 Well good evening. It's so great to see all of you here. I'm Wendy Lujet, the University Librarian and this is just an exciting way to start our program series for the Friends of the Library this year. And I do want to give a special thanks to that organization which supports us in so many ways. But we also have a number of co-sponsors of this event this evening, some wonderful colleagues from campus but also community organizations. The University of Minnesota Alumni Association, the College of Continuing Education, the U of M Retirees Association, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, the U of M Bookstore, Friends of the St. Paul Public Library, Stillwater Public Library, and our good friends at Minnesota Public Radio. Thank you all for that support. Now it obviously takes a village to plan an event such as this and this one had helped from some very special villagers. University of Minnesota Chemistry Professor George Barani himself, a Wizard of Puzzles and contributor to the New York Times Crosswords created that special puzzle that you found in your programs this evening and he enlisted some other friends, namely some of our librarians including Nancy Hurther, Megan Lafferty, and John Jeffries to do some test solving to make sure things came together. And we thank you all for that inspired work, really important. And there's also many puzzle constructors in the audience tonight and you know who you are. They come from all over, many of them here at the University but also some of them working through the St. Paul Friends of the libraries who have an annual puzzle, have an annual crossword tournament and it's next coming up in June 2014 so it's not too early to begin thinking about that opportunity. And those puzzle constructors have helped us in the last month or so and that they've created puzzles that we've put throughout the libraries across campus. So when the students came back they had a little something to focus their energies on as they were getting accustomed to this big institution. Now it was just 100 years ago this fall that the first crossword puzzle was published in the New York world as a mental exercise. And in fact doctors are now telling us that if we want to keep the synapses flowing as our gray matter gets a little slower, this is perhaps a good thing for us to undertake. And today you can find crossword puzzles in every major alphabet based language all over the world in print and we also of course can get them on our favorite mobile devices. And it's been said that crossword puzzles and doing them is a series of small well-earned victories. And for those of us who look forward to our daily crossword with a healthy mixture of dread and delight at the same time, we can surely appreciate the consummate skill that it takes for a really fabulous puzzle master. And it was also I think a path of these small victories that represents the career of our guest tonight, Will Shortz. He sold his first puzzle at age 14. He was able to negotiate the labyrinth of university bureaucracy at Indiana University to construct his one-of-a-kind college degree in enigmatology. As I say, one small victory at a time. As I was thinking about my remarks tonight, it occurred to me that there's a strong similarity I think between librarians and Will Shortz. We both love to connect the dots between problems and solutions. We both love language. We love logic. Obscure literary references? Not a problem. Arcane subject areas, just bring it on. So it really isn't such a stretch to imagine why Will chose to continue his education after Indiana, after that enigmatology degree with study of law at the University of Virginia. Where else could he spend his days studying arcane legal issues and obscure court cases? But following law school, he returned to his first love puzzles. He once said that crosswords are creative, but law school isn't. If it taught him one thing, it was this, that designing puzzles for a living was perhaps not a profitable endeavor. And so he embarked on a career in editing puzzles, which led to the New York Times, and to a weekly segment on National Public Radio's weekend edition Sunday, and to one of the top 25 highest grossing documentaries of all time, Wordplay, and to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, now the oldest and largest in the world, with over 700 contestants. And it also led to him authoring and editing more than 500 puzzle books. Oh, and yes, there's one more thing. He loves table tennis, or ping-pong if you're looking for a two word alliterative phrase. And in fact, I learned he's already played his game today as something that he tries to do each and every day. But I'm going to let Will connect the dots about that obscure fact and the rest of his career. And I'd like you to join me in welcoming Will Schoens. Thank you very much, Wendy and Kathy for inviting me here. And thank you all for coming out this evening. It's great to be here in Minneapolis, which I understand from Crossword Puzzles is a suburb of Edina. And understand there are some other major cities around here, Eden Prairie and Egan. Those are big cities, but it's nice to be here in this little town of Minneapolis. As Wendy mentioned, there are amazingly a lot of New York Times Crossword contributors from here in Minneapolis and the surrounding towns and cities. And I'd like to introduce them. One is George Barani, who made the puzzle in your program. He's had three Crosswords in the Times and he's got one more coming soon. George, where are you seated right here? Will you stand up? And for the rest, I'm just going to do them all. There are eight more. I'd like to mention them all and then you all stand together. Victor Barocas has had three Crosswords in the Times, including a great one a couple of weeks ago called Capital L's, a Sunday puzzle on August 25. Jotson Bernackel has had four Crosswords in the Times so far. Her most recent one appeared Monday, I think this week. It was the one with English words with Chinese roots. She just packed the grid with those very pretty. Michael David has had three Crosswords in the Times, most recently in January, a puzzle involving wedding anniversary gifts. David Hanson has had one puzzle so far in January 2011 with palindromic words in which they went all around the grid and then he had palindromic word right across the middle. Daniel Cantor has had eight puzzles so far, most recently in February. J. Caskell has had six, most recently in January, and that puzzle involved ingredients in heavy cream, had them all in order as you would if you were creating heavy cream. David Libman-Noel has had eight puzzles, most recently in June, and Tom Peppers had two, most recently last October. It had royalties, properties, novelties and things like that. So there's really a lot of Crosswording going on here in Minneapolis. Will you construct or stand up? I'll tell you what we're going to do tonight. We've got a lot to pack in in about 80 minutes or so. First I'm going to talk a little about Crossword puzzles. I'll tell you some of my favorite New York Times Crosswords from the last several months. I'll tell you how a Crossword is made, what makes a great Crossword, a little about the history of Crosswords, what I do is a Crossword editor. So I'll be a few minutes on that. Then I'll open up this up to questions. If there's anything you'd like to ask me about Crossword puzzles, Sudoku, puzzles of any sort, table tennis, anything you want to ask me. And then I have, I brought an original audience participation game called Beat the Champ. So I'll engage your brains shortly. But some of my favorite puzzles from the last few months in the New York Times, one of them appeared on Sunday, June 9, it was called Fast One by Elizabeth Gorski. The middle answer across the grid was Secretariat, defined as 95 across who made the covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated in the same week. And 95 across was Superhorse. Also in the grid were all-time records, which amazingly Secretariat set 50 years ago and her and those records still stand today. Homestretch and the Triple Crown, those were all in the grid. And the grid had 19 circled letters, which went from A, B, C, D, E, etc. up to S. When you're done with a puzzle, you could connect those 19 letters in alphabetical order and they formed an outline of Secretariat's head. That is such a brilliant idea and so hard to pull off. And that puzzle ran on the 50th anniversary of Secretariat winning the Triple Crown. Another favorite puzzle of mine appeared on Sunday, July 