21-year-old Tyler Himan won the American Crossword Tournament. And just for the record, you can’t become the youngest person to do something a second time. Will Shortz predicts this as the beginning of a 75-year run.
Tyler did it all wearing his black Trogdor T-shirt which gives him extra coolness points in my book. And since the Courant did an extremely bad job of explaining Trogdor to the uninitiated, I’m providing this link. Enjoy!
It must be because of the Starbucks Crossword Challenge. The best discussion of the final puzzle is going on over at Doug’s blog and I’ve added my thoughts to the fray. So, if you’re here looking for hints, check out his blog.
The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament starts tomorrow in Stamford, Connecticut. A local newspaper has run an article on the event and the documentary Wordplay which will be screened at the event tomorrow. Wordplay is about Will Shortz, who founded the event, and will feature some of the tournament participants along with many famous cruciverbalists including Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Jon Stewart, and Mike Mussina. The tournament is apparently growing and turning into more of a general puzzle event. Jeopardy star Ken Jennings will be on hand to run a trivia game and a “Sudoku Smackdown” is also planned. So, I wonder… will the best cruciverbalists in the country be otherwise occupied when the final Starbucks puzzle come out?
Found through the Huffington Post: A book called Secrets of the Alchemist Dar by Michael Stadther will be released. The book will contain clues that lead to $1.5 million in jewels hidden around the world. Apparently, Michael Stadther released a similar book in 2004 after hiding gold coins in state parks around the US. He made at least one starving grad student a rich man. There seem to be hints that the upcoming challenge may not even require you to travel to state parks as Stadther makes some cryptic comments about finding “the power of the internet.” Maybe you’ll be able to order the jewels from Amazon and have them shipped to your house.
Jana Tyvola from the Czech Republic pulled out an upset win in the World Sudoku Championship by beating out Wei-Hwa Huang who has multiple World Puzzle Championship titles under his belt. The London Times printed the final puzzle giving readers the chance to try their times against the winning time of 15 minutes. I was able to complete the puzzle but, needless to say, it took me a good deal longer than 15 minutes. I’ll include a link to it so you can take a shot.
Forsmarts has published Issue 20 (or issue 10 of season 7; I’m not really sure how that works, but I haven’t been visiting the site for very long) and this issue contains three interesting puzzles. Forsmarts, is a semi-annual puzzle competition that includes puzzles on the more difficult end of the spectrum.
Fair warning: What I write below might be a little confusing if you have not actually seen the puzzles.
The first puzzle is based in a hex grid and requires you to place some number of 3-cell figures into the grid. Each cell in each figure will contain a number that corresponds to the number of other filled cells in a direct line with it. Some partial figures are already placed. This puzzle is a standard logic problem with very specific constraints. It essentially says, here are some digits. For each digit, place the corresponding number of additional digits in hexes that are within a direct line. And they must be adjacent in groups of no more or no less than three. Of course, it’s the last constraint that’s the kicker.
The second puzzle is a dominoku. It’s a 7X7 grid jigsaw sudoku (of course, all 7X7 sudokus must be jigsaws) but instead of the placing digits one at a time, you have to place from a given set of dominos. Essentially, you have to place the digits two at a time. It’s an interesting sudoku variation and one that requires very few digits given at the start.
The third is an optimization puzzle, to be solved by the best possible solution. It requires you to write numbers frome one to ninety nine (in english and in any order) into a grid, starting from the top left and filling in left to right from the top line to the bottom. The catch is that a given letter can be repeated only once in any row or column. The goal is to include as many digits as possible. So, quickly, the largest possible grid is 16X16 since the numbers share 16 letters in common. However, it may not be possible even to come up with one row with 16 different letters, let alone 16. I think the best solution will involve finding a row length that will allow you to have a maximum number of rows. But that’s only a guess, I haven’t come up with a solution yet.
I didn’t make it to a Starbucks today to try to pick up the puzzle for the crossword competition, but from what I’m reading in some blogs, maybe it wouldn’t have been woth the effort anyway. I’ll try to see if I can get a puzzle tomorrow.
On the Starbucks website, there are instructions on how to get puzzles through the mail. It’s a pain, but you can still get the puzzle even if your local Starbucks drops the ball.
Starbucks Gossip tells readers how to win free coffee for life. You do it by solving crossword puzzles.
Starbucks Coffee has enlisted puzzle master Will Shortz to create six crossword puzzles for a competition called “The Ultimate Coffeehouse Crossword Challenge.” Starting this Sunday a special crossword puzzle will appear in the Sunday Edition of the New York Times sold at Starbucks Coffee.
It’s not entirely clear how you win, but there seems to be a treasure hunt involved as is usually the case with these types of competitions. The final instructions will be included with the final puzzle.
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