acpt 2

Puzzle 5. What can I say. BEQ authored the pain this year. Again, most of the room failed to finish. What's really disturbing is when the elite are getting up and leaving while you're still looking for the first clue you can answer. It wasn't the hardest I've seen overall, but here's the difference from last year: I got less of that one in the allotted time, but ten more minutes and I would have finished. This one I've seen online and I remember some of the clues for the ones I missed, and I still don't know what the answers are. I don't know what that means, but there it is.

I've had some ups and downs today. After my big confession earlier, I looked at my scans, and the judges overlooked my mistake. [Man, since I found out I'm not supposed to double-space after a period, I am really struggling to stop that.] I'd like to think I'd own up and see that they correct things regardless, but now that I've publicly announced my failure, I really can't take credit for a correct solution. Further, after reviewing my #5 scan, I found another couple of squares that didn't get marked. #4 and #6 I finished correctly. So I can't say for sure what my ranking is, but I'm right around 200 of 646. Give me the 150 I got that I shouldn't have, and throw in about 175 for a correct #5, and I would be ranked at 150 or so. The online results haven't caught up yet to the point that I know where I'd be in the C division. All so much navel gazing anyway, but I'm intrigued to see how far I am from greatness.

Speaking of, 1) Dan Feyer 2) Howard Barkin 3) tie: Tyler Hinman, Anne Erdmann 5) Kelly Langan 6) Kiran Kedlaya 7) tie: Stella Zawistowski, Francis Heaney 9) tie: Al Sanders, Ellen Ripstein 11) Eric Maddy 12) Katherine Bryant 13) Trip Payne 14) Dave Tuller 15) tie: Amy Reynaldo, Doug Hoylman 17) Joon Pahk. I stopped there because it was a ways down before I recognized another name from the Rex Parker blog. Joon is exactly 400 points behind Dan, who has 9690 (I have 7750 uncorrected).

I finally met up with Rex Parker (who isn't competing), and he introduced me to Sandy (also not in it), imsdave, mac, Bob Kerfuffle, PuzzleGirl, Karen from the Cape (and her mom), Eric Berlin . . . it's funny how fast those dominoes fall. I had a great dinner with some of those folks and met ACME at the restaurant. Somehow I lost them on the way to this evening's unofficial puzzling. I hope they've done better than I have tonight.

One puzzle to go (21X) in the morning. Whatever miracles I may have been hoping for have not materialized, so I look forward to solving it for fun, then watching the finals.