14, it was by Daniel Finan called Show Me the Money. All the long answers in this puzzle had a connection to money and finance. For example, penny stocks crossed price point, going long crossed cash on hand, ticker tapes crossed bottom line, sunk costs crossed bond rating and across the middle of the grid was dollars and cents, which crossed fiscal and cliff. And when I say these words crossed, they crossed in an unusual way. In each case, one of those words had an S, which crossed the letter I going in the other direction as in a dollar sign. That was a really nice one. One of my favorite daily puzzles appeared just a couple of weeks ago on a Thursday, August 29 by Timothy Poland. And there was an isolated black square in the middle of the grid, so just a white square surrounded by blacks. And the solution involved filling in the letters E, Y, E in that single square. And that was part of the answers, Gimlet Eye, London Eye, Eye of Newt and Eyeopener. In addition, the puzzle had Hurricane Carter, Brooklyn Cyclone, Typhoon and Katrina. And all those other answers in the grid swirled in counterclockwise fashion around the eye of the puzzle. A few weeks ago, there was a long time New York Times Crossword solver who visited me, met me at my table tennis club, to show me his records for solving the Times Crossword, which go back to 1997. He's tried every Times Crossword back to then and he's kept a daily log of the number of letters he's missed. And over all that time, he's missing about 2.3 letters per puzzle. And some of them are perfect and then he's missed a few more, obviously missed more letters. There was one puzzle which he missed half the puzzle and he just got slaughtered and he told me that was his all time, the puzzle he hated the most of all time. And that was the one, it was an April Fool's puzzle a couple of years ago where the middle answer down the diagram was, I think it was two way traffic. And all the vertical answers on the right hand side of the diagram ran upward. And he hated that puzzle. I haven't talked with him yet about this hurricane, but I have a feeling this is his new all time most hated puzzle. And one more puzzle in the last few months I particularly liked was, has a great story connected to it, was from Wednesday June 26. And the byline said puzzle by David Steinberg 16 and Bernice Gordon 99. And the answer involved phrases that contained age, the letters AGE at the end, which you could drop to make a new phrase, or a familiar phrase that you could add AGE to to make something else. So for example, one of these was exit rampage, which is playing on exit ramp. Exit rampage was clued as the result of someone yelling fire in a crowded theater. Perfect. Diet pillage was looting of a legislature. And then on the other way, musical pass was exemption from playing an instrument in school. And instant mess was clued as what an exploding microwave can make. And across the middle of the diagram was the answer age difference. And the clue for that was 83 for the creators of this puzzle. Yeah, so sweet. But that's astonishing. David is now, well, 16, as the byline said, he started, he's a kid in California, started sending me puzzles when he was 12. He got his first acceptance when he was 14. I think he had sent me 17 puzzles before I finally accepted one. He kept improving. And he has had 16 puzzles in the paper all together just in the last two years. He's also started something remarkable. It's called the pre short sin puzzle project. I started at the times in 1993. And next month is actually my 20th anniversary at the paper. And all the puzzles that I've edited for the times are in digital format. You can go online. There's a website you can go to and see every New York Times crossword back to my start. In fact, you can look up any answer like Adina and see how it has been clued every time it has appeared in the paper in all those years. Well, the New York Times crossword started in 1942 and David thought it's a shame that all these earlier puzzles, there's no way to access them without going to the library and looking in microfilm or something. So he's he has engaged dozens of crossword enthusiasts around the country. He has made a photocopy, I believe, of every New York Times crossword back to 1942. If you're interested in doing this, he will send these puzzles to you and it's your job to enter them in a computer, send them to him. He checks for errors, typos, and and then the puzzle will be in digital format for everyone to access. And he's got it already back to the early 1970s with his goal of going back to 1942. Fantastic project. And Bernice Gordon, on the other hand, her first crossword in the New York Times appeared in 1955. She's been doing this almost 60 years, right, 60 years. And she's had a puzzle, at least one puzzle in the times for almost every year during all that time. I have her birthdays in January. I have just accepted another puzzle of hers, which I will run around when she turns 100 next year. I'll tell you, so those are my favorite puzzles, some of my favorite puzzles of the last few months that have stories connected with them. And also Victor's puzzle with the capital L's is also one of my favorites of the last few months. I'll tell you my all-time favorite crossword. And if you've seen WordPlay, the documentary, then you saw it mentioned in here. It appeared on Election Day in 1996. And that was the year that Bill Clinton and Bob Dole were running for president. And the puzzle appeared on Tuesday, Election Day, and it appeared to predict the results of that day's election. The clue for the middle answers across the diagram was headline in tomorrow's newspaper. And the answer could be Clinton elected, but it could also be Bob Dole elected. Either one worked with the crossing words. So the first down answer was black Halloween animal. And you could do cat forming the sea of Clinton or bat forming the first bee of Bob Dole. And the next one was French 101 word. You could do Louis or Huit. And my favorite was the next one, the clue. I believe the clue was means of support. And the answer could be IRA or bra. That clue was mine. And I challenge you to write a clue that works for both IRA and bra. So this puzzle appeared on Election Day. And my phone started ringing that morning at the times. First of all, from outraged solvers who thought it was presumptuous of me to assume that Clinton would win the election, because he was ahead in the polls. They were thinking maybe the times was showing its liberal bias. And then there were people who had worked out the other answer, Bob Dole, and thought I had made a big mistake. Those are my favorite puzzles, as I say. Let me tell you a little about how you make a crossword and what makes a good crossword. There are basic rules to American crosswords. One is the diagram has to be symmetrical. So generally speaking, that means if you take the diagram and rotate it 180 degrees, the pattern of black squares will look the same as it did right side up. And the reason for that is visual appeal. This goes back almost to the start of crosswords. And interestingly, I think this same rule has, same standard has been developed almost everywhere in the world, where crosswords are published. I think there's something about symmetry that humans like. You know, we like a diagram that's symmetrical, is pleasing to the eye, and more likely to draw you in. We don't allow unchecked letters in American crosswords. That means every letter has to appear in two answers, across and down. So if you don't know that rap singer in one direction or you don't know the name from the Bible and the other way, well, you got two chances to get it. We don't allow two letter words in American crosswords. You can't repeat words. And then there is a rule that you think would be self-evident to anyone ever creating a crossword, even if they're doing it for the first time. Every answer has to be a real word or phrase. You can't make stuff up. And one of the great puzzle makers over the years, Maura Jacobson, made crosswords for New York Magazine for years and years in other publications. She told the story. Her first crossword, which she sent to Margaret Farrer at the times, when she was done constructing and starting to write the clues, she found that she had misspelled a word in the grid. And rather than fix it, she wrote her clue, and at the end of the clue, she said, variant. And Margaret was such a sweet person. When she wrote back, she said, I like your crossword. Well, I have looked in all my dictionaries, and I