2013 Wrap-Up

The 2013 contest has drawn to a close and it’s time to select the Grand Prize winner in a random drawing. A total of 52 solvers are eligible this year, having solved at least 8 of the 12 contest puzzles correctly. Solvers’ chances of winning are proportional to their total points, which can be found here. Five solvers tied for top score this year: Vraal, jeremiahsjohnson, JanglerNPL, j, and ab (who also was the high scorer in 2012).

Drumroll please….This year’s Grand Prize winner is….Patrick Lipawen of Philadelphia. Congratulations Patrick! Patrick wins a free entry to this year’s ACPT.

This was a great year for the MMMM. Two puzzles were among the highest-rated of the year at Amy Reynaldo’s Crossword Fiend and one of them won Matt Gaffney’s Crossword of the Month. I want to give a special shout-out to people who helped make this contest happen. First, thanks to Sue Keefer (aka my sister), for her ongoing feedback and her help brainstorming themes. Thanks to my invaluable editor Frank Longo, who catches far more mistakes than I thought I was capable of making. Thanks to Charles Montpetit for his test-solving and great musical clue suggestions. Thanks to meta-megastar Matt Gaffney for his unqualified support and encouragement, including blogging every MMMM at Crossword Fiend. And last but not least, thanks to Jeff Balbien, who always helps when my ambitions for this website exceed my coding skills.

I also want to say thanks to all the solvers out there for your great feedback. It wouldn’t be fun to create puzzles if people didn’t have fun solving them. As a solver myself, I love the feeling of thinking “there’s no way I’m going to solve this puzzle,” and then suddenly getting the flash of insight that makes everything fall into place. I aim to give that experience to MMMM subscribers (now numbering over 650!).

As requested by a number of subscribers, there’s a customary end-of-year Tip Jar to the left. It will remain on this page for one week. Please don’t feel obligated in any way; but if you like, you can click on the Tip Jar icon to donate via PayPal. As I don’t plan on ever making money on this site, everything I collect will be used to reimburse contest expenses. Anything left over will be given to the crossword community at sites like xwordinfo.com. Thanks!

I would love to hear feedback on the this year’s contest. What did you especially like? Anything you didn’t like or would prefer to see different? If you’re open to me publishing your comments on the website, please write “OK TO USE” after the comment. I’ll summarize feedback next week. Longer comments are welcome too via email.

There will be a few changes in 2014. First, there will be an extra contest puzzle that will come out next Tuesday, January 21. The mega-meta will once again be guessable early for extra bonus points, only this year (thanks to Peter Gordon for the suggestion), the earlier you guess it, the more points you get. Full scoring details can be found here. The 2014 contest will once again start out relatively easy and grow in difficulty over the course of the year.

If you’re not a subscriber, you can sign up in the box at the right and start receiving the MMMM via email. Existing subscribers don’t need to sign up again for 2014.

See you in a week!