Some notes from the local cinephile society’s latest presentation….
The main feature: “Sherlock Holmes Faces Death” (but not taxes – then again, that would be not so much a mystery movie as a horror picture), preceded by a short film from 1927 in which Holmes’ creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, addresses the audience – his only appearance on sound film.
Conan Doyle seems to be a pretty affable guy as he patiently discusses – doubtless for the umpty-umph time – the origins of his most famous character. “I’ve written a good deal more about him than I ever intended to,” he says with a good humor that, if I remember correctly, was not always present when someone mentioned the great detective in his presence – indeed, he’d unsuccessfully tried to kill Holmes off many years before this short film was made.
If Conan Doyle wasn’t too enthusiastic about Holmes’ life-after-supposed death, it’s obvious that he’s rarin’ to talk about the second focus of his brief talk: his interest in whether non-fictional characters live on after death and his belief that they do and his efforts to document this. Spiritualism was his chief interest near the end of his life, a topic that led to tension between him and Harry Houdini, who was just as convinced that spiritualism, at best, is hokum. But both sides in this debate can agree on one thing: Conan Doyle created two characters who remain immortal.
(And if you’re interested, you can watch the Conan Doyle featurette here.)
“Sherlock Holmes Faces Death” (Universal, 1943) stars – who else? – Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Rathbone’s Holmes was an adroit mixture of hauteur and humaneness – and was capable of making a mistake once in a while. And while some have criticized Bruce’s Watson as too much of a bumbler, Conan Doyle, in the featurette, does say that the good doctor is “rather stupid.” Even so, in the Universal films the scriptwriters occasionally throw Watson a bone – in one film literally, as Watson explains to Holmes that a skeleton is not that of a boy but a midget. (Or was it the other way around? Either way, you’d think Holmes would be at least as much of an expert on human anatomy as he is on footprints.)
Universal’s Rathbone-Holmes films (Fox had made two before the characters changed studios) were usually loosely based on a Conan Doyle story – in this case, “The Musgrave Ritual.” The original story, though good, wasn’t very cinematic, so the moviemakers took several elements of the story – a mysterious family ritual, a butler and a hidden treasure – and fashioned one of the better Holmes films.
It’s more than obvious that all is not well at Musgrave Manor – an abode that, even from the outside, makes that mansion from “Rebecca” look like Disneyland. Inside the manor, young Sally Musgrave is upset because her crabby brother, Geoffrey, doesn’t want her to marry an American airman. Old stick in the mud that he is, Geoffrey might have something of the point: The airman is played by a young Milburn Stone, and perhaps Geoffrey realizes that as Milburn ages he’ll eventually become the equally crotchety Doc on “Gunsmoke.” (It takes a crab to know a crab.)
Sally is played by the lovely Hillary Brooke, who would eventually move on to TV, where she not only never became Mrs. Doc but was perpetually pursued by, of all people, Lou Costello on "The Abbott and Costello Show." (The poor girl just couldn’t get a break.)
Musgrave Manor is very big place – not only does it also house another Musgrave brother, a housekeeper and a butler named Brunton (quite a ladies’ man in the original story but an old drunk here), but it’s also the temporary residence of a group of convalescing war veterans who are being looked after by Dr. Watson. (It seems odd that such a gloomy place would be chosen to house such patients, but apparently there was a housing shortage at home and the Black Hole of Calcutta was full up.)
Geoffrey and a couple of other people are murdered and Milburn is hauled off to jail before Holmes, elementarily enough, sets things straight.
Universal’s Holmes films often end with the Great Detective delivering a stirring little speech that is meant to improve wartime morale and accompanied by appropriately stirring music. It’s worth noting, in these times, that the audience at this particular showing laughed its collective derriere off at this film's last scene, in which Holmes tells Watson of “a new spirit abroad in the land. The old days of grab and greed are on their way out. We're beginning to think of what we ‘owe’ the other fellow, not just what we're compelled to give him.”