can't find this spelling. What is your source? And that was Maura's cue to fix the puzzle. And it's not just words that are misspelled. It can be phrases. You know, I love phrases in crosswords, things from everyday life that everyone knows that aren't necessarily in the dictionary, you know, like DVD player. You won't find that in any reference book. But we all know what a DVD player is, and that makes a really nice crossword entry. But you just can't stick any two words together, like a blue car. You know, there is a blue car, but that's not really a thing that's appropriate for a crossword. So those are the basic rules for a crossword. If you meet all the rules, then that gets your foot in the door. I'll look at your puzzle and look at the quality of it. If Monday to Thursday crosswords in the times typically have themes, Friday and Saturday usually don't. If the puzzle has a theme, I'm looking to see if it's fresh, interesting, fun to do, like especially like those examples I gave you. And then I'm looking for the quality of the vocabulary in the grid. There was a puzzle recently, let's see if I made the list of all the great vocabulary in this puzzle. Yeah. This was last Saturday actually by Julian Lim. And one across was Burj Khalifa, which is the world's tallest building. That's the one in Qatar. Great group letters, B-U-R-J-K-H-A-L-I-F-A. Yeah, if you know the answer, that of course it was an instant fill in. If you don't know that, then you're in trouble. And also in the same puzzle was on autopilot, wisdom teeth, state run, major league, and so it goes, cast anchor, PG-13, and last resort. Now that's great, interesting, colorful, juicy vocabulary. Most of those answers had never appeared in a crossword before. And if you're solving a puzzle and you've got a lot of fresh stuff like that, that makes for pleasurable solving. So I'm looking for a vocabulary, I'm looking for a fill that's as interesting as possible. And then as little obscurity, I'd say uninteresting obscurity and crossword ease as possible. And crossword ease, if you're a crossword doer, there's words like, you know, ESNE, ESNE, you're a regular doer, you have encountered this, it's an Anglo-Saxon slave. You can read widely in many different sources your entire life and not find the word ESNE. And so that's a word that's not good to use in a crossword. Can't say it'll never appear, you know, if you're a puzzle maker, and you've got this great theme and you've got an intricate construction and everything is hanging on ESNE, you start to think, you know, ESNE is not that bad. But a good puzzle should have as little of that as possible. And yeah, that's how you get your puzzle accepted. I'll tell you a little about the history of the crossword. As Wendy mentioned, this year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the crossword. The first one appeared on December 21, 1913. So we're just three months away from the centennial. It appeared in an old newspaper, The New York World. There was a Sunday supplement called Fun. It was about eight, I don't know, eight inches wide by maybe six or seven inches, tall by six or seven inches wide, and had about 12 pages. And every week there were some jokes, riddles, a few puzzles. And on the Sunday before Christmas in 1913, Arthur Wynn, the person who was responsible for that section, came up with something he called a word cross. It was in the shape of a hollow diamond. It was the first time that anyone had ever interlocked words and put them in a grid to be filled in. And a grid was the important thing. There had been interlocking word puzzles before, but Wynn was the first one to have a grid of letters to a grid of squares to be filled in. And I think that is an essential element of crossword's appeal. I think as human beings, we like to fill up empty spaces. I don't know. There's something about it. If you're a puzzle person and you're in, you know, you look at the puzzle page, and there is this grid with empty squares, it's hard to turn the page without filling them in. So he had this thing called a word cross. The, it was an immediate hit with solvers. The second week, he left, there was no title of the puzzle. The third week, the compositor wrote, they left, they didn't title the puzzle, but it said, can you fill in the cross words? And in the fourth week, they just made the title of the puzzle crossword rather than word cross. So it's almost by accident this mistake that compositor at the newspaper made that we call this a crossword rather than a word cross. So the crossword became a weekly feature in the world in the teens. By the early 20s, there were maybe a couple of newspapers around the country that were publishing crosswords, but this was basically unknown, an unknown puzzle, unless you read this one newspaper. Then in 1924, there were two young graduates of Columbia Journalism School, Dick Simon and Max Schuster were putting together a publishing firm. They were looking around for ideas to, for books to publish. One of them had an Aunt Wixie, who was a fan of the crosswords in the world, and she suggested that they do a book of crosswords. They looked around, found there was no such thing. So they went to the crossword editors of the world, Margaret Petherbridge, Prosper Burnelli, and Gregory Hartzwick, and asked them to put together a book of crosswords. So they look, they go to a drawer of unpublished manuscripts, put together a collection of 75 of them, and the book was ready. At the last minute, Simon and Schuster got cold feet on this. First of all, they had gotten some advice that this was not going to be a popular book. And second, they wanted to have a prestigious publishing firm. And how would it look if their first book was on something as trivial as crosswords? So they removed their name from the title page and put a bogus name on there. The book came out in April, 1924. 3,500 copies were printed. They sold out immediately. They did another printing of 3,500, and then 5,000, 7,500, 10,000, 25,000. They put two new editions into print, and two new, so they had three crossword books by the end of the year, which ranked number one, two, and three on the national nonfiction bestseller list. And starting, I don't know, with the third, fourth, or fifth printing somewhere around there, they put their name on the title page. This crossword book was not only the world's first crossword book, it was also the first book that Simon and Schuster published, and it launched the publishing firm into a big success. So there was a, this crossword, the success of crosswords just created a mania for crosswords around the country, just like nowadays, Rubik's Cube, Pet Rock, the Macarena, anything like that. The country was crazy about crosswords. Most newspapers, with the exception of mine, the New York Times, which looked down their nose at these things, but most newspapers started crosswords in 1924 or 25. There were big newspaper contests with prizes as much as $25,000, which nowadays, I don't know, that would be maybe half a million dollars. A lot of money was involved in this. The B&O Railroad installed unabridged dictionaries for the convenience of their puzzle loving passengers. There was crossword clothing, crossword jewelry, and there was a show on Broadway called Puzzles of 1925, in which the climactic scene was set in a crossword puzzle sanatorium. Those early crosswords were really simple affairs. If the answer was cat, then the clue would be feline animal. And if the clue, if the answer was tree, the plant would be, the clue would be woody plant. Over the next decade or so, the vocabulary became a little more sophisticated. Themes, as we know them, I guess, started to come in in the 1950s, where they'd be real simple. Maybe you'd be solving along and find that several of the answers were also the names of cigarette brands, for example, or maybe there'd be some simple puns in them. The New York Times was the last major daily newspaper in the country to start crosswords. Actually wrote an editorial in 1924 decrying the puerral nature of this fad. And who uses the word puerral, you know? But in 1942, the publisher of The Times, Arthur Salzburger, the story goes, was tired of buying the competing Harold Tribune to get their crossword and decided it was high time that The Times started one of its own. And they had the good sense to ask Margaret Farrer, who had been Margaret Petherbridge, editor of the first crossword book, who married the publisher, John Farrer. They had the good sense to ask her to be The Times's crossword editor. And