In 1967, Terry Biddlecombe won the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Woodland Venture. Today, I just managed to win a "Cheltenham silver cup" for the Times Crossword Championship.
I'm afraid I was too busy accepting congratulations to collect a full set of grand final results, so those will have to wait until I can pinch them from the Times xwd club site.
Qualifiers from the two preliminaries were, in finishing order:
Morning
1 Tim Smith
2 Peter Brooksbank
3 David Howell
4 R Crabtree
5 Richard Grafen
6 Philip Dodd
7 Peter Biddlecombe
8 Michael MacDonald-Cooper
9 Neil Talbott
10 Philip Meade
11 N Robinson
12 C Williams
(I finished in about 25/26 minutes, and I think Tim Smith finished in 18 or 19. I should have been quicker but struggled for a while with a four-letter answer in the first puzzle with checking letters that allowed many possibilities.)
Afternoon
1 Helen Ougham
2 J Roberts
3 Phil Jordan
4 Simon Chillingworth
5 Sir John Sparrow
6 Lord Aberdare
7 D M MacArthur
8 John Marshall
9 Mick Hodgkin
10 Chris Brougham
11 R Cuthbert
12 Brenda Widger
Afternoon times were something like 15-20 minutes slower, and 13 of the first 25 had a mistake (mostly the same one, but I won't mention any answers here, so that you can do the puzzles unseen when they appear in the paper).
The set of puzzles for the final seemed even tougher than last year. I got on fairly well with the first one - 10 mins or so, though I had one answer left to complete, and as it turned out, one wrongly filled in at that point. Each of the others was quite a struggle, but I eventually finished them, returned to number one and found my mistake, which meant that something I knew should be true about the unentered answer could now be true. I put my hand up at about 37:50, knowing that most people were still working, but not knowing whether any other hands had gone up. Eight seconds later, David Howell (1997 champ and second last year) finished. In the format used before 2006, that would probably have meant that David and I would have had to sit down for an extra puzzle to reach a decision. I'm mighty glad to have avoided that experience! A while later (I didn't see this bit happen) Philip Dodd and Philip Meade put their hands up simultaneously. Older readers will remember that Phlip Meade finished second several times in the glory days of John Sykes, so it was good to see him back. It was also good to see bloggers Neil Talbott (talbinho) and (from fifteensquared) Mick Hodgkin making their first finals, along with John Marshall who has been sending in times for the cryptic RTC contests here.
It turned out that Helen Ougham had finished first, but in a reversal of last year, it was her turn to have a couple of wrong answers. Commiserations to her, David Howell who was so close, John Henderson (first hand up in the morning, but with a wrong answer that was very plausible), Shane Shabankareh (13th in the morning), and Tony Sever - about 16th in the morning. And of course, we'll never know how Mark Goodliffe would have got on with these puzzles in the heat of battle.
Quick idea about the championship puzzles and our unofficial RTC contests: I'm going to leave them out of the weekly contests, but have a separate contest for the 9 championship puzzles, open only to those who weren't there and haven't seen any more news about the puzzles than appears in the paper or other public places. I'll say more about this when it's clear what the schedule is for publishing the championship puzzles.
I'm afraid I was too busy accepting congratulations to collect a full set of grand final results, so those will have to wait until I can pinch them from the Times xwd club site.
Qualifiers from the two preliminaries were, in finishing order:
Morning
1 Tim Smith
2 Peter Brooksbank
3 David Howell
4 R Crabtree
5 Richard Grafen
6 Philip Dodd
7 Peter Biddlecombe
8 Michael MacDonald-Cooper
9 Neil Talbott
10 Philip Meade
11 N Robinson
12 C Williams
(I finished in about 25/26 minutes, and I think Tim Smith finished in 18 or 19. I should have been quicker but struggled for a while with a four-letter answer in the first puzzle with checking letters that allowed many possibilities.)
Afternoon
1 Helen Ougham
2 J Roberts
3 Phil Jordan
4 Simon Chillingworth
5 Sir John Sparrow
6 Lord Aberdare
7 D M MacArthur
8 John Marshall
9 Mick Hodgkin
10 Chris Brougham
11 R Cuthbert
12 Brenda Widger
Afternoon times were something like 15-20 minutes slower, and 13 of the first 25 had a mistake (mostly the same one, but I won't mention any answers here, so that you can do the puzzles unseen when they appear in the paper).
The set of puzzles for the final seemed even tougher than last year. I got on fairly well with the first one - 10 mins or so, though I had one answer left to complete, and as it turned out, one wrongly filled in at that point. Each of the others was quite a struggle, but I eventually finished them, returned to number one and found my mistake, which meant that something I knew should be true about the unentered answer could now be true. I put my hand up at about 37:50, knowing that most people were still working, but not knowing whether any other hands had gone up. Eight seconds later, David Howell (1997 champ and second last year) finished. In the format used before 2006, that would probably have meant that David and I would have had to sit down for an extra puzzle to reach a decision. I'm mighty glad to have avoided that experience! A while later (I didn't see this bit happen) Philip Dodd and Philip Meade put their hands up simultaneously. Older readers will remember that Phlip Meade finished second several times in the glory days of John Sykes, so it was good to see him back. It was also good to see bloggers Neil Talbott (talbinho) and (from fifteensquared) Mick Hodgkin making their first finals, along with John Marshall who has been sending in times for the cryptic RTC contests here.
It turned out that Helen Ougham had finished first, but in a reversal of last year, it was her turn to have a couple of wrong answers. Commiserations to her, David Howell who was so close, John Henderson (first hand up in the morning, but with a wrong answer that was very plausible), Shane Shabankareh (13th in the morning), and Tony Sever - about 16th in the morning. And of course, we'll never know how Mark Goodliffe would have got on with these puzzles in the heat of battle.
Quick idea about the championship puzzles and our unofficial RTC contests: I'm going to leave them out of the weekly contests, but have a separate contest for the 9 championship puzzles, open only to those who weren't there and haven't seen any more news about the puzzles than appears in the paper or other public places. I'll say more about this when it's clear what the schedule is for publishing the championship puzzles.
Comments
Now off to have plastic surgery and be given a new identity by the Times (!)