What’s a 14-letter word for someone who likes crossword puzzles? If you know the answer, or even if you don’t, word nerds who love sitting down with a pencil and their weekly Suffolk Times can enterSouthold Free Library’sinaugural East End Crossword Tournament.
The free event, slated for Saturday, March 14, is organized by the library’s special projects manager Anakin Jackson Mignone, teen services librarian Penny Kelley, and Greenport Harbor Brewing Company head brewer andtrivia host Sean Galligan.
Mr. Galligan, a self-proclaimed crossword fanatic, developed the event with Mr. Mignone after attending theAmerican Crossword Puzzle Tournamentthe past three years, with plans to enter the next contest again in April.
“This is just kind of a more informal way for people who are not necessarily super competitive speed solvers to have fun with word play,” Mr. Galligan said of the tournament in Southold.
Mr. Galligan was inspired to compete in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, directed by New York Times puzzle whiz Will Shortz, by his girlfriend Sam Cicchetti. The two complete The New York Times’ Games puzzles most days, and when he spotted the tournament ad on the back of a puzzle book — he just had to go. Ms. Cicchetti reluctantly went with him to the tournament, which she joked as having an atmosphere equivalent to an SAT session.
He has honed continued to hone his crossword-solving skills on theThe New York Times Games app,and is working on trimming the time it takes to fill in all the answers to the Gray Lady’s Monday puzzle to under three minutes.
“Really the only issue there is I just can’t type that fast,” Mr. Galligan said. “But if I were to do one of those on paper, I could do it in maybe four minutes.”
Content in crossword puzzles has become a bit more pop-culture focused than previous iterations’ more academic focus, Mr. Galligan said. Geography clues are another commonly-used question in puzzles, he added.
Source: The Suffolk Times
