Solution to Evan Birnholz's April 27 crossword, ‘World-Building'
Last week I wrote about my adrenaline-fueled experience at Crossword Con on Friday, April 4. After discussing today's puzzle, I'll pick up the story at the 2025 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT), after I'd finally gotten a good night's sleep following 44 straight hours awake.
The instructions to this weekend's meta say we are looking for 'the missing 11-letter theme answer, formed by combining two entries in the completed grid.' The theme answers stick out pretty loudly as bizarre phrases that smash disparate words together:
Whenever you solve a meta with theme answers as strange as these, the first thing to ask yourself is why these words in particular are combined the way they are. They're not puns based on regular phrases, so there must be a reason.
With a little nod from the puzzle's title, you'll notice the pattern inside the theme answers. They each form the name of a planet in our solar system:
The one planet missing from that set is EARTH, so hopefully it's clear how to finish the meta: We need to find two entries in the grid (totaling 11 letters) which, when combined, create the letters of EARTH in consecutive order.
You'll find one of those pieces in a fairly common place to find a meta hint: the final Across entry, where APPEAR appears at 129A: [Become visible]. The other piece is not too far away at 79D: [Bronze medalist's place] which is THIRD. Combine them and you get the meta answer APPEAR THIRD, as Earth does in the order of the planets.
You might guess that the theme answer that amused me the most was KAIJU PIT EROTICA. In fact I'm pretty sure that's exactly what the Great Red spot on Jupiter is used for. I'm not saying that every crossword has to have theme answer like KAIJU PIT EROTICA … I'm not not saying that, either.
If you've never seen the 2006 documentary 'Wordplay,' here's some background to explain how the ACPT works. There are five divisions of solvers: A, B, C, D and E. The top three fastest and most accurate solvers solve competitively in the A division finals. The B division is made up of the top 20 percent of all solvers and the C division is made up of the top 40 percent of solvers. You get placed in these divisions based on your past performance in the ACPT, or directly into the C division if it's your first ACPT. If you're in the A division, you can't solve in the B or C division finals; if you're in the B division, you can't solve in the C division finals. It gives a small handful of solvers of different speeds a chance to participate competitively during the final puzzle of the tournament.
Every ACPT competitor solves seven themed crosswords, six on Saturday and one on Sunday morning. There's an eighth puzzle (a themeless 15×15) that the finalists in the A, B and C divisions solve onstage on big whiteboards while everyone else solves it on the ground non-competitively. The C division finalists get moderately difficult clues, like those of a Wednesday New York Times crossword; the B division finalists get the same puzzle with maybe a Friday NYT-level difficulty; and the A division finalists get very tough clues, tougher than a Saturday NYT. I've been in the B division for about a decade, and I've been aspiring to solve in the B division final for a few years now.
Your puzzle score is determined both by how fast and how accurate you are, but it's to the minute. If you finish a puzzle perfectly with 10:59 left on the clock, you get the same score you'd get if you finished that puzzle perfectly with 10:01 left. If the minute rolls over — if you finish with 9:59 left — it's considered finishing a minute slower than if you turned it in with 10:01 left. Having about 30 seconds left when you look up at the clock is good because it gives you plenty of time to check over your grid before raising your hand to signal that you're done. If the minute ticks over and you look up to see 58 seconds left, you end up cursing your bad luck in being just a tad too slow; at the top of the standings in each division, those few seconds can make the difference between making the finals and not making them. Of course, you also have to turn in perfect solutions with no mistakes or blank squares on all puzzles.
For Puzzle 1, you're given 15 minutes to finish a relatively easy 15×15 crossword. In all my years going to the ACPT, I've never finished Puzzle 1 in under four minutes; finishing it in the 3-minute range would be a good target if I wanted a shot at the B division final. Sadly, I didn't hit it. I looked up at the clock and saw 10:46 left. So once again I would not finish Puzzle 1 in under four minutes and I would have to make up the time in some other puzzle. I told a few others that I would probably need the solve of my life on Puzzle 5 (the really difficult one) later in the afternoon.