“You may be right, Holmes.... I hope you are,” Watson says.
“And God willing,” Holmes responds, “we’ll live to see that day, Watson.”
Well … he did know a lot about footprints.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
"Easter '51"
Watch for him
walking in the dawn
along the silver lawn.
Hail him hushedly
lovingly
laughingly:
A surging
gurgling
rising of joyousness
be gracefully yours.
- The Rev. Robert H. Flood, C.S.B. (1919-1974)
(my uncle)
walking in the dawn
along the silver lawn.
Hail him hushedly
lovingly
laughingly:
A surging
gurgling
rising of joyousness
be gracefully yours.
- The Rev. Robert H. Flood, C.S.B. (1919-1974)
(my uncle)
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
At the (old) movies: 'China Seas'
Some notes from the local cinephile society’s latest presentation….
To look at the list of actors in “China Seas” (1935), you might suspect that the MGM casting director merely stuck his head into the studio commissary and ordered everyone who happened to be there at that very moment to put down their bowls of L.B. Mayer’s mother’s chicken soup and follow him to Stage 19. And what followers: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Rosalind Russell, Lewis Stone, Robert Benchley....
From its title you won’t be shocked to learn that “China Seas” is about a voyage from Hong Kong to Singapore. You might be a mite surprised to learn that the skipper is Clark Gable -- not that he’s not up to the job, but after all, he did seem to have some, um, issues with authority in “Mutiny on the Bounty,” and now, wonder of wonders, he’s the big cheese himself. It might have been interesting to find Charles Laughton skulking aboard this ship and plotting some sort of revenge, but apparently Laughton was lunching at the Paramount commissary that day.
Even without Laughton’s presence, the film’s voyage is a stormy one. Gable has to put up with an “entertainer” from his past, played by Harlow, while falling for Rosalind Russell, who plays the widow of an old friend. For some reason, the Connecticut-born Russell is cast as a British woman, and her accent is so plummy that it's a wonder she isn't stalked by Little Jack Horner.
But the storms on this ship aren’t just emotional: The plot also includes a typhoon and an attempted takeover by Malay pirates. (I suppose they could have worked in an invasion of locusts, but MGM was probably hoarding all the insects for its upcoming production of “The Good Earth.”)
As I watched “China Seas” (which I’d seen once before, many years ago on TV), it occurred to me that it’s the best Howard Hawks film ever made by someone who wasn’t Howard Hawks – in this case, Tay Garnett, hardly a household name, though film buffs rightly remember him for the original American film version of “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and for “One-Way Passage.”
Although Hawks’ name isn’t on the movie, and although I have no reason to believe he was associated with it, there are a few tropes or motifs (or whatever pretentious term you want to use) that are typical of him: the scrappy relationship between the male lead and the “entertainer” (think Cary Grant and Jean Arthur in Hawks’ “Only Angels Have Wings”); the coward who wants to redeem himself (the type of role Richard Barthelmess pretty much owned, though this time it’s Lewis Stone, a few years before he became Judge Hardy); the young pup trying to learn from the master (played here by William Henry and played years later, in Hawks’ “Rio Bravo,” by Ricky Nelson).
Then again, a closer look at the credits perhaps reveals the real reason for the similarities to Hawks’ movies: Jules Furthman, who co-wrote the screenplay, also worked on “Only Angels Have Wings” and “Rio Bravo.” (And “Rio Bravo,” come to think of it, also features Dean Martin in a role that’s similar to the Barthelmess-Stone parts, though unlike his predecessors, Martin’s character gets to survive to the final fadeout.)
Putting auteurist speculations aside (often a very good idea), you have to admit that in “China Seas” the dull moments are few and far between, if they exist at all. And aside from the melodrama, there are such delights as C. Aubrey Smith (for once cast not as a stuffed shirt or blowhard but as a fairly witty guy) and the always welcome Benchley, who, as a drunken novelist, provides my favorite moment: ”See that chess game over there? When I was four years old, I played 10 people all at once. Blindfolded. Lost every game."