Margaret, right from the start, Margaret set a standard for The Times crossword that was a cut above anyone else's. It was a more sophisticated puzzle, had more intellectual depth to it. And so those crosswords, you know, appeared, it was a Sunday puzzle for eight years and then the daily puzzle started in 1950. The Margaret was the editor at The Times until 1969. She was succeeded by Will Wing. And Will had a great sense of humor. He was formerly head of the metropolitan desk at The Times, but he had been a crossword contributor to the paper, had a great sense of humor. His puzzles could actually make you laugh. And that's not easy to do in a puzzle. He was succeeded by Eugene T. Moleska from 1977 to 1993. And I'd say the crosswords, I got more sophisticated wordplay during his period. And I've been at The Times now for the last 20 years. And my goal in the crossword, you know, when I was interviewed for the job in 1993, one of the first questions was, if you were the editor, what would you do? And I said, first of all, I don't want to, first of all, I really admire the crossword as it is and the intellectual substance to it. So I don't want to change that. What I do want to do is modernize the vocabulary. In the old days crosswords appealed mainly to older folks. I wanted the crosswords to continue to appeal to older folks, but also embrace younger solvers as well. And I wanted to open up the contributors to everybody. In the whole history of The New York Times crossword up to me, there were only five teenagers known to have been published. I've published 29 since I've been at the paper and two of them who are 14 years old and lots of 20 somethings too. I think everybody is, my goal is to have everybody's culture to be part of the crossword so that when you do the puzzle, you feel that part of your life is represented in the crossword. And the last thing I'll talk about before you ask me anything is what does a crossword editor do? Most people have no idea. In fact, no one at the Times has any idea what I do. The biggest part of the job is correspondence. I get 75 to 100 submissions a week. They just pour in and it's my job to look at them all and decide my favorites, obviously, and write and reply to everybody yes or no. And if I can, I'd try to, if I think the constructor has potential or shows skill, I'll try to say something about the puzzle as well, what I like or what I didn't like. When I accept puzzles, I will slate each one for a particular day of the week, Monday being the easiest, building up to very hard on Friday and Saturday. Sunday is a larger puzzle, but it's only at about a Thursday level of difficulty. When I come to edit puzzles, I select one puzzle from each day. I try to vary the puzzle makers from day to day and week to week, try to vary the theme so as not to repeat anything too often. And then I will edit the puzzles. On average, about half the clues and the times crossword are mine. The most important thing is accuracy. It doesn't matter how clever or interesting or fresh the clues are, if they're wrong. So anything that I'm not absolutely 100% certain about, I look up. But I'm also editing for a proper level of difficulty. Sometimes it's very hard for people to write Monday puzzles I found. Even the people who write a good Monday puzzle write Tuesday and Wednesday clues. So I have to spend a lot of time, I have to spend time editing them down, making them easier. So I'm editing the proper level of difficulty and then just freshness, interest, humor if I can. For the Friday and Saturday puzzles, those can take a long time to edit because the clues all have to be, mostly have to be fresh, things you've never seen before. It's hard, you know, you've got to come up with something that's going to twist your brain and make it fun to solve. Once I typeset the puzzles, oh well, after I edit them, I typeset them or an assistant typesets them, and the puzzles are sent to four test solvers, one of whom rechecks every word in fact after me, and he is unbelievably anal. But that's why I like them. And the testers, they all call in with their comments and corrections and if they found a crossing hard, whatever they don't like they will tell me and if I agree, I will change it. When the puzzles are done, I polished as best as I can make them, I send PDFs, I send them to the New York Times where a friend of mine goes in and prepares the puzzles for all the different formats that the crossword now appears in, you know, print, international Herald Tribune, mobile devices and other ways. That used to be the end of the process, but years, some years ago I noticed there was a guy in the New York Times crossword forum, Martin Herbach, kept writing these little nitpicky things about clues that he didn't think were quite right. And unfortunately, I found that he was often correct. So I thought if I decided why should I wait till the puzzles appear in print to get his little nitpicky comments? Why don't I get them before the puzzle appears and then there's time to change them? So after this my friend at the Times is done, she sends PDFs to this guy, to Martin. And our understanding is if I don't hear from him, everything's cool. And if he doesn't like one of the clues, he'll tell me and there's time to change it. And that's how the crossword appears in print. Okay, thank you. All right, we got a game coming up called Beat the Champ. But first, is there anything you'd like to ask me about? Crosswords, puzzles, anything at all right here. So the question is what kind of classes did I take to get my degree in enigmatology? Well, Indiana is one of about a dozen schools in the country, I understand, that have a program where you can literally make up your major. It's called the individualized major program. And as you might guess, Indiana had no courses on puzzles. So I made them all up myself. I would go to, well, one of the courses was crossword puzzle, crossword construction. It was the first time I had ever made, I'd call semi professional quality crossword. And every two or three weeks, I'd make an original puzzle, take it into my professor's office, sit next to him as he tested it and critiqued it. And that's how I got started in crosswords. Other courses I took were 20th century American word puzzles, where I studied their history, all the types. I took courses on logic puzzles, a couple of courses on math puzzles, a course on crossword magazines, where I studied the whole business, a course on the psychology of puzzles, which was partly what physically is going on in the brain as we're solving a problem, and also what is the appeal of crosswords? Why, as human beings, do we feel so compelled to do them? My thesis was on the history of American word puzzles before 1860. I'm the only person, I am sure, ever to study the subject. And I wrote a hundred page paper, which was printed in Wordways, the Journal of Recreational Linguistics. Yeah. So the question is, how is editing crosswords for The New York Times different from editing for another publication, such as Games Magazine, where I was for 15 years? The most important thing for any crossword editor or puzzle editor is to know your audience and edit puzzles appropriately. The cool thing about Games Magazine is it had a fairly young average age, somewhere between 35 and 40, pretty young for publication. And The New York Times, as I said, in those days, the average age of solvers was probably 55 to 60, I don't know. So first of all, you have to know your audience. And for when I was at Games, there was a lot more pop culture references, more playfulness, but probably less scholarly stuff, I guess I would put it. And no matter, I think I would make a perfectly fine crossword editor for TV Guide. I think I could do it, you know, I would, I would, I would still want quality in its own way, but it was a completely different audience. So I would edit accordingly. Right here. Yeah. So how do I question is how do I decide between a Monday puzzle and a Wednesday puzzle or any other day? Monday, well, this is just a matter of difficulty. I don't solve the puzzles myself, first of all, because I don't have time to solve them all and, and second, since I changed half the clues anyway, it's not going to stump myself with the clues I wrote. So I can tell the different natural difficulty of a puzzle just by looking at it. A Monday puzzle is going to have familiar, well, first of all, the vocabulary is going to be all or virtually all familiar. But the theme should be not have any wordplay, it should be straightforward English, maybe