Prince of puzzles
Inaugural Times Union Crossword Championship was won by a Clifton Park man.
They come across as dedicated.
Put it down to enthusiasm and experience.
Just fewer than 100 puzzlers competed Saturday at the inaugural Times Union Crossword Championship at the Hearst Media Center.
The top finisher was Michael Landau, 62, a Clifton Park endodontist who has a four- to five-puzzle-a-day habit that includes word searches, Sudokus and cryptograms.
A co-worker started him on puzzles during a boring summer job in between his dentistry school days when they would do the Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle.
Landau didn’t offer a particular reason why he ended up the day’s alpha puzzler.
“It’s hard to know how you’ll finish,” he said. “It’s a horse race — you never know who’s going to finish first.”
Head judge Mike Nothnagel, a Culinary Institute of America assistant math professor and New York Times crossword constructor from Poughkeepsie, said he was impressed by the crowd and how the tournament, sponsored by First New York Federal Credit Union, went.
“The solvers made our job easy. People didn’t get a lot wrong,” he said.
In the end, it was the spelling of the name of a local historic figure that separated the winners from the runners-up.
Winners correctly spelled the name of Eliza Hamilton, the Albany native who married American statesman Alexander Hamilton, who is the subject of the current celebrated musical on Broadway.
Nothnagel said the tournament is a reflection of how the art of puzzling is gaining popularity. There are more venues to access them, thanks to the internet, along with subscription services and newspaper apps. Word-of-mouth — “Hey, did you see today’s puzzle?” — is always a tried and true hook.
Puzzle-solving is different from taking a test, he said.
“It’s an intellectual satisfaction,” Nothnagel said. “You’ve completed something that requires you to be a smart person for that short amount of time. It’s a very human thing to want to solve a problem.”
Top finishers competed in a final round, featuring a Capital Region-themed puzzle, for the day’s biggest prizes: First, $200; second, $100; third, $50. Selmer Bringsjord, a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor of logic, was the keynote speaker.
Expect the contest to return next year. “I was shocked,” was second-place finisher Darrin Conroy’s reaction to his result. The East Greenbush research librarian, 52, who does his puzzles online, said the solvers in front of him were impressive, but he said having a breadth of knowledge is a useful gift.
You can’t, by the way, put all puzzlers in one box.
Fourth-place winner Arnold Reich, an IT director from Yonkers, has spent years competing in tournaments, including a recent contest in Manhattan’s Bryant Park, having caught the bug as a kid doing the TV Guide and newspaper puzzles. He does four or five a day.
But this was third-place finisher Timothy Zukas’ first tournament. The 61-year-old from Burnt Hills has only been doing puzzles for 10 years. Doing them over and over again sure helps, he said. He did two before getting to Saturday’s tournament.
But as the contest ended, that was it for the day.
“I’m just going to go home and relax and watch a football game,” Zukas said.