Puzzle 2 is a 17×17 crossword and you have 25 minutes to finish it. I had 19 minutes left when I turned it in, so my time was good, but I was convinced I'd made a mistake. I couldn't be 100 percent sure because if I've solved a tournament puzzle quickly without spending much time on any individual answer, I tend to forget a lot of what I just filled in. The problem was that I didn't fully understand the theme and I mostly ignored it while I was solving, but I had a vague memory of filling in a wrong Down answer and didn't check whatever the crossing answer was. So I figured my shot at the B final was over. If you make even one mistake, it sets you back far enough that it's virtually impossible to climb the rankings sufficiently to reach the final in your division … unless you are literally one of the four or five fastest solvers in the world (which I'm not), or you can outrace everyone in your division in all the remaining puzzles by maybe two minutes each (which I can't).
Puzzle 3 (19×19, 30-minute time limit) was fairly tough in its cluing, but I'd heard others had the same experience and I got a bit of luck in that I looked up and saw 22:02 left on the clock. I just shot my hand in the air to save the minute. I've gotten burned on this a couple of times in the past, when I didn't have enough time left in the minute to check the puzzle over for blank squares, but by this point I felt I'd probably already screwed up with Puzzle 2, so what did it matter?
I went to lunch, but I didn't want to look at the standings on my phone. I never check the standings until all six of the puzzles on Saturday are complete since I don't want to psych myself out before the afternoon slate of crosswords (especially Puzzle 5), but my friends Jesse Lansner and Adam Doctoroff told me separately that they had checked the standings and … apparently I was clean on Puzzle 2. No mistake. What a relief! That put my mind at ease, but I had to stay focused for puzzles 4, 5 and 6, perhaps mostly with Puzzle 6 — in the previous two ACPTs, I'd finished Puzzle 5 in a good time and then carelessly left a blank square in Puzzle 6, and I told myself over and over that this would not happen a third time in a row.
I finished Puzzle 4 (15×15, 20-minute time limit) in a good time, with 15 minutes left. Then came the dreaded Puzzle 5 (17×17, 30-minute time limit, with a very difficult theme and tough clues). I have finished Puzzle 5 without a mistake every year since 2015, but it doesn't matter how many times I have solved it successfully; I still have the fear that I'll get completely stuck and won't be able to finish before time is up.
Remember how I said earlier that to make up the time on Puzzle 1, I felt I needed the solve of my life on Puzzle 5? I got it. When I was finished filling it in, I looked up and saw maybe 22:20 left on the clock. This was my best-ever solve on Puzzle 5; I think my previous best was in 2023 when I had 19 minutes left, and I'd had a couple of years with 17 or 18 minutes left, but 22 minutes remaining? Unreal. I couldn't believe I pulled that off, and I had enough time to look it over for any iffy squares or blanks.
I knew Puzzle 6 (19×19, 30-minute time limit) would be significantly easier, but I still had to remind myself to check the grid again and again to make sure there were no blank squares. I finished that one with maybe 23:40 left, so I had plenty of time to look the puzzle over. My friends Pete and Claire Rimkus have a trick they use — turning the completed grid upside-down since supposedly your eye catches blank squares much more easily this way. Since I had time to spare, I did it myself just to make absolutely sure it was totally filled. I was fairly confident there were no blanks; if I turned this puzzle in with no mistakes, I might be in a competitive spot for the B final.
I went to dinner with my friends Matt Sandler, Heather McIntire, Jordan Goldberg, Zoe Jacoby and Zoe's dad. We had a nice time chatting about the day's puzzles, and I enjoyed eating Raclette cheese for the first time. I'd still been avoiding checking the standings and I'd heard they only had the scores of Puzzles 1 through 4 up. However, they had put my scan of Puzzle 5 online, and that was clean. All right! Five perfect puzzles and my best-ever finish on Puzzle 5 in the bag. At this point I decided I had to check my scan of Puzzle 2 and see what I did there; while solving I must have corrected whatever wrong letter I had without even knowing it (that has happened before). I looked down at my phone …
… and then my heart broke into a thousand pieces. There wasn't just one wrong square in Puzzle 2. There were two wrong squares. The judges just missed them in their early-afternoon check of the puzzles.