To look at the list of actors in “China Seas” (1935), you might suspect that the MGM casting director merely stuck his head into the studio commissary and ordered everyone who happened to be there at that very moment to put down their bowls of L.B. Mayer’s mother’s chicken soup and follow him to Stage 19. And what followers: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Rosalind Russell, Lewis Stone, Robert Benchley....
From its title you won’t be shocked to learn that “China Seas” is about a voyage from Hong Kong to Singapore. You might be a mite surprised to learn that the skipper is Clark Gable -- not that he’s not up to the job, but after all, he did seem to have some, um, issues with authority in “Mutiny on the Bounty,” and now, wonder of wonders, he’s the big cheese himself. It might have been interesting to find Charles Laughton skulking aboard this ship and plotting some sort of revenge, but apparently Laughton was lunching at the Paramount commissary that day.
Even without Laughton’s presence, the film’s voyage is a stormy one. Gable has to put up with an “entertainer” from his past, played by Harlow, while falling for Rosalind Russell, who plays the widow of an old friend. For some reason, the Connecticut-born Russell is cast as a British woman, and her accent is so plummy that it's a wonder she isn't stalked by Little Jack Horner.
But the storms on this ship aren’t just emotional: The plot also includes a typhoon and an attempted takeover by Malay pirates. (I suppose they could have worked in an invasion of locusts, but MGM was probably hoarding all the insects for its upcoming production of “The Good Earth.”)
As I watched “China Seas” (which I’d seen once before, many years ago on TV), it occurred to me that it’s the best Howard Hawks film ever made by someone who wasn’t Howard Hawks – in this case, Tay Garnett, hardly a household name, though film buffs rightly remember him for the original American film version of “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and for “One-Way Passage.”
Although Hawks’ name isn’t on the movie, and although I have no reason to believe he was associated with it, there are a few tropes or motifs (or whatever pretentious term you want to use) that are typical of him: the scrappy relationship between the male lead and the “entertainer” (think Cary Grant and Jean Arthur in Hawks’ “Only Angels Have Wings”); the coward who wants to redeem himself (the type of role Richard Barthelmess pretty much owned, though this time it’s Lewis Stone, a few years before he became Judge Hardy); the young pup trying to learn from the master (played here by William Henry and played years later, in Hawks’ “Rio Bravo,” by Ricky Nelson).
Then again, a closer look at the credits perhaps reveals the real reason for the similarities to Hawks’ movies: Jules Furthman, who co-wrote the screenplay, also worked on “Only Angels Have Wings” and “Rio Bravo.” (And “Rio Bravo,” come to think of it, also features Dean Martin in a role that’s similar to the Barthelmess-Stone parts, though unlike his predecessors, Martin’s character gets to survive to the final fadeout.)
Putting auteurist speculations aside (often a very good idea), you have to admit that in “China Seas” the dull moments are few and far between, if they exist at all. And aside from the melodrama, there are such delights as C. Aubrey Smith (for once cast not as a stuffed shirt or blowhard but as a fairly witty guy) and the always welcome Benchley, who, as a drunken novelist, provides my favorite moment: ”See that chess game over there? When I was four years old, I played 10 people all at once. Blindfolded. Lost every game."
Monday, April 6, 2009
A sad spin on an all-too-recurring story
More than 40 years later, I remember this:
I’m on a field trip with my eighth-grade class. We’re watching a woman, seated at a table, as she places a coffee cup upside down on a device that spins it.
As the cup spins, she takes a paintbrush – the kind an artist uses – and places the brush end of it maybe half an inch above the cup’s upside-down rim.
Before we know it, the cup has stopped spinning and now has a colored stripe – a perfectly straight line – around it.
The woman smiles. As I recall, it’s not a smart-alecky grin; it’s a sign of pride in a job well done with a skill she knows she has been blessed with.