phrases that you know. Tuesday and Wednesday can start to have a little wordplay. Thursday is a that's sort of a turning point that those themes that's the hardest, generally the hardest themes I run is often something like that hurricane puzzle that definitely a Thursday puzzle. That's hard. And then Friday and Saturday typically will not have a theme that's the will not have themes. Those are just wide open spaces, lots of white squares, not many black squares, a lot of fresh vocabulary. The thing about putting a theme in a puzzle if you have three, four, five long answers that greatly constrains the rest of the vocabulary. And most of the rest is probably going to be the great majority of that will be three, four and five letter words. And there are only so many of them in the English language, they're just going to keep appearing again and again. The cool thing about a themeless puzzle is without those preset entries, you can just pack the grid with this fresh stuff like I mentioned before. So that's how I just put myself in the solver's shoes and decide. Yeah, right here. So what's the pay for a crossword? And at times we pay basically the highest rates and they're not very high. A daily crossword is $200, a Sunday is a thousand. When you consider the amount of time, skill and expertise that goes into making a puzzle, plus the chance of only about 10% of the submissions are accepted, it's not very much money. But I will say in my defense that when I started at the times 20 years ago, daily puzzles paid 40, so it's quintuple since then and Sunday puzzles were 150. So I've got it more than seven times that I'm about to go to the times again and try to get the amounts raised again, because the puzzle makers deserve it. Yeah. Okay, I probably don't even need to repeat that question. But I will do is it ping pong or table tennis? So the games, of course, they are the same. But I say ping pong is the game, table tennis is the sport. It's just your level of skill and your mindset as you play the game. If you're in the Olympics or you know, that's table tennis. If you're in your recreation room going like that, that's ping pong. Yeah. Okay. And have I ever signed a ping pong ball? Yes, many times. Yeah. Right here. Good question. Do I own a copy of the world's first crossword puzzle? I have the only known copy in private hands. And I have, you know, I am a serious puzzle collector. I have, I have over 25,000 puzzle books and magazines dating back to 1533. It's the largest library in the subject. And I'll tell you how I got the world's first crossword. The New York Historical Society had bound volumes of the New York world in their archives, but they were taking too much space. So they decided to deaccession them. They were in, they went to a warehouse in Mount, Mount Vernon, New York, just north of New York City. And the person who bought them wanted the volumes for their comic strips of all things. That was the most valuable part. The trouble was he could not go in this warehouse because of the dust. He was allergic to this warehouse. He knew I was interested in these early puzzles. So he made a deal with me, or maybe had this agreement. I would go into this warehouse. I would remove the comic sections from the bound volumes so he could sell them. And for every comic section I removed, I could keep the fund section. So the very first issue I went to, of course, was December 21, 1913. And over time I got them all. Our agreement was, I don't tell this story to many people, but this is just between us, okay? Our agreement was that I was not supposed to remove any of the fund sections from the warehouse until my friend came in and said I could do it. But I had removed about maybe a year and a half or two years worth of fund sections and they were just sitting in a pile. But I could not leave the warehouse that day without taking the world's fraud. What happened if there was a fire in the warehouse? I had to have this section. So a friend was with me and she put that fund section under her blouse. And eventually I got all those funds, but I did not want to and I didn't think there was anything wrong in doing that. I was going to get it eventually, but I wanted it that day. Yep. Okay. As I say, just among us. How do I edit, how does someone edit Sudoku? Well, of course you don't. I have the best selling Sudoku books, actually. And it says Will Shorts presents Sudoku. But, you know, I don't do anything for those books. I'll tell you the the biggest amount of work involved in my Sudoku books is taking the royally check to the bank. Okay, right here. Does the crossword puzzle gene run families? I'm not sure. Neither of my parents and no one else in my family is interested in puzzles. My mom says that her mother, so my grandmother was did crosswords during the craze of the mid 20s. So if it does run on the family, it jumped a generation. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Right here. Yeah. So you all heard that the question is there are a lot of women in the history of crosswords, which is true important women in the set and in the field. And did they face discrimination? I don't think they I'm not aware of that. I never heard of that. I knew Margaret Farer for years and she never mentioned any, anything about discrimination to me. Perhaps because crosswords were trivial, I don't know, and maybe are considered trivial. And maybe also, you know, there were things that were considered women's subjects. So, you know, the editor of the women's section in the newspaper would be a woman. So maybe it was considered that way. I've never, I haven't heard about discrimination of women in crosswords. And as far as I'm concerned, I'm I'm blind as far as the contributions they come in from anyone, I try to judge each one on its own quality irrespective of gender or anything else for that matter. Right here. First question. Do I do crosswords for fun? Yes, not a lot, I have to say, because it is my job. So it's a busman's holiday. Whenever I go on a trip, I will load myself with puzzles for the plane ride. Coming here, I found a copy of the London Daily Mail in the waiting room at the airport. I picked it up. They have three pages devoted to puzzles of all sorts. They have a great puzzle section. I was very impressed. I love doing puzzles. Yes. One other thing I'll say, you know, I mentioned before that I play a lot of table tennis and I play it every day, literally every day. I have not missed a day since October 3 last year. And I do it for a similar reason that people do crosswords. With a crossword, you get completely wrapped up in this challenge. You're completely focused on it. The rest of the world falls away. When you're done, you feel relaxed and refreshed and ready to go back to everything else in life. I can't do that with crosswords because that's my work. So I do it with table tennis and that's how I feel. We'll take a couple more questions and then we'll do some game. Yeah? Right here. Yeah, right here. You, yes. So the question is regarding the second Sunday puzzles. There's always the crossword and the ken-ken on one page and then there's another puzzle on another page. And where do they come from? Well, I mean, the Acrostics are all made by Emily Cox and Henry Rathbone and that's every other week. And in the intervening weeks, there's a diagramless crossword. You didn't mention those, so I'm guessing you don't love those, right? And cryptic crossword and puns and anagrams. Do you like those? No. Okay. It's that. And these puzzles are on a six week cycle. The other every six weeks, I do something novel. One of them is a 3D word hunt. That's my own invention. I do that every year or so. The spiral words run like that and then there were another set runs backward using every letter twice. I didn't invent that, but I found it in an Italian puzzle magazine about 30 years ago, loved it and I was the person who introduced it in the English language. And yeah, those second puzzles, I guess I make a couple of those every year. They come from all over. And why aren't there more of them? Well, if I ran more of them, the acrostic people would kill me, the cryptic people would kill me. So I try to have something for everyone. Eventually, I'm hoping. I've asked many times, why don't we have two full pages of puzzles every Sunday? I mean, the Bailey mail has three pages every day. Their Sunday paper, I think, has eight pages. Just give me two pages. I have lots more variety. OK, back here. Yes, you, right there. Do I have a favorite word in English? Yes. It is ocalagon. It's spelled