![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreI keep intending to get caught up on writing and I keep getting distracted. I’ve been in a flurry of household cleaning / organizing, which is time consuming and drains my energy. And, of course, I have plenty of things to do.
So here is part of what I’ve been up to.
She Loves Me: I saw this musical at Signature Theatre at the end of March. It’s one of my favorites, with its witty book, lively score, and some of Sheldon Harnick’s best lyrics. I’d seen at least two productions of it before and listened to the cast album numerous times. But Signature is a special place to see musicals and I was sure they’d do a worthy job if it. Which, indeed, they did. Ali Ewoldt was up to the vocal challenges of playing Amalia, while Deven Kolluri had the right mix of conflicted emotions as Georg. Bobby Smith is a long time favorite at Signature and made Sipros more than an incidental character. Maria Rizzo, who played Ilona, is another Signature regular and was nicely matched by Jake Lowenthal as Kodaly. It’s hard to imagine a better cast. I recommended the show to several friends, all of whom told me they loved it.
American Crossword Puzzle Tournament: April started off with a train trip up to Stamford, Connecticut for the ACPT, which was (finally!) back in person. Friday night started off with a short talk by Josh Wardle, the creator of Wordle. There was also a six-round Wordle tournament. I had some trouble with the app for that, so didn’t do particularly well. By the way, we played the exact same game, called Jotto at the time, endlessly when I was in high school. We did not feel the need to tell everybody in creation how we did at it.
That was followed by a “pick your poison” event in which there were two rounds. The first one had the difficult choice between Puns and Anagrams and a Cryptic Crossword. I went with the former only because it seemed likely to go faster. The second choice was between Spiral and Split Decisions, which was easier because I’ve never cared for Split Decisions. I finished the puzzles I chose in both rounds, though not especially quickly.
Then came the wine and cheese reception. Short version is that it was great to see so many people I hadn’t seen in a few years.
The actual crossword tournament consists of 6 puzzles on Saturday and one on Sunday. Puzzle 1 was straightforward enough. I solved it cleanly, but between my mask interacting with my bifocals and my lack of recent practice in solving on paper, I was a couple of minutes slower than I should have been, taking 10 minutes out of the 15 minute time limit.
I picked up the pace on Puzzle 2, solving in 16 minutes out of the 25 minute time limit.,But I made an incredibly stupid error. I won’t give a spoiler here, but suppose the correct answer to a clue was, say, TENN, and you had TE already entered. It’s fairly easy to accidentally enter TEEN instead. Usual;y I catch myself on this sort of thing when I check things over, but somehow missed a crossing that made no sense. Grr. It’s one thing when I really don’t know an answer, but this type of error is annoying. (It also cost a lot in points.)
I solved Puzzle 3 cleanly in 17 minutes (out of the 30 minute time limit). I also solved Puzzle 4 cleanly, taking 11 minutes out of the 20 minute time limit. I should note that I particularly liked the theme of that one, though I could easily have solved it while ignoring the theme.
And then there is puzzle 5. This is always the killer. And hearing that it was by Brendan Emmett Quigley struck even more terror in my heart. The man is truly diabolical. I didn't come close to finishing, though I did at least grasp what was going on. Which was quite clever, as well as extraordinarily evil. It’s a minor consolation that a lot of other people had as much trouble with it as I did.
Puzzle 6 exists largely so that one doesn’t end the day too depressed. I breezed through it in 13 minutes (out of a 30 minute time limit) and managed not to make any dumb errors. I also really enjoyed the theme of that one, which (if I recall correctly) was by Robyn Weintraub.
Disaster struck Saturday night. Not for me, but for one of my friends, who fell down a staircase and sprained her knee. (Though it now looks like it was actually an ACL tear.) She’s healing (and was able to compete on Sunday), but the walker they gave her after her emergency room visit and x-ray wasn’t exactly the tournament hardware she would have preferred.
Anyway, the Saturday night program started with a mixture of stand-up comedy and a palindrome competition - very much not my sort of thing. I would have skipped out entirely but I wanted to play Stanley Newman’s “Fact or Fiction” trivia contest. And I really wanted to see Emily Cox and Henry Rsathvon receive the MEmoRiaL aware for excellence in crossword construction. (For those who are not familiar with the names, they do regular acrostics in the New York Times, but are even more renowned for their excellent cryptic crosswords.)
Sunday morning featured Puzzle 7, by Mike Shenk, who is one of my favorite constructors. I solved it in a reasonable amount of time (22 minutes out of the 45 minute time limit). But I made another stupid mistake. I had left a square blank because I wasn’t sure of a name. And I completely forgot about that. I still should have seen the blank square when I looked the puzzle over before turning it in, but “should of” doesn’t really help.
So how did I do, overall? I finished 243rd out of 474 contestants. That put me in the 48.7th percentile, which is the worst I’ve done over the times I’ve competed. I know what I need to do to improve, which amounts mostly to “don’t be careless.” But it was still disappointing.
By the way, I didn’t stay to watch the finals because I had plans in New York that evening and had scheduled trains so that I wouldn’t feel stressed about making it in time. This has been long enough, so I will write up my New York activities separately.