A skill that I – possessed of a nerve whose steadiness makes Don Knotts look like the Rock of Gibraltar – know I shall never have. A skill that fills me with wonder.
That’s the main thing I remember from the tour we took at our town’s pottery factory, which began making things in 1871.
And stopped making them today.
Over the years, the factory’s pottery was distributed all over the country. When folks from my town ate out of town, they often turned over their plates to see if they were from the hometown plant. (My Aunt Dorothy was particularly shameless about this, but, possessed of a doctorate, she did have the good sense not to do this while there was food on the plate.)
Over the past few decades, the factory, like so many factories in so many hometowns, changed hands more often than a softball during a particularly energetic triple play. The most recent owner, a company in Toledo, Ohio, announced late last year that it would be closing the plant, saying the factory, despite “considerable efforts,” had fallen short of “strategic expectations.”
(I suppose you could argue that the Maginot Line fell short of “strategic expectations.” But a place that made cups and plates?)
The owner did say that products with the plant’s brand name – which includes the name of my hometown – would be stamped on products imported from plants in other countries.
Which, of course, makes us all feel a lot better.
I’m on a field trip with my eighth-grade class. We’re watching a woman, seated at a table, as she places a coffee cup upside down on a device that spins it.
As the cup spins, she takes a paintbrush – the kind an artist uses – and places the brush end of it maybe half an inch above the cup’s upside-down rim.
Before we know it, the cup has stopped spinning and now has a colored stripe – a perfectly straight line – around it.
The woman smiles. As I recall, it’s not a smart-alecky grin; it’s a sign of pride in a job well done with a skill she knows she has been blessed with.
A skill that I – possessed of a nerve whose steadiness makes Don Knotts look like the Rock of Gibraltar – know I shall never have. A skill that fills me with wonder.
That’s the main thing I remember from the tour we took at our town’s pottery factory, which began making things in 1871.
And stopped making them today.
Over the years, the factory’s pottery was distributed all over the country. When folks from my town ate out of town, they often turned over their plates to see if they were from the hometown plant. (My Aunt Dorothy was particularly shameless about this, but, possessed of a doctorate, she did have the good sense not to do this while there was food on the plate.)
Over the past few decades, the factory, like so many factories in so many hometowns, changed hands more often than a softball during a particularly energetic triple play. The most recent owner, a company in Toledo, Ohio, announced late last year that it would be closing the plant, saying the factory, despite “considerable efforts,” had fallen short of “strategic expectations.”
(I suppose you could argue that the Maginot Line fell short of “strategic expectations.” But a place that made cups and plates?)
The owner did say that products with the plant’s brand name – which includes the name of my hometown – would be stamped on products imported from plants in other countries.
Which, of course, makes us all feel a lot better.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Thanks, but my AC and I are very happy
From a local weekly's classified ads:
Osculating stand up fan
adjustable height white color
almost new asking $10
Osculating stand up fan
adjustable height white color
almost new asking $10
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Fun at the puzzle tournament
Notes from the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, held Feb. 27 to March 1 in Brooklyn....
FRIDAY NIGHT
Registration time. Last year when I walked up to the table, a seemingly nice gentleman named David J. Kahn gave me my registration materials. But the next day it turned out that Mr. Kahn was the author of that year's Puzzle #5, which is commonly called, with more than sufficient reason, "the bastard puzzle."
This year I don't see Mr. Kahn at the registration table. Instead, I am waited on by Patrick Merrell, who I happen to remember is also a crossword puzzle designer. A very affable young man, Mr. Merrell is.
The Friday night program consists of a panel discussion and a competition that won't affect the weekend's scores. The panel consists of people who blog about crosswords, including Rex Parker, whom I've corresponded with a number of times, though we've never met, and our paths don't get around to crossing this weekend, either. (It's hard to spot someone in a crowd of more than 650 puzzle solvers.) The discussion seems pleasant enough, though the audio could be better.
