Anther year, another tournament! This year was my 15th ACPT, if you can believe it! (It would have been 17 but I missed two years because of conflicts with my kids' events.)
ACPT was a great way to spend a weekend, as always. Hotel rooms weren't available yet when I registered (as soon as registration opened) and then were completely sold out when I went back to look (a few weeks later, maybe?), so I stayed at an airbnb about a 10-minute walk away. That was fine, but I didn't feel quite as social this year as I sometimes do, and the airbnb exacerbated that, plus I caught COVID last year when I socialized more, so I kind of kept to myself. But I still had a nice time (and needed a little quite time after a period with a lot of travel & intensive family time).
It was wonderful to see Will Shortz (who experienced a stroke a few months ago) at the tournament -- he was very present throughout the weekend, though he left most of the emcee'ing to my old friend (and crossword constructor/competitor) Pete Muller.
Friday night games were enjoyable, and even though I didn't win any prizes, I finished 5 of the 6 "variety puzzles" within the time limit, including a very hard cryptic that I was quite proud of!
tl;dr I came in 31st overall, #3 in New England, #6 of solvers in their 50s, 5th highest female solver. And that's out of the largest field ever (739 registered solvers), so it put me in the top 4% of solvers. But I could have been 18th... oh well!
But I am still disappointed in myself, because I had a very avoidable mistake on P5 (didn't check a crossing answer). If not for that mistake, I would have been 18th overall (! - that would have been my 2nd-highest finish ever and highest percentile-wise because this year's field was so large), still #3 in New England, #1 of solvers in their 50s (four minutes ahead of the solver who did win that age group), and the 3rd highest female solver.
That's the third year in a row that I made a mistake -- I'm so annoyed!! I had quite a few years of a "clean solve" streak and I am not happy to now have what is clearly an "unclean solve" streak (at every in-person post-COVID tournament...)
On the plus side, my speed doesn't seem to be fading at all, even though I am pushing 60. (I will be 60 by next year's tournament -- in that category, I would have been 2nd this year without the mistake...)
Here's the blow-by-blow, together with my usual "if I hadn't screwed up..." commentary.
- P1 - under 4-minute solve, but I again missed the 3-minute cutoff by just a few seconds. 22 people solved this faster than I did, and nobody solved it in under 3 minutes, so I would have been tied for 1st if I had solved this puzzle 5 seconds faster (and not re-checked it, which would have been risky but OK as it turned out).
- P2 - 7 minutes. At this point, I was tied for 23rd. 25 people were faster than me on this puzzle.
- P3 - 9 minutes, and I felt a little slow / bogged down -- not quite sure what happened with this puzzle. But still only 24 people were faster, and at this point, I was in a 3-way tie for 27th place.
- P4 - 5 minutes, very very fast (only 8 people were faster) -- this puzzle bumped me all the way up to 18th place.
- P5 - 10 minutes. I actually felt like it took me a little longer than it should have to catch onto the gimmick, but as it turned out, only 16 people were faster than me. I would have moved up a few spots -- but as I mentioned before, I made a stupid, avoidable mistake. And as you may know, one letter wrong means losing 195 points (almost 8 minutes' worth of time). So now I was in 33rd place. Still pretty damn good for someone with a mistake, but not where I wish I was!
- P6 - 7 minutes, behind just 13 solvers.
- P7 - 10 minutes. Not super-fast, but decent. 28 people were faster than me.