U-C-A-L-E-G-O-N, ocalagon. It means a neighbor whose house is on fire. It's in an old unabridged dictionary. I've never heard of anyone actually using it in real life outside of the novelty of the word itself. And I can't even imagine how you would use it. You call the fire department and I say, I have ocalagon. That's not the way to make the announcement. So I don't know how you would use it. OK, here in the red, yeah. Wow. Which one out of my library have over 25,000 puzzle books and magazines? I tell you, that's only part of my library because I also collect ephemera, which are pamphlets, old newspapers, and magazines with puzzle columns, advertising trade cards with puzzles. So I have a lot of puzzles. And what is my favorite? Well, a couple answers to that. My hero as a child was Sam Lloyd. He lived from 1841 to 1911. He specialized in mathematical and logic puzzles. But that sounds dry. He would dress them up with a great story, each one with a great story. And when you were solving one of his puzzles, you wouldn't realize maybe that you were dealing with a sophisticated mathematical concept. But it was so engaging that it had great popular appeal. And there may be a nice picture connected with it. So he was my hero as a child. Of course, I have his collection of, well, I have his book called The Cyclopedia of 5,000 Puzzles from 1914. In fact, I have many copies of that. But what's precious to me, I have collected his puzzles from the original newspapers and magazines from around 1890 to 1911. I have literally thousands of Sam Lloyd puzzles that no one knows about but me. And someday I'm going to collect them in the lost puzzles of Sam Lloyd. Now, I'll tell you one other thing. That's precious, I guess. I'm a member of the National Puzzlers League. It's a group. How many people, we have at least, how many people belong to the National Puzzlers League here? Yeah, yeah. Good, good. A number of hands. So this is a puzzle. It's the world's oldest puzzles organization. Goes back to 1883. And there is a magazine called The Enigma. That's a monthly magazine. And the organization used to be restricted to the eastern half of the United States. And the magazine was called The Eastern Enigma. There are 17 early issues of this magazine that are no longer known to exist. And there's a record that they existed as recently as 1966 when a collector had the full run of the magazine. But they disappeared. No one knows where they are. I have almost all the issues from 1903 to the present. But I would love to get the early ones, just like even if I don't own them myself. I just love to know that they have been saved and preserved somewhere. That would be the most precious thing I don't have. All right, maybe one more question. OK, right here. Yes? Yeah. So the question is, regards the blogs about the New York Times crossword. I think there are five of them on the daily puzzle. And then there's another one for the six. I used to read most of them. I stopped to tell you, honestly, I stopped reading Rex Parker a couple of months ago because it's overwhelmingly negative. And I don't even have a problem with criticism because I read him for 12 years and he's a very critical person. I think that's fine. I think my editing has become better by reading the criticism. But he starts his criticism from the standpoint that he's not going to like the puzzle. And he even wrote on his Facebook page a couple of months ago that he now hates solves the Times crossword. And I think, well, first of all, why would you blog about something every day that you hate? That's ridiculous. And so I don't like it. I do. There's this. I don't know if you read it. xwordinfo.com. Jeff Chen, he's a very good crossword constructor. And he writes daily commentary on the Times crossword. Some of it positive, some of it not. But he writes it from a standpoint of affection. And I think he has good criticism. And so I always read that. Also, also read Wordplay, The New York Times crossword blog. Those are the most important ones to me. All right. Well, I'll be around later. You can ask more questions. But it is time for a game. And here's a warm-up. This is just a short one. Every answer here is a familiar phrase or name, a familiar two-word phrase or name with the initials MN as in Minnesota. For example, if I gave you the clue, be pleasant in order to appease someone, you would say, make nice. Now, since you are all so smart, I'm not going to give you the whole clue. That would be too easy. So I'm going to read the clues one word at a time. And if you know the answer before I finish the clue, just yell it out. And here's number one, Michelle. I remember it'll be a two. Remember, it's going to be a familiar two-word name or phrase with the initials MN. So Bachman, oh, she is from Minnesota, is not the answer. Here we go. Michelle Robinson for the current First Lady. That is her maiden name. That is correct. Number two is wear a compass. Needle points is magnetic north. Right. Hard-shelled snack item from Australia is an academia nut, right? Situation of great disorder is a mare's nest. Yeah, that was a tough one. All right. Something you put around a sleeping bag to prevent being bitten as a mosquito net, right? Indicator of an airplane's speed is a Mach number, is right? Something you make in your brain to remember something is a mental note, is right? Here's a good test of your knowledge. Daily newspaper in San Jose is the mercury news. That's right. This one, it all hinges on the last word. One of the monkeys. Michael Nesmith is right. And your last one, and last one, it's a four-word clue, but you're going to get it from just the first word because you're puzzle people. Omu, Omu or Moby Dick is a Melville novel, right? Okay. That is your warm-up. And now, here's the game. It's called beat the champ. I'm going to divide the audience right down the middle here. Those of you right on the middle decide which way team you want to be on. You can lean left or right. Anyway, right down. Decide which team. It doesn't matter. And everyone in the first tier here, you're involved in the game too. I'm going to ask you to raise your hand. Okay, I'll take volunteers from everywhere. Here's how it goes. By the way, I'd like each team to have a name. So if you could think of something related to Minneapolis or the Twin Cities or the university where we could have two team names. Okay, start thinking about that. And here's how the puzzle works. I'm going to ask one person from each team to stand up. And I'll give a quick word teaser like I just gave. The person who gets the answer first will score one point for his or her team and becomes the champ. The other person sits down and now two people from the other team stand up to challenge the champ. I'll give another quick teaser. Let's say the champ is the first to get that right. The champ will score four points, which is the square of the number of players the champ defeated. Those two people will sit down and now three people stand up. And let's say the champ wins again. That's nine points and 16 points and so on until finally somebody beats the champ. Everyone sits down except that new person who got it right. That person will score one point for his or her team because that's the number of players they defeated on the other team. And we'll see which side of the room here has the most brains. Anybody have an idea for? Ping-pong. Ping-pong. Ping-pong. Yeah, you know, Minneapolis, St. Paul is too obvious. It's good except if you're on the Minneapolis side and you're from St. Paul or vice versa, you're going to be annoyed, so I wouldn't do that. Maroon and gold, yeah, we'll do maroon and gold, okay. So you guys on this side are maroon. Okay, well, I'll give you 60 seconds to change sides if you have a favorite color. And I think we're ready to go. That's the rules. Okay, will one person preferably toward the front of each side stand up? Anybody? I won't ask for your name until you're a champion. So you're one person from each side. Here we go, excellent. Yes, and we need one. And one person from the gold side to stand up. Yeah, George has to stand up. And here's how this first puzzle goes. I'm going to read you a clue as in a crossword puzzle. The answer has five letters and the answer, besides answering the clue, the word besides answering the clue can also be found in consecutive letters inside the clue. For example, if I said some teenager's language, you would say slang, because slang is some teenager's language and it's found consecutively inside teenager's language. Okay, here we go, number one. Okay, and by the way, everyone in the audience, only the standing people should give answers. So if you get the answer before them, nod your head vigorously, elbow your neighbor, make sure that everyone around you knows that you have the answer. But don't say it out loud. It's only these two players, okay? Number one, a term a dame might use. Madam is correct. Victor scores one point for the maroon side and we need two challengers from the gold team. Two challengers, excellent, thank you. And that's good, let's get some other people to play and you can stand up again later. Here are two people and here is your next one. The arterial system flows from it. The answer is heart, were you the first to say it? What's that? No, no, I think it was you, yes. The answer, it sounded like it was aorta, but no, the answer was heart and what's your name? Phil is our champion for the gold teams and we need two challengers from the maroon team. Phil, you're intimidating them. That was, the answer was so fast. Come on, two people. Okay, yeah, you guys stand up, yeah. Okay, here we go. One might appear linked on a necklace. One, oh say it out loud if you get it. The answer is pearl. One might appear linked on a necklace and it is hidden inside appear linked, is correct. And so you're the champ, Jay, right? Jay is our champion for maroon scoring a point and we need two challengers for Jay from the gold team. Who wants to give it a shot? And if you're in the, okay, here's one in the balcony, yes. And so we need one more, and right here, okay. And here is your next one. What a whalers harpoon should be. Who said that first? I think you may have said it first, just a hair before anyone else, so. All right, what's your name? Carl, Carl, your champion for the gold team. This could be a very low scoring game here. It's two to two. All right, we need two challengers for Carl from the maroon team. Don't be shy, I never ask your name until you're a champion. Okay, you two are taking on Carl and here's your sentence, or here's your clue. One of the places to rent in a mall. One of the places to rent in a mall. Store is correct. What's your name? Mike, Mike's our champion for a maroon team. What do you do, Mike? You a student here? Are you a student here? Uh-huh, okay, what are you studying? Okay, I'll see if I have any chemistry related clues. We need two challengers for Mike. Who wants to give it a shot? Someone right here and right here. Good, yeah, the balcony is going great tonight. Okay, something a lover sends on Valentine's Day. Verse is correct. Hidden inside lover sends, nice job. What's your name? Say again? Kyle, Kyle's our champion for gold. And the score is three to three. Did I tell you this game goes to a thousand? We need two challengers for Kyle. Excellent, thank you. Here's your next clue. It means I said it too. It means I, did you say it? Ditto, and you were the first with that, right? Yeah, okay, Kyle is our champion. Scoring a whopping four points. More than doubling the score to seven. Okay, we need three challengers for Kyle from the maroon team. Excellent one. And if I don't see you, yeah, two, uh-huh. And three, right here, okay, you three people. And here is your clue. Push over hard. All right, I think you were the first to get it by hair. Yeah, we have a new champion. What's your name? Sorry, Mary Beth. Mary Beth is our champion for the maroon team. Scoring one point, but more important, keeping gold from getting nine points. And we need two challengers from the gold team. Who wants to give it a shot? Excellent, and one more person, thank you. And here is your clue. It might be built with big, loose blocks of ice. I think some people said it before the answer. So once again, it's only those who are standing. And if you feel compelled to blurt out the answer, then you should be volunteering. Okay, so just the three people who are standing and here's your new clue. Many long stockings are made of it. Nylon is correct, hidden inside many long, nice. What's your name? Mark is our champion for the gold team. Bringing this score to eight to four. We need two challengers for Mark. Excellent, thank you, one more challenger. Say again, am I missing somebody? Oh, sorry, yeah, yeah, right here. So we just need you, hold on, you'll be next time. And you and the balcony, thank you. And here's your clue. It's got a long nail. It's, Talon is right, it's got a long nail. Talon, hidden inside, got a long. All right, oof, what's your name? Bob is our champion for the maroon team. And we need two challengers from gold. Okay, oh, thank you, thank you. Okay, you guys will be next. You two are at this time. And it's just in time for a new puzzle. And here's how this one works. I'm gonna name something that's in a category of things. And the thing that I name would be alphabetically second if you listed all the things in this category in alphabetical order. For example, if I said five, then that is one of the 10 digits. And five, if you listed all the digits in alphabetical order, five would be the second one on the list. The only one ahead of five alphabetically is eight. So if I said five, what comes before five, you say eight. Everyone ready? Here you go. Monday, what comes before Monday? I couldn't hear. Friday, you're there, you're right here. We have a new champion Friday, yeah. And what's your name? Diana is our new champion for the gold team. Scoring a point. All right, we need two challengers for Diana. Who wants to give it a shot? Two challengers, yeah, excellent, you two. And here you go. Columbus Day. We're talking about U.S. federal holidays. Columbus Day. No, Arbor Day's not federally recognized. If you have the answer, say it out loud. Christmas is it, yeah. Christmas is a federal holiday. What's your name? Say again? Tyler? Charlie, sorry, Charlie. Charlie scores one point for the Maroon team. And by the way, we were ignoring, there's actually one another one. It's birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. It's not Martin Luther King Jr. day, it's birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., but we're ignoring that. Okay, we need two challengers for Charlie. We had two here in a moment ago. Yeah, who were, where were they? Yeah, right there, thank you. And here is your next one. Annapolis. Annapolis. What's the only state capital alphabetically in front of Annapolis? Okay, we'll call a halt on that one. And you guys keep standing. Anyone else know the answer? Albany. Albany is it, yes. Okay, same people. Just these three. Here's your next one. Jupiter. Jupiter. I hear it right here, yeah? You say it louder. Earth is it. Earth is our planet is. In all my years of doing this game, I've never seen such a low scoring game. They don't just so make champions like they used to. I don't know. What's your name? It's just Ping Pong. It's excellent, yeah. The game is a game of ping pong, except for Kyle, who broke the, who was champion for two. Yeah, what's your, what's your name? Joe is our champion for the gold team. The score is 10 to six, and we need two challengers for Joe. Yep, here's one. Excellent, thank you too. And here you go. Diamonds are forever, as in James Bond movies. Diamonds are, say again? Casino Royale, yes. Scoring four points, bringing this gold team to 14. You are crushing Maroon. We need three challengers, thank you. Two more? Two more for Joe? Uh-huh. And where? One or two? Just one here, and we need one more person. Oh, okay, you'll be next time. We have one here, one here, and you. And here it is. Can't Buy Me Love. We're looking for US number one hits by the Beatles. Can't Buy Me Love. Was not number one, was not number one, but you can keep going. Ballad of John and Yoko. Ballad of John and Yoko was not number one. Good guess, though. Can't Buy. What's that? Hard days now, huh? We're ignoring the article A. That's an H, not an A, but keep going. Can't Buy Me Love. You seem to know your Beatles, though. Okay, here's, say again? No. But here, I'll give you a hint. Here's the enumeration of the answer. 33424. 