Closing Friday afternoon, within the foyer of a Marriott in downtown Stamford, Conn., attendees of the forty seventh American Crossword Puzzle Event, the yearly confab of phrase nerds hosted via The Occasions’s puzzle editor, Will Shortz, joyously convened. Veteran puzzlers greeted previous pals with the joy of a homecoming. First-timers smiled nervously, eyeing others’ title tags in hopes of catching a glimpse of a favourite crossword constructor. Some broke off into teams to speak or paintings on one of the crucial many crosswords stacked at the welcome desk. “Electrical!” I scrawled in my pocket book, smiling eagerly on the scene regardless of my efforts to be a dispassionate observer.
Earlier than closing weekend, I considered myself as a crossword particular person, insofar as I do the Occasions puzzle frequently and with some pace. I had, since seeing the 2006 documentary “Wordplay,” dreamed of attending the event, however handiest idly, once in a while musing to my one crossword pal about the way it could be a laugh to spend a complete weekend doing puzzles. I had no thought what an beginner I used to be. On the event I encountered puzzlers who can end a Saturday puzzle in 3 mins. I met a fan who can, when introduced with a constructor’s title, recall with precision simply what number of crosswords that particular person has had printed in The Occasions. I witnessed a die-hard dressed as a cruciverbalist Phantom of the Opera, replete with grid-printed cape and masks and a rose whose stem was once a large pencil.
“There aren’t any informal puzzle other people right here,” I wrote in my pocket book after the late-night wine-and-cheese reception the place I sipped pinot grigio and listened to 2 constructors attempt to articulate the ecstasy they really feel when, whilst painstakingly crafting a crossword, they notice the grid is if truth be told going to come back in combination, that they’re going so to entire a sublime puzzle.
On Saturday, I did six timed puzzles with the competition, handiest one in every of which I didn’t organize to finish within the half-hour allocated, and I felt some measure of satisfaction that I wasn’t utterly out of my league. However like a majority of the just about 1,000 other people on the event who had no hope of creating it to the overall spherical (grand prize: $7,500) my instances have been inappropriate. The purpose was once the group, the shared love and language individuals possessed. Within the resort elevator after the primary puzzle consultation, strangers turned into quick comrades in hands as they commiserated over the clues they didn’t get: “Wait, how is POT a three-letter phrase for ‘Money available’?” The puzzles they’d all simply finished have been sufficient of a connection to start out a dialog, to linger and chat after they were given to their flooring, then make plans to get lunch in combination.
