"John, since you are going to the Championships, it would be nice if you could give us another picture blog this year. Many of us have a good excuse for not making it, like being on the other side of the Atlantic, or in Australia."
Well last year's post was quite popular, so I am happy to oblige. I hope it gives those who couldn't be there a flavour of what it was like.
One month later this year, so it was still dark when I set out from home to drive the 40 miles to Royston for my train, a route I use for the frequency of service that generally gets me to London from home in about 2 hours.
Not an auspicious start, though...
The train I was planning to get was cancelled and I had to wait 1/2 hour for the next one. Never mind. I had allowed plenty of time and I still had long enough to walk from Kings Cross to Times HQ, as I did last year - a 3 mile stroll which took me about an hour. Going down Farringdon Rd, I was able to see St. Paul's Cathedral and The Shard, which is right next door to the Times office.
My route took past St. Paul's and across the Millennium Bridge...
...and then past the Globe Theatre, The Golden Hind, Southwark Cathedral and through Borough Market.
Times HQ is in the Shard Quarter, and we would be on the 17th floor as previously.
But first we had to queue to get in and get through the airport-style security, which took some time.
Not as sunny as last year, but the views were still impressive.
Drinks and nibbles were laid on before the start, but we were soon called into the "examination room".
Yes. It really is like sitting a school exam, with stern admonishments about a zero-tolerance policy on mobile phones. After taking a couple more photos I made sure mine was turned off. You can choose whatever desk you like, and you have to write your desk number on your answer booklet as well as a register that is passed down each row. I chose 159, as it was my old school number. Maybe it would bring me luck.
A pen and a pencil with rubber are provided, but I had a couple of spares in case I broke a point. I was glad of the rubber to rub out things I put in wrong!
Just about ready to start now, the hall wasn't completely full. In fact there were only 76 in the morning session.With the top 45 going through, I thought I might be in with a chance. The way it works is that positions are decided on, firstly, accuracy, and secondly, time to solve. The protocol is that, when you are done with the 3 puzzles, you raise your number above your head, and the invigilators note the sequence in which people finish.
The countdown clock was set to 60 minutes and we were told, "You can open you papers now". 3 puzzles in an hour. Hmm. My average solving time is about 22 minutes, but my form had been good recently...
Unlike last year, I got into the solving groove straight away and with 2 left on my first puzzle, I glanced up at the clock to see only about 13 minutes had passed. My progress was steady and, with a couple of biffs I was doing quite well. After polishing off a couple of recalcitrant clues, I raised my number in triumph and saw that there were still over 8 1/2minutes on the clock. Crikey! The previous two years I was left with several clues guessed wrong or unanswered. My paper was taken away and I had to sit till the 60 minutes was up. I glanced around. I had taken no notice of anything but the paper in front of me, but I had heard the invigilators walking around plenty of times before I finished collecting people's papers. But there were plenty of people still puzzling. It looked like rather less than 45 had finished, but had I got any wrong? No use worrying.
While we waited for our crosswords to be marked, we had a buffet of finger sandwiches and fruit-juices and collected our goody-bags. This year we all got The Big Book of Cryptic Crosswords, Book 6. Here is astonvilla1 with his.
We were also treated to a giant 500-word puzzle, each with a clue from a previous Times puzzle. We were invited to fill it in.
I picked up one of the sets of stapled pages to find the 3 1/2 pages were of only the down clues!
I did my bit with 5D and one of the across clues down at the bottom. Then there was another innovation - a discussion chaired by David Parfitt with Richard Rogan, the puzzle editor and John Grimshaw, who sets hundreds of puzzles a year (he does all the weekday Times2 crosswords, sets under the name of Joker for the Quick Crossword and also sets the 15x15, Cryptic Jumbo and, I think he said, The Concise Jumbo too). They introduced themselves and talked a bit about how the came to do what they do. Then the floor was opened for questions.