33424. It sounds like everyone's stumped, so that's fine. Does anyone know the answer? All you need is love. All you need is love, yeah. US number one. Yeah, okay, let's try another one here. Same people. And your clue is, is Antony and Cleopatra. We're looking for Shakespeare plays. Antony and Cleopatra. All's Well That Ends Well, yeah. What's your name? Sherry. Are you particularly good on Shakespeare? You're not, okay. Last night I did this game in, I'll tell you the story after the next one. We need two challengers for Sherry from the gold team. Okay, you and you, yes. And here you go. Yeah, yeah, British Columbia. Alberta, yes. Okay, who got that? Up here, excellent. What's your name? Kevin? Kevin scores one point for the gold team. So last night I did this puzzle in Iowa City and I asked the person his name and it's Albert. Okay. All right, we need two challengers for Kevin and it's 15 to seven. Excellent, yes. You two and here you go, dragon. And we're looking for animals on a Chinese zodiac, dragon. Not a cat, no. Not one of the animals on there. And it's not a boar, no. What was your first one there? A cock or a chicken? Not a cock or a chicken, no. Okay, we'll have a, call a hold on that. Anyone know? It's a dog. Yeah, a cow is not on the zodiac. It would be odd to say I was born as a cow, but I don't know, rat is one of them. How bad can cow be when they have rat? Okay, same people. Aries, A-R-I-E-S. Aquarius, yes. It is, Kevin, if you can just do one more. You know, you will be the winningest champ. It's 19 to seven. We need three challengers for Kevin. Who wants to give it a shot? Right here, yeah. And we need two more. One here, thank you. And one more. Excellent, yes. And here's your new one. Center fielder, catcher. Who said it first? Did Kevin get that right? I think Kevin got it, yeah. Well, Kevin, you are on a roll. You just scored nine points for the goal team, bringing the goal score to 28. And Maroon, I'm sorry to say, is still in single digits. But it doesn't say that it's sort of like double jeopardy. The scores can change rapidly. So we need four challengers for Kevin. Excellent, yeah, three more. You two, yeah, and we need one more. Yes, right here, okay. And here you go. Briar, B-R-E-Y-E-R, as in Stephen Briar on the Supreme Court. Who's the only justice up front? Alito is right. Well, okay, the rules of this game are gonna change. It's now Kevin against everybody. We need five challengers for Kevin. Challengers for Kevin. Here's one, yes. Two, three, four, and five. Okay, and your word is Andrew, as in first names of US presidents, Andrew. Abraham Lincoln is right. Excellent, what's your name? Jack is our new champion for Maroon, scoring one point, but more important, keeping goal from getting 25. Excellent, okay. We need two challengers for Jack. It's been a while since we've called for challengers on the gold team. Two challengers for Jack. Who wants to make a go? About, where? Yes, one. Right here, and right here, you two, yes. And okay, it is carrot, and we're looking for vegetables in V8 juice. Say again, beat is it, yes. I am impressed about, how did you know that? A weird vegetable you happen to hate. Sorry, sorry. It was always the weird one, yeah, it stands out. Excellent, yeah, yeah. What's your name? Sarah, Sarah's our champion for the gold team, and she knows her weird vegetables. Yeah, and two challengers for Sarah. Who wants to give it a shot? One here, yeah, one more. One more person, and yes, you. And here you go, billiard room, and we're looking for rooms in the game of Clue. Billiard room. What did you say? Ballroom, is it? Yes. Scoring four points, so the score is now 49 to eight. How are we doing on time here? Yeah, okay, we're gonna go to 60 points. The team, the first team to 60 points. Come on, Maroon, guys. All you need is a good run, you can do it. All right, we need three challengers for Sarah. Three challengers for Sarah. One here, yes, two more? Yes, right here, and one more. One more challenger for Sarah. Okay, it'll be you right here, and you guys, you hold on until next time, you, you, and you. And here you go, dock, DOC, as in dwarfs dock. Bashful, is it? Yeah. Shoo, I know there's a lot of pressure on you right now too. But just stay loose, you know, all games, that's a secret, stay loose. What's your name? Janet. Janet is our champion for Maroon. We need two challengers for Janet. Who wants to try? One right here, and one here, yeah. And Aqua Marine, and this is Birthstones. Aqua Marine. Amethyst, yeah. Bringing the score to 50 for Gold, what's your name? Say again? Mel. Mel, as in M-E-L? Uh-huh. As in the Spice Girls, there were two Mel's, right? You're Mel D, or Mel? Sure, Mel, but we'll go with Mel, that's good. And we're just in time for a new game, so. Think about that, about volunteering. Okay, we need two players from Maroon. Two, maybe I shouldn't have announced that yet, yeah. And one more from Maroon. Side, one more, yes, thank you. And here's how this new puzzle works. I'm gonna read a sentence and leave off the last word, and it's a, it's a, the past tense of a verb, which will complete the sentence in a punny way. For example, if I said, um, that was the best all night dance party ever, Tom raved. So it's always Tom something. I will tell you the first letter of the missing word. You name the word that completes the sentence in a punny way. And here's number one. That's too much whale fat, Tom. Blubbered, yeah. Didn't even need that first letter. What's your name? Dutch is our champion for the Maroon team. And congratulations guys, you are now in double digits. Okay, two challengers for Dutch. Excellent, and one more. And here, yes, complete the sentence. I wrecked, no, you wrecked my Swedish car, Tom. Sob, die here, here, yeah. What's your name? Carol, Carol's our champion for goal, bringing this word to 51. Okay, two champion, two challengers for Carol. Thank you, and you, yes, you too. Complete the sentence. Well, I wouldn't say that a breakfast dish made on an iron is my very favorite, Tom. Waffold, yes. My, my, my, 55 points for gold. Don't feel any pressure, Carol, but if you can get this next one, you're gonna win the game for your team. And we need three, three challengers for Carol. Thank you. Say again? Okay, yes, there's two of you, right? Two, and you, here's our three players. And complete this sentence. Pope Benedict the 16th will go down in history as one of the greats, Tom, starting with P. Pope Pontificated is it. Nice job, what's your name? John's our champion for Maroon, saving the game up to 11 points. Two challengers for John. Thank you, one more, and right here, yeah? Here's your next sentence. And this is a, here we go. Okay, I wonder how cows digest their food. Tom, starting with R. Who said it first? You got it first? Okay, ruminated, yeah, John. Scoring four points, and you were the first two-time champion in the Maroon team. Three challengers for John. Thank you, yes, you three right here, you'll be next time. Let's do the, you were the first three. You and the orange, you'll be next, okay? You three, and here is your sentence. Don't you hate plumbers who bend over with their pants too low? Tom, cracked, yes. The score is now 55 to 24. Four challengers for John. So yeah, we have four people right here. You'll be next time, okay? You four people, and here is your sentence. For the thousandth time, quit betting on the racehorses, Tom. Starting with N. Nagged, yes, John. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, okay. I appreciate the honesty, very good, thank you, John. Okay, you guys continue to stand, and we'll do a new one, the same people. Oh, you said it, okay, you got it, sorry, okay. I appreciate that. What's your name? Julia, Julia is our champion for the gold side. One point makes 56 points. All you need to do, Julia, is get this one, and you're gonna win for the gold. Go for the gold, yeah. All right, we need two challengers for Julia from the Maroon team. Thank you, and one more. And right there in the audience, in the balcony, I mean. And this one is a two-word phrase, and I'll tell you the initials of both words when I get to the end. Two words to answer. This ellipsis has only two dots, Tom P.O. Pointed out, yes. So, Julia, you are undefeated champion at Beat the Champ. Gold team, you guys are the champions, congratulations. There was a lot of fun tonight. I really appreciate you're coming out. I really appreciate it, thanks a lot. That was surely a stimulating event. I think our brains all gotta work out. I think it also means we get a pass on the crossword puzzles tomorrow, so we're all fine. Just a final thank you for our sponsors tonight, and especially our friends in the university libraries. If you're not a friend, look at the back of your program. There's a form you can fill out. We'd love to have you join us. Please join us for refreshments out in the atrium, and the bookstore will be out there selling books, and Will will be out there signing books. Hopefully his name not filling in the answers to the questions. So thank you again for coming.