Groundhog Day Crossworld News & Notes

Lots going on right now, and this is a long one. We even have section headings. Grab some water and a granola bar.

ACPT

Interest in this year’s ACPT has well outpaced my expectations, even after a record number of attendees made it to Stamford last year. The room block at the Marriott is already sold out. As in past years, a secondary block at the nearby The Stamford Hotel is available, though perhaps not for long.

The tournament itself will likely sell out earlier than in past years, as well; over 400 competitors registered in the first ten days. We can expect capacity to be a bit larger this year with additional space dedicated to a new Pairs solving division (which itself is already sold out), but all indications are that the time is now if you plan to attend and haven’t yet made arrangements.

Edit – many thanks to the team at AmuseLabs for reminding me that the online tournament will never sell out and is a stay-at-home option available to all.

Logistics aside, a number of programming details for the actual ACPT weekend came out this week. The traditional Friday night session will feature a “Connections” competition and remarks from the game’s editor at the New York Times, Wyna Liu, along with additional variety puzzles. On Saturday evening, The annual Merl Reagle MEmoRiaL Award for lifetime achievement in crossword construction will be awarded to Andrea Carla Michaels.

And of course, the tournament itself! Constructors were announced Wednesday. (Is this earlier than normal? It feels earlier to me.)

In alphabetical order: Tracy Bennett, Kevin Christian, Joel Fagliano, Lynn Lempel, Anna Shechtman, Mike Shenk, Sid Sivakumar, Robyn Weintraub. You’ll notice a number of repeat names from last year’s slate, but indie crossword fans will also be glad to see Sid Sivakumar’s first ACPT puzzle. If you’re unfamiliar with his style, you can find his work at sidsgrids.com.

Tournament veterans may notice that the ACPT website has gotten a bit of a facelift. One substantive change is a revamp of the Solve Online page for past tournament puzzles, which had been temporarily down in 2023. The page reports that in time the full ACPT archive will be available. Mail-order paper puzzles dating back to 2014 are still available, as well.

Books & Charity Packs

Released last month, Puzzles for Palestine is a charity pack of 22 themed, themeless, and variety puzzles, many with Palestinian-centric themes or seed entries and some without. Perspectives and voices from the region are highlighted throughout the pack. Donations may be made to one of four humanitarian organizations. Additional resources and information are available at the P4P site.

A few coming books on our radar: A-to-Gen Z Crosswords: 72 Puzzles That Hit Different from Ada Nicolle and Puzzlewright Press arrives May 7, Black Crossword: 100 Mini Puzzles Celebrating the African Diaspora from Juliana Pache and the eponymous blackcrossword.com will drop in August. Stu Ockman’s Will and Me hit the shelves last fall and looks to be a fascinating read: Stu saved every correspondence with Will Shortz from his first submission to the New York Times and has now woven those into a behind-the-scenes narrative of a constructor and his puzzles. Grids Just Wanna Have Fun, an ’80s-themed partner to last fall’s ’90’s-minded New Grids on the Block will drop in late March.

Other Tournaments

There’s still time to register and compete in this weekend’s Boswords Winter Wondersolve, a one-day tournament Sunday, February 4 from 1:00-4:30 Eastern. Puzzles will be from Elise Corbin, Olivia Mitra Framke, Matthew Sewell, and Finn Vigeland.

Looking further ahead, most of the constructors for Boswords’ Spring Themeless League are announced, with one spot reserved for an open submission. The known constructors for eight of the nine puzzles are Katherine Baicker & Garrett Chalfin, Michael Hawkins, Nova Qi, Shannon Rapp, Jess Rucks, Emily Sharp & Kunal Nabar, Anna Shechtman, and Ben Zimmer. Details on the open submission can be found here.

Registration for the inaugural Westwords tournament in Berkeley, CA and online, is now open. The first west-coast tournament in several years, the June 23 event hopes to “serve people who have not had the chance to participate in crossword tournaments in the past—whether because of being relatively new to crosswords, or because geographic distance makes travel too expensive, too time-consuming, or too much of a health risk—along with solvers of all abilities and experience levels.”

No new news from the Midwest Crossword Tournament coming to Chicago in October, but don’t forget about it, either. Sign up for email updates at the link.

Other News

We shared a bit of recent site news in a separate post yesterday.

The online-only monthly “bonus” puzzle at the New York Times quietly changed from longtime constructor Fred Piscop to a Sam Ezersky joint in January. Fred’s puzzles were often uber-dense around a topical theme; 2023 titles included “World Pet Rock Day” and “National Homemade Cookie Day,” but it seems that with the new constructors the topical density remains, but perhaps with a focus on pop culture. Today’s February puzzle is by Joel Fagliano and titled “All About Rom-Coms.” Find these puzzles on the “Bonus” tab after navigating to the archives – the same place the now-unavailable Variety puzzles used to live.

Fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg collaborated with constructor David Kwong to create a themed crossword scarf for her spring collection celebrating the 5oth anniversary of the wrap dress. The collection also includes dresses made from a crossword print.

We were hours too early with our last edition to include a link to T Campbell annual epic The Year in Crosswords, so here it is now.

T of course had a busy year himself. Already a master of the “Ubercross” – giant crossword grids with detailed grid art – 2023 saw the serial release of a truly staggering project – a quilt-like Abecedaria effort in which 25 massive puzzles each depicting a letter of the alphabet (I and J share a grid) knit together into a single, 116,371-clue puzzle. T is in the process of getting the project confirmed by Guinness as the World’s Largest Crossword.

Quick hitters: A Cascadia Daily profile of indie legend Matt Jones | An NPR profile of Will Shortz | A quick Axios piece on New York Times Games, mostly the same bits we’ve heard before, except we learn that the crossword will be deemphasized in a future version of the mobile app to make room for something “truly like a Games app.”

Amusing open letter from Texas’ Episcopal Bishop on NY Times entry “TACO SAUCE” | A lengthy and thoughtful essay from Ben at Nautilus Puzzles | Another one of those “are puzzles good for your brain?” pieces from The Guardian

Two new word and crossword-ish games:

From Juliana Tringali Golden and Lil’ Snack, SWAP features a mini crossword with clues and all the letters in the grid. To solve, players rearrange the letters into the correct places, but only have a limited number of turns to manage it.

New just this week, Jeff Chen’s Squeezy Word Game challenges solvers to fit letters into words to make new words and uncover a light, multi-layered meta. Tough to describe but the actual gameplay is pretty clean.

Podcasts

A fun coincidence of crossworders on pods in the last few weeks:

Constructor and Lil AVC X editor Jess Shulman, on the Fandom Show, discusses how crosswords are made, tournaments, and more.

Constructor and 2024 Merl Reagle MEmoRiaL Award recipient Andrea Carla Michaels on Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone on constructing crosswords.

Constructor and AVCX Cryptic editor Steve Mossberg (appearing under the pseudonym General Knowledge) on Off-Grid, analyzing some British cryptics of the week.

For Constructors

Brooke Husic shared on Twitter the newest update to Spread the Wordlist, now coming in at 297,870 words.

Two announcements from the crew at AMU: David Steinberg at Universal tells us they are closing new 15×15 submissions during even months (February, April, June, and so on). The limit for 15×15 submissions—including theme queries—will be five per constructor per odd month, with collaborations counting as half for each constructor. This change is effective immediately, so submissions are now closed and will reopen after midnight on February 29.

Meanwhile, Amanda Rafkin at USA Today similarly announced that off-roster submissions will be open every other month for the first week of odds months (so January, March, May, July, September, November). As always, we recommend Matthew Stock’s spec sheet sheet for updated submission guidelines across the landscape.

Ross Trudeau has shared this job opportunity for a Puzzles Contractor at Apple News.

Black Crossword is accepting submissions of themed and themeless puzzles that place emphasis on Black culture for an upcoming subscription service.

This week’s Atlas Obscura puzzle came from the students in Atlas Obscura’s Creating Crossword Puzzles course in September 2023, along with their instructors, expert crossword creators Brooke Husic and Natan Last. If you’re interested in learning how to create a crossword puzzle like this one, the next course is scheduled to start on Monday, March 4, 2024, at 8 p.m. ET. Enroll here!

Los Angeles Times: Miranda Carson (12/31), Aidan Deshong (1/5), Nate Cardin (1/5), Kevin Curry (1/16), Michael Berg (1/18), Noelle Griskey (1/23)

USA Today: Will Eisenberg (12/20), Adam Aaronson (12/28), Lindsay Rosenblum (1/2), Beth Rubin (1/4), Jill Singer (1/6), Deanne Cliburn (1/8), David Karp (1/15), Billy Ouska (1/16), Jess Rucks (1/17), Max Schlenker (1/19), Shannon Rapp (1/22), Rebecca Moore (1/26), Sala Wanetick (1/30), Emily Biegas (1/30)

New York Times: Joe Marquez (12/18), Seth Weitberg (12/19), Amie Walker (12/25), Neil Shook (12/26), Kareem Ayas (12/27), Harry Zheng (1/1), Julian Xiao (1/6), Marshal Hermann (1/16), Jon Michnovicz (1/18), Carl Michnovicz (1/18), Patrick Maher (1/23), Grace Warrington (1/27), Greg Warrington (1/27), Nathan Hale (1/31)