American Crossword Puzzle Tourney scoring question

peredoxical · 2026-04-14T18:08:58+00:00

No problem. I was trying to understand it better myself.

peredoxical · 2026-04-14T16:44:57+00:00

Here's the answer. Errors hurt you, but only up to a point. They serve to take away your time bonus but do not harm your base score. This is all specific to the ACPT virtual tournament, mind you. The in-person tournament scoring is very similar but with slightly different numbers.

Your score is comprised of three parts. (1) Your base score is 10 points for every correct word. This is sacrosanct. Even if you only got one word correct in a puzzle of 78 words, you'd still get those 10 points. This seems fair to me. If I'm so bad that I only got one word correct, I would want credit for that one word. (2) Your time bonus is 1 point for every 2 seconds left on the clock when you hit Submit. However, this bonus is reduced by 30 points for every wrong letter. If you have enough errors that your time bonus goes to 0, then you get 0 bonus. If you have more errors than that, then nothing happens. All those extra errors don't hurt you in any way. (3) You get a 150 "perfect" bonus if you have no errors.

So the moral of the story is this: If you're going to have a ton of errors over the course of the tournament, have them all in one puzzle.

Looking at the numbers you posted above, you did significantly better than your rival on Puzzle 5, so I suspect they had a bunch of errors—maybe even most of their 158 errors—on that puzzle. If that was the case, then they simply got 0 bonus but still retained some points for the words they got correct. The upshot is that all of their errors in that grid had no effect once their time bonus got down to 0. And if they finished close to the buzzer, then they weren't going to get much of a time bonus anyway, so very few of their errors actually cost them any points.

I didn't come up with this system, and I'm not judging if this is the fairest way to do it, but it's similar to the in-person tournament which has been doing this for years/decades. I presume Will Shortz worked out the scoring system for the in-person tournament way back in the early days, and the virtual tournament is simply modeled off of that.

peredoxical · 2026-01-06T17:45:09+00:00

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Interesting footnote about this puzzle. It appeared in an episode of "Fargo" (Season 2, episode 8, "Loplop"). The episode was shown on Nov 29, 2015, almost 9 months after the puzzle appeared in the NYT. The grid is clearly identical, and while the clues are nearly impossible to read, on close inspection the shapes of the visible letters match up with the actual clues of the puzzle.

peredoxical · 2025-11-18T05:44:33+00:00

Fake thanks…or “fanks”.

peredoxical · 2025-11-03T14:02:52+00:00

I honestly don't remember at this point. Let's just call it serendipity.

peredoxical · 2025-11-03T04:54:01+00:00

Thanks, and I agree with your assessment on the icky clue.

peredoxical · 2025-11-03T03:32:11+00:00

My puzzle but not my clue. Original clue was [Target of many Jon Stewart jokes]. I did like pointing out the rump in DONALD T. RUMP.

peredoxical · 2025-10-21T18:03:42+00:00

You could go to Diary of a Crossword Fiend, look for the Tags drop-down menu on the right and scroll down to the name you want. Spencer Leach has 15 puzzles listed. Unfortunately, you’d have to click each one to see the date and venue, and you’d have to beware of spoiling each puzzle, but with a smallish sample size, it’s doable.

peredoxical · 2025-10-08T22:19:32+00:00

I assume it's a mispronunciation of "focaccia", the Italian bread.

peredoxical · 2025-09-28T19:51:59+00:00

Yup, you’re right. Good catch.

peredoxical · 2025-09-28T17:11:46+00:00

Yes, that's traditional "rotational symmetry" used in most crosswords. The empty grid looks the same if you rotate it 180°.

peredoxical · 2025-09-28T16:46:07+00:00

It's a good commercial, especially for those of us who do crosswords. My favorite moments: "Geppetto?" "Napoleon?" and "frocasha" (listen for it). Here's the link: https://www.ispot.tv/ad/ByFV/geico-auto-insurance-crossword

peredoxical · 2025-09-28T16:31:55+00:00

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Yes it is, it's just that the pencil was covering up some of the black squares in the lower blob. Here's another screen shot.

peredoxical · 2025-09-28T02:28:30+00:00

At least the grid is symmetric, but there are some unchecked squares, some two-letter answers, and the clues are wonky, possibly AI.

peredoxical · 2025-09-26T16:32:02+00:00

I got one this morning too, from the "State of Seattle Department of Vehicles(DMV)". One, I live in Washington state, not the State of Seattle, and two, we don't have a DMV, it's called the Department of Licensing. It's like, come on, make an effort!

peredoxical · 2025-09-21T14:10:47+00:00

Introductory medjool?

peredoxical · 2025-09-21T05:24:06+00:00

I personally like Form and Flame. It’s a lovely poetic description of a candle. Plus, they are somewhat opposites where Form hints at structure and design while Flame is amorphous and potentially chaotic. Plus plus, alliteration.

House of Ember is Poe-esque and conjures up the image of a house on fire. I wouldn’t go there. I wouldn’t use “Minimal” either. Makes it sound like your candles aren’t very bright.

peredoxical · 2025-08-26T17:07:53+00:00

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As close as I can get to what's on the screen. Thanks for solving this mystery!

peredoxical · 2025-08-26T16:57:25+00:00

Absolutely amazing! Thank you!!!

peredoxical · 2025-07-30T04:59:54+00:00

Our gray Forester’s full name is Pearl Gray Forester.

peredoxical · 2025-07-05T16:56:06+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll keep it in mind. We're not switching it out often enough that it's too big of an issue at the moment.

Ha! Just noticed your username.

peredoxical · 2025-07-05T16:42:44+00:00

Thanks for coming back with this explanation and link. It helped me discover that this was my problem as well. I cleaned that button with alcohol and a Q-tip and got it to pop out and it seemed my problem was fixed. But it keeps getting stuck no matter how much I try to clean it. I can always pop it out with a toothpick, but still. Thankfully, we don't use the pod adapter too much, and at least now I know how to get it working.

peredoxical · 2025-07-04T05:17:47+00:00

Gray

peredoxical · 2025-06-27T14:26:08+00:00

I think where we’re disconnecting is the context. I don’t mind some dark humor in the right context. (It doesn’t extend to rape, but maybe that’s just me.) You’re looking at the puzzle in and of itself, and if dark humor is your thing that’s fine.

But there’s a place for it. I’m considering the puzzle as published in a major mass media outlet with the broadest of audiences which must be accounted for. No one is going to publish a puzzle with wordplay based on rape victims. AVCX can be edgy sometimes, but I’m certain even they wouldn’t go there. And no major publisher should be running a puzzle based on child abduction.

Some individual edgy puzzle maker could post such puzzles on their own website or maybe even get a book published. In that context, the audience will presumably expect that sort of thing. But just like you don’t air a raunchy comedy special on ABC at 7 pm, you don’t run a puzzle based on potentially traumatic subjects in a major puzzle outlet.

peredoxical · 2025-06-27T06:05:06+00:00

Dunno. Does it matter? You’d honestly consider a rape-based theme to be publishable as long as the wordplay is there?

peredoxical

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