The competition, called "Pick Your Poison," is in two rounds. The first consists of KenKen puzzles, KenKen being the latest rage for those who love Sudoku. The inventor of KenKen, Tetsuya Miyamoto, is a special guest at the tournament and speaks to us for a few minutes. Mr. Miyamoto is charmingly exuberant, and it soon becomes clear that no one will have any trouble getting him to come out of his shell any time soon.
Although I've done some Sudoku puzzles, I've never done KenKen. Turns out I have a choice between four 4-by-4 puzzles and two 6-by-6 puzzles. I figure doing the four smaller puzzles will be easier. We have 20 minutes, and with maybe four minutes left I've finished the first three and am thinking myself quite the KenKen whiz. But the last one stumps me, and I am forced to realize that the only competition I might win within the next few minutes will be one that awards a trophy for the most erasures. When it comes to KenKen competitions, I am a WashoutWashout.
Next we have 20 minutes to do one of three puzzles: Cryptic Crosswords, Split Decisions or Diagramless. I've never been able to do a Diagramless and I've never heard of Split Decisions (and when I look at a sample I know I'd be dead in the water before I ever left the beach). So by default I try a cryptic puzzle. I've done them before. They're like British crosswords; the clues involve puns and anagrams and almost never mean what they seem to mean.
Although I've done cryptic crosswords, it usually takes me a while to do each one, and my brain has to be in the proper gear for it. Because it's been a while since I've done a cryptic, I'm pleasantly surprised when I get a lot of it done, but there's no way I'm going to beat the 20-minute time limit.
So I don't need to stay for that night's awards ceremony.
SATURDAY
A big day -- six puzzles.
Right off the bat I forget a lesson I learned last year: Get in the competition room early so you can get a seat at one of the long tables. Despite my forgetfulness, I manage to find a seat before things get so bad that they have to send out for extra chairs.
Two seats down from me is Ellen Ripstein, a competition winner who was among those featured in "Wordplay," a documentary made about the tournament a few years ago. Next to me is a young man (way younger than I) who designs puzzles; one he constructed with someone else was published earlier in the month in The New York Times.
No reason for me to be intimidated sitting at the same table with these folks, no sirree.
Puzzle #1 is by Byron Walden. Mr. Walden is a double threat: Not only does he compose diabolical puzzles, but I often see his name on the Times' crosswords Web page, listed among the top 10 solvers of the puzzle of the day.
But Puzzle #1 is supposed to be easy, and Mr. Walden complies. I'm relieved but maybe a little disappointed; seeing a puzzle by Byron Walden that turns out to be easy is a little like being James Bond and being taken to Dr. No's torture chamber and finding out that the only weapon the good doctor has on hand is his collection of favorite knock-knock jokes. But I complete the puzzle perfectly (150 bonus points) and a few minutes early (25 bonus points for each point).
Puzzle #2 is by someone even scarier than Byron Walden: Brendan Emmett Quigley. Seeing his name on a crossword puzzle usually makes me want to buzz my secretary and have her clear all appointments for the next three days -- no matter that I a) have no secretary and b) have few appointments these days. The puzzle is titled "Allow Me to Introduce Myself." The theme answers are familiar phrases with i's stuck in them, so that, for example, the answer to "Put some complete morons it touch with each other?" is CONNECT THE IDIOTS instead of CONNECT THE DOTS.
Luckily I figure out the theme soon enough, but some other answers (what crossword buffs call the "fill") prove troublesome. Most troublesome are two intersecting words, the clues for which are "Having gems arranged side by side, e.g." and "Fifth-century Chinese dynasty." For the first I have T_OROW; the second, _EI. I can't figure it out and return to it after I've resolved all the other trouble spots. Finally, with less than a minute, I decide that maybe China at one time had a FEI dynasty. And less than 20 seconds after the proctor takes my paper, I realize the correct answers are WEI and TWOROW (TWO ROW).
The next puzzle is by Merl Reagle It takes a while, but I finish it perfectly with a few minutes to spare. Luckily for me, Mr. Reagle is a lot closer to my age than those whippersnappers Walden and Quigley and is apparently an old-show-biz buff, so I have an apparent advantage over the young man to my left: I know immediately that "Constance or Norma of the silents" is TALMADGE and the vaudeville star who is famous for appearing in "Hellzapoppin'" is OLE OLSEN.
Even so, Ms. Ripstein has finished the puzzle (112 words) within a few minutes and has left the room, having had the decency not to get in my face and yell "Nyah-hah-hah!" before departing.
After lunch, Puzzle #4, by Andrea Carla Michaels and Myles Callum, provides me with another perfect finish.
But then comes The Bastard Puzzle.
And it's by -- you guessed it -- Patrick Merrell, that affable enough young man referred to above. How could you, Patrick? Then again, I am able to figure out the theme, which wasn't the case with Mr. Kahn's puzzle: each theme answer in Mr. Merrell's puzzle has two words, each of which could be preceded by "sub" (HUMAN SPECIES / SUBHUMAN, SUBSPECIES). But the fill is way too tough, and most of the people in the room (including me) run out of time.
The final puzzle of the day is by longtime puzzle-maker Maura Jacobson, who I believe has had a puzzle in the competition since the beginning, more than 30 years ago, and who once again wins a warm round of applause from the audience. The theme clues are spoonerisms -- NERD'S BEST SOUP for BIRD'S NEST SOUP is one -- and it's a charming way to end the day, especially since I finish it perfectly and ahead of time.
After dinner, it's Game Show Night, with word and trivia games. One of the team members is a puzzle-maker named Tony Orbach, but there's no puzzle about his parentage: It's plainly obvious from his looks that he's the son of one of my favorite actors, the late Jerry Orbach.
SUNDAY
A lot of suspense -- not just the end of the competition, but the imminent end of relatively mild winter weather in Brooklyn: A big storm is scheduled to hit the area that night, and I decide to head out for the airport after the competition, skipping the dinner, which this year is to be prepared by a Food Network chef who, as part of the program "Dinner: Impossible," was taken to the hotel Sunday morning with the assignment to prepare the dinner from scratch. Matter of fact, The Food Network has been taping the tournament both Saturday and Sunday. A big sign near the entry to the competition room tells us all that we've pretty much given up our right to privacy by being in the tournament. (This is a particularly bad break for tournament contestants who are also entered in the witness protection program.)
The last puzzle for everyone, by Mike Shenk, isn't too bad, but going into it I know that that WEI has led my score way astray, so I try to be accurate and very fast, and I succeed.
The tournament ends with the section finals, and the last round, the Section A final, is particularly suspenseful; Trip Payne and Francis Heaney finish the puzzle (by Patrick Berry) early but have made the same error, while Tyler Hinman, who has won four times in a row, seems to be stuck and the clock is running ... running ...
Did he finish in time? Find out here.
The scores are posted on the tournament Web site. At first I'm 245th, but during the week the scores are adjusted, and on Friday I learn I'm 250th out of 674, up from last year's finish, 262nd out of 699. Were it not for that Puzzle #2 blunder, I apparently would have been 228th.
And did I get out of New York City in time to beat the snow? I'm afraid I don't have video on that, so you'll have to take my word for it that my plane took off before the snow took over, and I said WEI! WEI! WEI! WEI! all the way home.
FRIDAY NIGHT
Registration time. Last year when I walked up to the table, a seemingly nice gentleman named David J. Kahn gave me my registration materials. But the next day it turned out that Mr. Kahn was the author of that year's Puzzle #5, which is commonly called, with more than sufficient reason, "the bastard puzzle."
This year I don't see Mr. Kahn at the registration table. Instead, I am waited on by Patrick Merrell, who I happen to remember is also a crossword puzzle designer. A very affable young man, Mr. Merrell is.