So here is part of what I’ve been up to.
She Loves Me: I saw this musical at Signature Theatre at the end of March. It’s one of my favorites, with its witty book, lively score, and some of Sheldon Harnick’s best lyrics. I’d seen at least two productions of it before and listened to the cast album numerous times. But Signature is a special place to see musicals and I was sure they’d do a worthy job if it. Which, indeed, they did. Ali Ewoldt was up to the vocal challenges of playing Amalia, while Deven Kolluri had the right mix of conflicted emotions as Georg. Bobby Smith is a long time favorite at Signature and made Sipros more than an incidental character. Maria Rizzo, who played Ilona, is another Signature regular and was nicely matched by Jake Lowenthal as Kodaly. It’s hard to imagine a better cast. I recommended the show to several friends, all of whom told me they loved it.
American Crossword Puzzle Tournament: April started off with a train trip up to Stamford, Connecticut for the ACPT, which was (finally!) back in person. Friday night started off with a short talk by Josh Wardle, the creator of Wordle. There was also a six-round Wordle tournament. I had some trouble with the app for that, so didn’t do particularly well. By the way, we played the exact same game, called Jotto at the time, endlessly when I was in high school. We did not feel the need to tell everybody in creation how we did at it.
That was followed by a “pick your poison” event in which there were two rounds. The first one had the difficult choice between Puns and Anagrams and a Cryptic Crossword. I went with the former only because it seemed likely to go faster. The second choice was between Spiral and Split Decisions, which was easier because I’ve never cared for Split Decisions. I finished the puzzles I chose in both rounds, though not especially quickly.
Then came the wine and cheese reception. Short version is that it was great to see so many people I hadn’t seen in a few years.
The actual crossword tournament consists of 6 puzzles on Saturday and one on Sunday. Puzzle 1 was straightforward enough. I solved it cleanly, but between my mask interacting with my bifocals and my lack of recent practice in solving on paper, I was a couple of minutes slower than I should have been, taking 10 minutes out of the 15 minute time limit.
I picked up the pace on Puzzle 2, solving in 16 minutes out of the 25 minute time limit.,But I made an incredibly stupid error. I won’t give a spoiler here, but suppose the correct answer to a clue was, say, TENN, and you had TE already entered. It’s fairly easy to accidentally enter TEEN instead. Usual;y I catch myself on this sort of thing when I check things over, but somehow missed a crossing that made no sense. Grr. It’s one thing when I really don’t know an answer, but this type of error is annoying. (It also cost a lot in points.)
I solved Puzzle 3 cleanly in 17 minutes (out of the 30 minute time limit). I also solved Puzzle 4 cleanly, taking 11 minutes out of the 20 minute time limit. I should note that I particularly liked the theme of that one, though I could easily have solved it while ignoring the theme.
And then there is puzzle 5. This is always the killer. And hearing that it was by Brendan Emmett Quigley struck even more terror in my heart. The man is truly diabolical. I didn't come close to finishing, though I did at least grasp what was going on. Which was quite clever, as well as extraordinarily evil. It’s a minor consolation that a lot of other people had as much trouble with it as I did.
Puzzle 6 exists largely so that one doesn’t end the day too depressed. I breezed through it in 13 minutes (out of a 30 minute time limit) and managed not to make any dumb errors. I also really enjoyed the theme of that one, which (if I recall correctly) was by Robyn Weintraub.
Disaster struck Saturday night. Not for me, but for one of my friends, who fell down a staircase and sprained her knee. (Though it now looks like it was actually an ACL tear.) She’s healing (and was able to compete on Sunday), but the walker they gave her after her emergency room visit and x-ray wasn’t exactly the tournament hardware she would have preferred.
Anyway, the Saturday night program started with a mixture of stand-up comedy and a palindrome competition - very much not my sort of thing. I would have skipped out entirely but I wanted to play Stanley Newman’s “Fact or Fiction” trivia contest. And I really wanted to see Emily Cox and Henry Rsathvon receive the MEmoRiaL aware for excellence in crossword construction. (For those who are not familiar with the names, they do regular acrostics in the New York Times, but are even more renowned for their excellent cryptic crosswords.)
Sunday morning featured Puzzle 7, by Mike Shenk, who is one of my favorite constructors. I solved it in a reasonable amount of time (22 minutes out of the 45 minute time limit). But I made another stupid mistake. I had left a square blank because I wasn’t sure of a name. And I completely forgot about that. I still should have seen the blank square when I looked the puzzle over before turning it in, but “should of” doesn’t really help.
So how did I do, overall? I finished 243rd out of 474 contestants. That put me in the 48.7th percentile, which is the worst I’ve done over the times I’ve competed. I know what I need to do to improve, which amounts mostly to “don’t be careless.” But it was still disappointing.
By the way, I didn’t stay to watch the finals because I had plans in New York that evening and had scheduled trains so that I wouldn’t feel stressed about making it in time. This has been long enough, so I will write up my New York activities separately.
