Crossword aficionado is a five-letter word for victor Crossword aficionado went ACROSS the border to go DOWN as a champion By: Ben Waldman Posted: 4:15 PM CDT Friday, Aug. 29, 2025

It might take you a week to solve a New York Times crossword. For local cruciverbalist Sam Doucet, to solve an entire week’s worth of puzzles takes an average of 30 minutes, three seconds.

Last year, the middle-school teacher issued himself the half-hour challenge as one method of preparation for his first trip to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, Conn., an annual competition hosted by crossword editor Will Shortz, sponsored by the New York Times and made famous in the 2006 documentary Wordplay.

It worked: in April, Doucet won the rookie C division and placed 41st out of 787 individual entrants.

For Doucet, 34, crosswords have been a daily comfort since his teenage years, but about five years ago, he recognized how much his solving skills had developed.

“I sort of realized I was actually pretty good at this and I wondered how good I could get,” says Doucet, who typically completes about 15 puzzles per day.

“I really wanted to see what my ceiling was in terms of competitive solving, so I just said, this might be a bit much, but I’m going to do as many crosswords as I feasibly can, just as a means of practising and really as an excuse to write more numbers down in my spreadsheet.”

On that spreadsheet, Doucet tracks his progress solving puzzles published by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Vulture, USA Today, and on specialty sites such as Crossword Club, Universal and Puzzmo.

A longtime trivia host and the former program director of campus radio station CKUW 95.9 FM, Doucet says he avoids solving puzzles at the breakfast table.

“I don’t do them first thing in the morning because I want to have at least a decently clear head, so I usually do them after work,” he says, preferring to solve in silence as if taking a final exam.

Though he began entering online tournaments four years ago, Doucet intensified his training in 2023, around the time he set his sights on the tournament in Stamford, which held its 47th edition this spring.

Doucet checked his calendar and saw that the tournament was scheduled for the last weekend of spring break. Along with his wife, he flew to New York for a few days, seeing a Yankees game and a production of Chicago on Broadway, before taking the train up to Stamford.

At the Stamford Marriott, Doucet found himself surrounded by a record-setting 889 contestants, along with industry celebrities such as David Balton and Jane Stewart, the acrostic puzzle creators for the New York Times, as well as favourite constructors such as Brendan Emmett Quigley, Stella Zawistowski and Brooke Husic, the founder of Puzzmo.

“All my crossword heroes were there. I’m looking around and it seemed like every other name tag was someone whose puzzles I’d solved before or someone who’s been in the 10 fastest in the world. It was overwhelming to see all these names and faces in one place after this had been a purely individual habit for me for so long,” says Doucet.

“I felt like I was just a fan at the all-star game.”

But Doucet wasn’t just a spectator. On Saturday morning, he grabbed a handful of Dixon Ticonderogas and a pencil sharpener and got to work, set to be marked for both speed and accuracy.

The first puzzle had a 20-minute time limit, and Doucet solved it in five minutes, earning him a 15-minute credit. Across eight puzzles, Doucet finished the tournament completely error-free — even on the notorious puzzle No. 5.

“Five is the backbreaker. Most people show up with fingers crossed, hoping they can finish or at least understand what’s happening,” says Doucet.

In this puzzle, for all down answers of five or more letters, a certain amount of the letters in the answers suggested by the clue were flipped.

“Five is the backbreaker. Most people show up with fingers crossed, hoping they can finish or at least understand what’s happening.”–Sam Doucet

“Basically, every letter except for the last three in each answer was flipped, relative to the clue given. So, for instance, eight down, the clue was White House family of the 1970s, which suggested the answer Carters, so Carter’s became tracers, because the C, A, R, T of Carters was flipped. OK, are you following?”

He finished the 30-minute puzzle in 12 minutes flat.

“It was just bananas,” he says.

After solving the first seven puzzles of the tournament, Doucet competed against New York’s Adam Isaacson and Ryan Smith of Texas in front of 700 spectators for the C Division championship puzzle on large whiteboard easels.

Doucet finished the 15-minute puzzle in six minutes, beating out Smith by 45 seconds.

“I threw my hand up, got a round of applause from the room and then my heart was beating a mile a minute. And then Will Shortz, who was emceeing, announced that all three grids had been solved clean, so I gave a little fist pump because I knew I’d won,” Doucet says.

“In first place, perfect in six minutes, Sam Doucet,” Shortz announced.

Next year, Doucet hopes to crack the top 40.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca