It was puzzling, so to speak, how quiet the Morgan Hill Public
Library was with scores of people inside Sunday, even by typical
library standards.
MORGAN HILL
It was puzzling, so to speak, how quiet the Morgan Hill Public Library was with scores of people inside Sunday, even by typical library standards.
That’s because it was the site of Silicon Valley Puzzle Day, an event which drew more than 100 puzzle enthusiasts and volunteers of all ages, and required intense concentration among attendees as it featured what is already becoming one of the West Coast’s premier crossword and sudoku puzzle tournaments.
This year’s (and last year’s) crossword puzzle winner, Eric Maddy, flew up from the Los Angeles area to defend his Silicon Valley championship. Wei-Hwa Huang, a Mountain View resident and the current national champion of sudoku, a type of number puzzle that has exploded in popularity in the last decade, also competed in the local event and won.
A list of the puzzle world’s celebrities were in Morgan Hill for the third annual puzzlement, offering their expertise as judges in the tournaments and in workshops on how to solve, and even create, puzzles. Adrea Carla Michaels, who writes New York Times Monday and Tuesday (easy) crossword puzzles led a workshop, as did Byron Walden, a writer of Saturday (hardest) puzzles. Thomas Snyder, who admits he is known more for creating sudoku puzzles that are published worldwide than he is for his day-job as a bioengineering researcher at Stanford University, wrote the puzzles used in Sunday’s tournament.
Tyler Hinman, the equivalent of sport’s Tiger Woods, was a judge in the Silicon Valley crossword tournament. Hinman, a 24-year-old computer programmer for Google, has won the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in New York the last four years. He claims to have completed NYT Monday crossword grids in under two minutes.
Silicon Valley Puzzle Day is organized by the nonprofit organization Friends of the Morgan Hill Library, as a way to bring attention to and raise money for the local facility. Coordinators said they are pleased with how much the event has grown in three years.
In fact, this year the puzzlement expanded to a two-day affair, with workshops Saturday and the official competitions on Sunday.
“The program continues to grow,” said Carol O’Hare, president of Friends of the Morgan Hill Library. “It brings many people to our library, it showcases Morgan Hill, and it helps us raise a little money.”
O’Hare noted that Puzzle Day is the only time of the year that the library opens its doors on Sunday.
Volunteer Lisa Pampuch said Silicon Valley Puzzle Day is the first event of its kind on the West Coast, and the only competition in Silicon Valley that hosts both crossword and sudoku tournaments on the same day.
She said about 60 people competed in both tournaments, and about 60 volunteers organized puzzle day.
And not everyone attending was a celebrity or an expert. Most of the competitors in both tournaments were there to have fun and improve their puzzling skills.
“I want to get better,” said Morgan Hill Mayor Steve Tate, who competed in the sudoku tournament. “It’s a good way to support your library, support your community and have a good time doing it.”
It was also the ideal family event for many attendees, including the Holmstroms of Morgan Hill. The family of four has puzzled together for several years as a hobby, and have attended Puzzle Day all three years. This time, they swept the awards for best Morgan Hill puzzlers.
“We have a lot of puzzle books at home,” said Jennifer Holmstrom, who works as a project manager in Palo Alto. “It’s something we do together, and talk about as a family.”
Jennifer and her husband Dave Holmstrom, an educator for Puzzle Day sponsor the American Institute of Mathematics, tied as the adult winners for both the crossword and sudoku competitions. Their sons Mark, a student at Britton Middle School, and Alex, who attends Jackson Elementary School, tied for first place for local youth participants, and both turned in perfect scores on all the puzzles they completed.
Snyder described how participants at such unique festivities get special treats that other puzzlers are missing out on.
“These are not standard newspaper puzzles,” Snyder said. “People get to see different themes that they don’t normally see in other puzzles.”
Furthermore, crossword competitors got to solve four of this week’s NYT puzzles before publication, as they were provided for use in the local tournament.
Each tournament consisted of three timed rounds in which everyone participated. The top three scorers, based on accuracy and quickness, advanced to the final round, in which they had to complete the most difficult puzzle of the day on white display boards in front of about 100 spectators.
As another treat, puzzlers were offered a bonus round in each category – a “cryptic” crossword puzzle and a “killer” sudoku puzzle, also created just for this event.
Maddy, who finished the final crossword puzzle in just under seven-and-a-half minutes, said the competition level has improved markedly from last year’s Puzzle Day. The second-place winner, for example, finished only 10 seconds after Maddy.
“That was a good time for a Thursday puzzle,” said Maddy, a sports reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He noted he is looking forward to the ACPT in New York later this year.
There were more challengers in the sudoku tournament this year as well. Last year, Maddy won the sudoku competition, but came in a distant second (about three minutes) behind Huang Sunday.
Besides being a fun hobby, puzzling is also a good learning tool, in seemingly unrelated subjects such as science and vocabulary. Many of those attending Puzzle Day were engineers, computer programmers, and math teachers, and it’s no mistake that such top puzzling talent is based in Silicon Valley.
“With both science and puzzles, it’s a problem solving challenge that you don’t know the answer to right away, but you can work your way to it,” Snyder said.
