I went into my first (and last?) online crossword puzzle tournament with very low expectations, which I lived down to. I don’t consider myself to be a good pressure player (see basketball, high school), so it came as no surprise, but, if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that my sweaty palms and rapid heartbeat were signs of Covid. Just to be safe, I took an at-home test after each of the four puzzles, which confirmed that I had no medical excuse for my performance.

To be fair to myself, I don’t think there were a lot of casual players, and I didn’t finish last, beating 10% of the individual entrants (unfortunately there was no senior division), not to mention some pairs, which I just did, but pretend I didn’t.

I could have scored a little better had I cheated, but still wouldn’t have approached the best players, who were finishing the puzzles in under three minutes. Seriously!? I couldn’t have filled all the answers in that fast if they were written on a piece of paper in front of me.

One unexpected joy from participating was getting to see the well-done, humorous videos that were shown between puzzles. Who knew that crossword comedy was a thing?