It was very interesting and we got a few favourite clues thrown in. In a discussion about how to get started as a setter, Richard said he gets quite a few unsolicited offers, some of which are not so good. He quoted a clue from one submitted by a couple of ladies (I can't remember it exactly, but it was something like this...) "Where you wash your tits." (4-4), the answer, of course, being BIRD-BATH. No he couldn't publish that one.
One of the points they made is that The Times has a lot more rules about what is and isn't allowed in a crossword than other regular crosswords. For example, in the 15x15, there can't be more than 5 anagrams and 1 hidden word. There is also a restriction on which single-letter abbreviations are allowed. Richard said he makes quite a few changes to what the setters submit.
Eventually, the results were released. Where was I?
Yes. I hadn't made any mistakes! And I had come 24th! Quite an improvement on my 55th last year. And I would have to come back for 3:30 for the semi-final. We were asked to leave to make room for the second prelim. So it was down to The George, the traditional watering hole on finals day, to meet others, including astonvilla1, boltonwanderer, daviddavid, sawbill and paul_in_london. The downside was I had to eke out a single pint of beer and then a non-alcoholic one until it was time to join the qualifiers from the second prelim.
Also there, were Big Dave (of Big Dave's Telegraph Crossword blog) and some of his friends as well as quite a few people I had met at the recent York Sloggers&Betters weekend.
Then it was back through security. Here are some of the other qualifiers from the first prelim waiting to get in.
The invigilators were laying out new desk numbers and crossword booklets...
...while the finalists mingled. It was good to catch up with Keriothe, Verlaine (who had flown over from San Francisco for it!), Topicaltim, Pootle and others before we set off again.
I found the puzzles harder than the morning and struggled to re-boot my solving brain so finished well down the list. But I had achieved my objectives of reaching the semi-final and completing the 3 in the hour in my prelim.
This time there was no waiting for results as the first to finish had their answers checked straightaway. While the rest were being checked 3 of the first 4 to finish were called up on stage for the Grand Final. Unfortunately, Jason James, who had finished 3rd had to leave and his place alongside Mark Goodliffe and John McCabe was taken by Helen Ougham. We were all given a copy of the Grand Final puzzle to attempt at the same time they did and I had more than half of it done before time was called, so I hadn't seen that Mark had finished in under 6 minutes, with John McCabe about 2 minutes behind in second place.
Another innovation this year was a clue-writing competition. We were invited to submit a clue to the word CONTESTANT. While the finalists answers were checked, Richard Rogan shared some of the excellent efforts and announced the winner was Ben Bush for his clue “Barbarian team’s first to involve international player”. Nice one!
Here is Mark collecting his prize and the cup.
There were other prize winners as well. The semi-final was divided into 3 leagues of 30 solvers... The top 15 of each preliminary in Group A, The next fifteen from each in Group B (which included several other TimesforTheTimesers apart from me) and the rest of the qualifiers in Group C.
So well done Mark on winning again, John for coming second and Helen (who I'd met in York) on the Grand Final place. Congratulations also to Keriothe on his Group B prize.
So, while people had been dubious about the new format, the concensus appeared to be that it was really good. Chatting to David Parfitt at the the end, he explained they felt they had to make the final more of an event rather than just having 24 in the room (plus a few spectators).
The 500-word puzzle, by the way, got completed. I liked that innovation as well as the lunchtime panel discussion and clue competition.
So Thank-you to David, Richard, the setters of the 10 puzzles and the Times events team for a great day.
Next year will be the 50th anniversary of the first championship. I'm looking forward to it already. It's not too soon to start practising doing 6 puzzles a day!
You can see more of my photos of the day here on Flickr.
Nice work again, John.
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff John.
ReplyDeleteGreat recap. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the recap and well done on being all-correct in Heat 1! 55th->24th in one year suggests a place in the A stream may beckon in 2020???
ReplyDeleteWell done, John. Really impressive. Must be because of all that time on your hands now...
ReplyDelete