This wasn't a case where my letters looked ambiguous and a judge might have thought I put in the right letters; they were clearly wrong. So I had a mild moral crisis on my hands: I had a chance to make the B final if the scores didn't reflect the error, but it wouldn't be fair to the other B division competitors who handed in six perfect puzzles. I say it was mild not just because it's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but because I didn't need much convincing on how to proceed. The plan was that after we got back to the hotel, I'd let the judges know about my two wrong squares.
About 20 minutes later, the standings were updated again, and the error still hadn't shown up in my score. This is where the ACPT really twisted the knife — I was sitting in 18th place overall, and 2nd in the B division! You need to finish in the top 3 of division A, B, or C to solve one of the final puzzles onstage, and I had a somewhat comfortable three-minute lead on the two B division solvers who were sitting just behind me in 4th and 5th (David Cole and Sam Mattson). I somehow managed to finish Puzzle 5 faster than everyone else in the B division, which is something I'd have never imagined doing at any point in my solving life. When I saw my erroneous place in the standings, I basically jumped out of my seat and shouted 'ARE YOU KIDDING ME?' I've had moments at the ACPT where I've discovered I'd made a mistake in one of the first six puzzles, and that's always a bummer, but until now I'd never had a moment where I needed to tell the judges they missed a mistake I'd made and sacrifice my place in the standings. I'd certainly never had this much at stake at the ACPT in any year.
I didn't even get the chance to have my moment of integrity with the officials. When you are sitting as high as 2nd place in the B division, the judges look over your puzzles again and again, as well as the puzzles of everyone else who has a real shot at making the finals, just to make sure they've gotten everything right. They eventually caught the two wrong squares on their own. I fell back down to 50th place in the standings while we were finishing dessert. As Matt put it to me, 'You had the agony without the heroism.'
The next morning, we had Puzzle 7 (21×21, 45-minute time limit). Of course it didn't matter how well I did on this puzzle since there was no way to make up enough ground to make it back into a B-final position. Puzzle 7 was very bizarre for me in that I felt I was slow — not that the theme was difficult, but that the clues felt pitched tougher than I expected — and yet somehow, I still finished in good time with 35 minutes left. Once again I had the good fortune of looking up and seeing 35:02 on the clock, and once again I'd stopped caring if I'd even made a mistake, so I just threw my hand up to turn it in. I had a nagging feeling I'd left an entire corner blank, but that concern turned out to be unfounded — it was a clean puzzle, and I leaped back up to a final finish of 38th place overall, but nowhere near the top three spots of the B division.
Even in my best prior performances at the ACPT, I wasn't fast enough to be a B division finalist. This year, I was fast enough to make it. If not for that one careless error in Puzzle 2, I would have been in the B final. As disappointing as that was, the silver lining I'm taking from this year's tournament is that I know I can make the B final one day. I just have to, you know, not screw it up. And honestly, I couldn't have been prouder of my friend David Cole after he became the third B finalist. He told me after Puzzle 7 that he was just as shocked on Saturday night that he was sitting in 3rd in the B division when he thought I was ahead of him, and he ended up finishing 2nd onstage in the B final. Dan Schwartz finished first in the B final, in a little more than four and a half minutes, which is astonishing; I have a hard time believing I'd have been anywhere near that if I'd made the final. (If you've solved the ACPT puzzles already, you can watch the B final here. The final for the A division is here if you want to see three crossword-solving titans — Paolo Pasco, Will Nediger and Dan Feyer — absolutely rip through the toughest clues in blazing speed.)
So that's another ACPT gone by. Hopefully that error in Puzzle 2 won't end up haunting me for years to come, and who knows if I'll have that same kind of speed next year. I feel like I can't really count on having the 'solve of my life' on Puzzle 5 again, and there are so many B division solvers (or some as yet unknown rookie) who could crush the competition in 2026. Then again, if I did as well as I did despite spending 44 straight hours from Thursday into Friday awake, and if I felt like I went slowly on Puzzle 7 and still finished it in under 10 minutes, then maybe I have room to improve my speed-solving. Even if I never end up making the B final, I won't regret that I got to spend time with my whole crossword family. Maybe my son Elliot will compete at this tournament one day, too — he's still the winner of the Unbelievably Cute Little Guy division in my book and he didn't even have to solve a puzzle to do that — but we'll let him decide if he wants to take up crosswords as a hobby.
Let's do this again next year, shall we?
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