The Friday night program consists of a panel discussion and a competition that won't affect the weekend's scores. The panel consists of people who blog about crosswords, including Rex Parker, whom I've corresponded with a number of times, though we've never met, and our paths don't get around to crossing this weekend, either. (It's hard to spot someone in a crowd of more than 650 puzzle solvers.) The discussion seems pleasant enough, though the audio could be better.
The competition, called "Pick Your Poison," is in two rounds. The first consists of KenKen puzzles, KenKen being the latest rage for those who love Sudoku. The inventor of KenKen, Tetsuya Miyamoto, is a special guest at the tournament and speaks to us for a few minutes. Mr. Miyamoto is charmingly exuberant, and it soon becomes clear that no one will have any trouble getting him to come out of his shell any time soon.
Although I've done some Sudoku puzzles, I've never done KenKen. Turns out I have a choice between four 4-by-4 puzzles and two 6-by-6 puzzles. I figure doing the four smaller puzzles will be easier. We have 20 minutes, and with maybe four minutes left I've finished the first three and am thinking myself quite the KenKen whiz. But the last one stumps me, and I am forced to realize that the only competition I might win within the next few minutes will be one that awards a trophy for the most erasures. When it comes to KenKen competitions, I am a WashoutWashout.
Next we have 20 minutes to do one of three puzzles: Cryptic Crosswords, Split Decisions or Diagramless. I've never been able to do a Diagramless and I've never heard of Split Decisions (and when I look at a sample I know I'd be dead in the water before I ever left the beach). So by default I try a cryptic puzzle. I've done them before. They're like British crosswords; the clues involve puns and anagrams and almost never mean what they seem to mean.
Although I've done cryptic crosswords, it usually takes me a while to do each one, and my brain has to be in the proper gear for it. Because it's been a while since I've done a cryptic, I'm pleasantly surprised when I get a lot of it done, but there's no way I'm going to beat the 20-minute time limit.
So I don't need to stay for that night's awards ceremony.
SATURDAY
A big day -- six puzzles.
Right off the bat I forget a lesson I learned last year: Get in the competition room early so you can get a seat at one of the long tables. Despite my forgetfulness, I manage to find a seat before things get so bad that they have to send out for extra chairs.
Two seats down from me is Ellen Ripstein, a competition winner who was among those featured in "Wordplay," a documentary made about the tournament a few years ago. Next to me is a young man (way younger than I) who designs puzzles; one he constructed with someone else was published earlier in the month in The New York Times.
No reason for me to be intimidated sitting at the same table with these folks, no sirree.
Puzzle #1 is by Byron Walden. Mr. Walden is a double threat: Not only does he compose diabolical puzzles, but I often see his name on the Times' crosswords Web page, listed among the top 10 solvers of the puzzle of the day.
But Puzzle #1 is supposed to be easy, and Mr. Walden complies. I'm relieved but maybe a little disappointed; seeing a puzzle by Byron Walden that turns out to be easy is a little like being James Bond and being taken to Dr. No's torture chamber and finding out that the only weapon the good doctor has on hand is his collection of favorite knock-knock jokes. But I complete the puzzle perfectly (150 bonus points) and a few minutes early (25 bonus points for each point).
Puzzle #2 is by someone even scarier than Byron Walden: Brendan Emmett Quigley. Seeing his name on a crossword puzzle usually makes me want to buzz my secretary and have her clear all appointments for the next three days -- no matter that I a) have no secretary and b) have few appointments these days. The puzzle is titled "Allow Me to Introduce Myself." The theme answers are familiar phrases with i's stuck in them, so that, for example, the answer to "Put some complete morons it touch with each other?" is CONNECT THE IDIOTS instead of CONNECT THE DOTS.
