We have a lot (a lot) more to say about how great the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament was, including lots of pics and the questions we used, but that might need to be saved for the podcast. For now, though, here were the final scores & the teams that played.
A perfect score was 40 points, and the preponderance of “MI5” and related team names referred to a particularly contentious clue that had come up in on of the puzzles that day. (We checked each multiple team name against handwriting, so we’re sure of the scores being correct, but there’s no way to differentiate between teams, as there’s just so damned many of them and we couldn’t do a whole lot about that.)
And yeah, we had 72 teams, which was about double what we were expecting. We have some ideas about how to do this better next time. Thanks to everyone who played; we were a little overwhelmed with the reception we got from you guys.
John & I owe extra thanks to the doughty and fearless Stella Zawistowski, who aside from being our Head Question setter, also finished 9th overall out of 624 players, despite helping us mark answer sheets like a woman possessed on the Saturday night.
Congratulations to everyone. We had a ton of fun.
| SCORE | R1 | R2 | R3 | R4 | |
| Euro Tart Swallows | 34 | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 |
| Wordsmiths | 32 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 8 |
| Kieran Needs A Drink | 31 | 7 | 10 | 7 | 7 |
| MI5 (b) | 31 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 |
| MOA | 31 | 10 | 8 | 7 | 6 |
| Benny & the Jeffs | 30 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 7 |
| Booker T & The Magnesiums | 30 | 9 | 9 | 6 | 6 |
| Ellen’s Umbrella | 30 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 6 |
| Flannelly O’Connell | 30 | 7 | 9 | 6 | 8 |
| Wrap Me In Seaweed & Call Me Sushi | 29 | 8 | 9 | 6 | 6 |
| Pamacava | 28 | 8 | 6 | 7 | 7 |
| Zarf | 28 | 8 | 6 | 7 | 7 |
| Bag O Pencils | 27 | 6 | 10 | 6 | 5 |
| Endgame, the | 27 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 5 |
| Floopy Cats | 27 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 5 |
| MI Phony | 27 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 7 |
| MI5’s | 27 | 9 | 7 | 6 | 5 |
| MI-SIX | 27 | 7 | 9 | 6 | 5 |
| Tumbling Blocks | 27 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 7 |
| Beetrix | 26 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 6 |
| Cryptic Canards | 26 | 6 | 8 | 7 | 5 |
| Dipsomaniacs | 26 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 5 |
| Infomaniacs | 26 | 8 | 6 | 7 | 5 |
| Kerfuffle, the | 26 | 8 | 10 | 8 | |
| Mixed Stomata | 26 | 8 | 6 | 7 | 5 |
| Team With No Name | 26 | 9 | 9 | 3 | 5 |
| Affordable Care Act | 25 | 7 | 8 | 4 | 6 |
| Bicoastal Elites | 25 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 7 |
| Row 9 | 25 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 5 |
| 4 Housecats of The Apocalypse | 24 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 5 |
| Blekks, the | 24 | 7 | 7 | 4 | 6 |
| D & D | 24 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 4 |
| Franks | 24 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 6 |
| Lil Don Hands | 24 | 6 | 9 | 5 | 4 |
| Team Name | 24 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 5 |
| MI5 (a) | 23 | 5 | 9 | 4 | 5 |
| Oh Boy | 22 | 6 | 10 | 3 | 3 |
| CJ & The Man | 21 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Crappy Internet | 21 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 5 |
| Maroon 4 | 21 | 9 | 6 | 4 | 2 |
| MI3 (a) | 21 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 4 |
| PTB | 21 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 4 |
| 4 Lefts & A Right | 20 | 7 | 7 | 3 | 3 |
| MI3 (b) | 20 | 7 | 7 | 3 | 3 |
| MI4 | 20 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 4 |
| Solver Lovers | 20 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 2 |
| Untitled | 20 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 2 |
| Alcohol Challenged Pub Team | 19 | 4 | 7 | 4 | 4 |
| Constructor Bitches | 19 | 7 | 8 | 4 | |
| T Wolves | 19 | 7 | 7 | 5 | |
| Team Everyone Wants To Be On | 19 | 7 | 7 | 5 | |
| Huh Wow | 18 | 5 | 6 | 3 | 4 |
| Re Tired | 18 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Tedward & Jimothy | 18 | 6 | 7 | 5 | |
| Fillmores | 17 | 5 | 7 | 2 | 3 |
| MI5 ( c) | 17 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 2 |
| Peacocks | 17 | 7 | 7 | 3 | |
| Sad! | 17 | 7 | 6 | 2 | 2 |
| 5NT | 16 | 7 | 6 | 3 | |
| This Place Is A 2 On Trip Advisor | 16 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 3 |
| Blue | 15 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 3 |
| Smart Cookies, the | 15 | 9 | 3 | 3 | |
| Coast To Coast | 14 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| Deaf Y Ant 1’s | 14 | 5 | 6 | 3 | |
| Drunken Eggheads | 14 | 5 | 7 | 2 | |
| WOW MOM | 13 | 6 | 5 | 2 | |
| 333 | 12 | 6 | 6 | ||
| Forget Me Nots | 11 | 6 | 3 | 2 | |
| Clueless | 10 | 6 | 4 | ||
| Drey Sisters | 10 | 5 | 3 | 2 | |
| Foxy Five | 10 | 6 | 1 | 3 | |
| Country Lawyers | 7 | 7 |
