2005 US Puzzle Championship: A total bomb

Date published: June 28, 2005

Well, I've been delaying writing this for a while now. Basically, I did worse than worse on the puzzle competition this year. We're talking basically last place; a far cry from 133rd place last year and 208th place the year before.

So, what's the reason? Well, not to excuse my actions but to explain them, I've been feeling quite down lately. I think I have had a bit of a mono relapse, though I haven't gone to the doctor to confirm it yet. I've been sleeping SO much lately. I remember it was March through May of 2001 when we (the doctors and myself) were trying to figure out why I had an enlarged lymph node near my left hip. Anyway, five different blood drawings later, they figured out I had mono. Interestingly though, I didn't exhibit any of the symptoms besides that single enlarged node.

No enlarged node this time, but like I said, I think I had a relapse or something. Work has been a bit uncreative lately too, so that is another reason why I've been down. My mind has just been all over the place and not really able to concentrate.

I'm not even going to bother making any graphs to show where I fell in the overall competition, like I said...it was basically dead last. Heheh, funny thing is, I didn't even know that it went 2.5 hours either. I thought it was only 2. So around the two hour point, I was hurrying and trying to finish some puzzles and submit my answers...that's when I started guessing, which led to my ultimate demise. Guessing incorrectly leads to five points being taken off your total score. I did a lot of guessing and got a lot of them wrong. Thus, my horrible placing.