Luckily I figure out the theme soon enough, but some other answers (what crossword buffs call the "fill") prove troublesome. Most troublesome are two intersecting words, the clues for which are "Having gems arranged side by side, e.g." and "Fifth-century Chinese dynasty." For the first I have T_OROW; the second, _EI. I can't figure it out and return to it after I've resolved all the other trouble spots. Finally, with less than a minute, I decide that maybe China at one time had a FEI dynasty. And less than 20 seconds after the proctor takes my paper, I realize the correct answers are WEI and TWOROW (TWO ROW).
The next puzzle is by Merl Reagle It takes a while, but I finish it perfectly with a few minutes to spare. Luckily for me, Mr. Reagle is a lot closer to my age than those whippersnappers Walden and Quigley and is apparently an old-show-biz buff, so I have an apparent advantage over the young man to my left: I know immediately that "Constance or Norma of the silents" is TALMADGE and the vaudeville star who is famous for appearing in "Hellzapoppin'" is OLE OLSEN.
Even so, Ms. Ripstein has finished the puzzle (112 words) within a few minutes and has left the room, having had the decency not to get in my face and yell "Nyah-hah-hah!" before departing.
After lunch, Puzzle #4, by Andrea Carla Michaels and Myles Callum, provides me with another perfect finish.
But then comes The Bastard Puzzle.
And it's by -- you guessed it -- Patrick Merrell, that affable enough young man referred to above. How could you, Patrick? Then again, I am able to figure out the theme, which wasn't the case with Mr. Kahn's puzzle: each theme answer in Mr. Merrell's puzzle has two words, each of which could be preceded by "sub" (HUMAN SPECIES / SUBHUMAN, SUBSPECIES). But the fill is way too tough, and most of the people in the room (including me) run out of time.
The final puzzle of the day is by longtime puzzle-maker Maura Jacobson, who I believe has had a puzzle in the competition since the beginning, more than 30 years ago, and who once again wins a warm round of applause from the audience. The theme clues are spoonerisms -- NERD'S BEST SOUP for BIRD'S NEST SOUP is one -- and it's a charming way to end the day, especially since I finish it perfectly and ahead of time.
After dinner, it's Game Show Night, with word and trivia games. One of the team members is a puzzle-maker named Tony Orbach, but there's no puzzle about his parentage: It's plainly obvious from his looks that he's the son of one of my favorite actors, the late Jerry Orbach.
SUNDAY
A lot of suspense -- not just the end of the competition, but the imminent end of relatively mild winter weather in Brooklyn: A big storm is scheduled to hit the area that night, and I decide to head out for the airport after the competition, skipping the dinner, which this year is to be prepared by a Food Network chef who, as part of the program "Dinner: Impossible," was taken to the hotel Sunday morning with the assignment to prepare the dinner from scratch. Matter of fact, The Food Network has been taping the tournament both Saturday and Sunday. A big sign near the entry to the competition room tells us all that we've pretty much given up our right to privacy by being in the tournament. (This is a particularly bad break for tournament contestants who are also entered in the witness protection program.)
The last puzzle for everyone, by Mike Shenk, isn't too bad, but going into it I know that that WEI has led my score way astray, so I try to be accurate and very fast, and I succeed.
The tournament ends with the section finals, and the last round, the Section A final, is particularly suspenseful; Trip Payne and Francis Heaney finish the puzzle (by Patrick Berry) early but have made the same error, while Tyler Hinman, who has won four times in a row, seems to be stuck and the clock is running ... running ...
Did he finish in time? Find out here.
The scores are posted on the tournament Web site. At first I'm 245th, but during the week the scores are adjusted, and on Friday I learn I'm 250th out of 674, up from last year's finish, 262nd out of 699. Were it not for that Puzzle #2 blunder, I apparently would have been 228th.
And did I get out of New York City in time to beat the snow? I'm afraid I don't have video on that, so you'll have to take my word for it that my plane took off before the snow took over, and I said WEI! WEI! WEI! WEI! all the way home.
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