We are so so excited to announce the Midwest Crossword Tournament! Chicago, October 2024. Much more info to come! mwxwt.com

Westwords surrounded by our best friends, Lisa 'Lolla' Lopes and T-Boz-words 💕

Yes!

Delighted to announce the winners of the Lollapuzzoola meta puzzle contests (Taigen O, Vivian Sophia, and Annie Hu) and of the At-Home Division (Paolo Pasco)! Congratulations to all!

The tournament may be over, but the puzzles are still available at bemoresmarter.com/lpz2023/

all bangers, no skips

This is an amazing insider retrospective of the day! Thank you, Brooke, for sharing all of this!

third place at #lpz16 ! mega congrats to fellow finalists Will Nediger & dan schwartz, and thank you to Brian Cimmet alexandra ladee & Sid Sivakumar for putting on an amazing tournament

IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY FOR A CROSSWORD TOURNAMENT IN NYC

Emily Sharp & Kunal Nabar live in the Bay Area, where they enjoy cooking, hiking, eating, and drinking coffee. Kunal's favorite birthday memory is visiting friends studying abroad in Europe. On Emily's most memorable birthday, she got stung by a stingray at the beach.

Anyone else out there just order 50 pizzas to get delivered to their party tomorrow? No ...? Just me, huh 🍕 🎉 🎈

T MINUS 24 HOURS UNTIL
Lollapuzzoola !!!

Of all the crossword tournaments ever held annually on a Saturday in August, it’s by far my favorite.

Who else is gonna be there tomorrow?? Come say hi! 🥳

The annual journey to NYC begins ...

Erica Hsiung Wojcik is a professor at Skidmore College, where she studies how infants learn language. Her puzzles have appeared in the Inkubator, USAT, NYT, LAT, and more. Her most memorable 'birth' day was when she was in labor for 21 hours with her now five-year-old child.

What a fun photo op!

Doug Peterson has been making puzzles for 20 years, and this will be puzzle #13 for Lolla. When he turned 10, his parents bought him 'Batman: From the ‘30s to the ‘70s.' He re-read it so often it literally fell apart and needed rubber bands to hold it together. Best present ever.

Pretty sure we're keeping Amazon in business right now

Not sure why, but our attempt at automated social media spammed a bunch of sites with Matt Gritzmacher's picture and bio. Maybe Twitter and Facebook and Insta and all are just REALLY looking forward to his puzzle? (This is part of it — isn't it exciting?) bemoresmarter.com

Matt Gritzmacher founded dailycrosswordlinks.com to connect more solvers with more crosswords. A previous Lolla Rookie of the Year and frequent Downs-Only competitor, he won the Express Division in 2022, using *all* the clues. His birthday is sometimes on a Saturday in August.

So um, this is wild … but we've sold out the venue in NYC!

You can still get the puzzles in PDF or snail mail versions here: bemoresmarter.com/lpz2023

… and if you want to join the wait list for NYC, you can do that here: forms.gle/TaSRe69DRWFeDD…

#crossword #puzzle #tournament

Rebecca Goldstein Rebecca Goldstein is a scientist discovering immunotherapies for cancer. Her puzzles have been in the NYT, the New Yorker, and more. She placed 12th in Lolla Online in 2022. Her favorite birthday memories involve food: waffles, tacos, and many mojitos in Kauai.