; and we published a puzzle book!

We could not have kept this project going for a full five years or organized the book without the skillful work of our expanded team: managing editors Juliana Tringali Golden and Brooke Husic, themeless editor Stella Zawistowski, our group of mentors, and our many test-solvers.

We step away with a feeling of immense gratitude for the opportunity to make a difference in the puzzle landscape, and with a sense of accomplishment. Though there is still work to be done, since the Inkubator’s launch the puzzle community has evolved in many positive ways. Crossword editors have taken steps forward in awareness, representation, and inclusion, while solvers have a richer variety of puzzle venues and constructor voices to experience. We remain committed to this purpose individually, and the Inkubator will live on as a resource.

Thank you to all of our constructors, subscribers, supporters, and friends for joining us in this journey. Most of all, we hope you’ve enjoyed solving our puzzles!