You be the judge
First things first: Les Foeldessy's new Gryptics contest is up. Go knock it out.
Now to the meat of this post: Saturday's Napa Valley Puzzle Challenge saw yet another thrilling ending to a local crossword tournament. Perennial contenders Jon Berman and Eric Maddy both made one mistake, and Jon beat Eric by a mere second! Coming in third was young newcomer Jeff Davidson... but should he have won? Read on to find out what happened and decide what you think. But don't do so until you've done Thursday's New York Times puzzle; it's a great one and you don't want to be spoiled by my description here.
As you might guess, all of the hubbub arose as a result of the very tricky theme. I'm enough of a dweeb to know how the symbols and numbers match up, but none of the three contestants were so fortunate. Eric put SAND* instead of SAND$, while Jon paired the pound sign with an H to form HDTV rather than 3DTV. Meanwhile, Jeff was still struggling away, and he had a few wrong answers scattered about, to the point where I didn't think there was any way he'd go around and correct everything. But that's exactly what he did, and pretty soon the special squares were the only things amiss, as he'd written just the numbers. He raised his hand to turn in his solution and was ruled incorrect, as the symbols were absent. Jeff, somewhat understandably, lamented this judgment, as he didn't know these were necessary. He admitted that he hadn't figured out what symbol joined the 5, but he would have taken his several spare minutes to do so had he known it was important.
I wasn't completely satisfied with the ending, but I'm not sure what else we could have done. Jeff's solution didn't demonstrate a total grasp of the theme. Eric had spent several moments figuring out the 5's symbol, which certainly played a role given the margin of victory, so that part had to be taken into account. Looking at the three grids, Eric's and Jon's seemed more correct, as it were.
At the same time, the standards weren't entirely clear, which does seem unfair. We tried to think of ways we could have informed the finalists of these standards before the final, but couldn't come up with anything that didn't give too much away about the puzzle. Maybe the best idea is not to use a puzzle like that in a tournament setting, to say nothing of the final.
What would you have done? Did Jeff get hosed? Did we make the right call? Both?
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July 5th, 2012 - 10:15
Maybe the best idea is not to use a puzzle like that in a tournament setting, to say nothing of the final.
What would you have done? Did Jeff get hosed? Did we make the right call? Both?
yes, the same thing, yes, yes, and yes.
July 5th, 2012 - 10:52
For this reason, I generally dislike using rebus-type themes in tournaments, because there is ALWAYS a borderline case where a contestant is either getting hosed or getting improper credit. And using one in a final, where the stakes are even higher, seems a huge mistake to me.
July 5th, 2012 - 10:55
I totally agree with Trip, though I’m surprised to hear him say that, given his Crosswords LA puzzle.
But yeah, rebuses should pretty much never appear in a tournament puzzle. As I wrote on Dan’s blog, there shouldn’t be room for interpretation in a crosswords tournament. Either you write the correct thing in the square, or you didn’t. Rebuses take that away and replace it with some level of subjectivity, which is no good.
July 5th, 2012 - 12:06
Hang on. Are we complaining about rebuses, or two-way rebuses? I don’t see how it’s that unfeasible to ask people to put a symbol in a box for a rebus, even if just a star to stand for “there are a bunch of letters that go here”. (I’m aware that there have been Issues with that in the past, based on people getting used to what I will call “applet grading”. Plus writing on whiteboards makes everything more difficult.)
I might not put in both symbols in a two-way rebus if I’m doing it on my couch, though I would probably do it here out of paranoia. In this situation, I would think going up to him right afterward and asking him to explain why all these numbers are in the grid would get the information you need — and if he couldn’t explain all the two-way squares, then IMO he hasn’t finished the puzzle yet.
July 5th, 2012 - 14:00
I’m not sure I’d call my Crosswords LA puzzle a rebus, though I guess it’s a borderline case. I think there were only one or two answer grids in total where we had to discuss whether or not to accept how the key squares were entered.
July 5th, 2012 - 16:32
IMO only themelesses should be used for playoff puzzles. It would make more sense to ask for a Friday puzzle to be included in the set of donated NTY puzzles.
MAS
July 5th, 2012 - 16:35
How would someone at their first tournament have a clue what to enter on any rebus? And how much time would they waste trying to figure it out. Make it clear before every tournament what the rebus rules are so everyone is on the same page if one should appear.