This week, as we near the end of 2025, the writers and editors of KQED Arts & Culture are reflecting on One Beautiful Thing from the year.

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n a bright Sunday morning in June, I sat down in a crowded synagogue library in West Berkeley for my first ever crossword puzzle competition.

I’d signed up on a lark, in the interest of trying something new. Berkeley’s second annual Westwords crossword tournament — a grueling, six-hour puzzle-solving extravaganza — certainly fit the bill.

“I’m gonna get smoked!” I told my wife and kids, who’d decamped to New Jersey for the summer a few days earlier, leaving me with a precious free weekend to pursue my nerdy hobbies. “I just don’t want to finish last.”

Look, I’d done enough research ahead of time to know I didn’t have a prayer of winning, or even placing remotely close to the top of the leaderboard. Not when the world’s top puzzlers routinely solve the New York Times Saturday crossword in 3 or 4 minutes — nearly 10 times faster than my best efforts. Still, I didn’t really think I was in any danger of coming in dead last. I’d completed the NYT puzzle for more than 500 days in a row! I didn’t know anyone, personally, who was a more devoted crossword puzzle solver than me!

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If glory was out of reach, I figured I could at least achieve respectability.

So how did it come to be that about 15 minutes into the first puzzle of the tournament, I was one of just five or six people in the room who still hadn’t finished my grid? Looking at the friendly mix of mild-mannered software engineer types, dudes rocking ponytails and goth girls in crossword-themed dresses who’d gathered in Berkeley that day, how did I not realize that more than half of them were outright monsters?

Last place started to seem like a real possibility.

Vintage black and white photo of crossword solvers sitting at individual desks during a competition. — Ahh, crossword squares and Scotch: In 1971, competitors take part in the Cutty Sark/Times National Crossword Championships in the London. (Central Press/Getty Images)

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n one sense, you could say I’d been training for crossword glory for my entire life.

I’d always been the Word Person in my science-oriented friend group — the OED brandisher, the unrepentant menace in games of Boggle and Speed Scrabble. But I came to crossword puzzles, specifically, relatively late in life. In the early pandemic years, I started taking long hot baths every night as a way to self-soothe. Instead of doomscrolling during those hours-long soaks, I got in the habit of doing the New York Times crossword on my phone. I was surprised to be able to complete them, mostly — the breezy Monday puzzles and, with enough time and effort, the gnarly, knotty Saturdays (which I learned were much harder than their more famous Sunday counterparts). Week by week, I got faster and more confident, and my mental health started to improve, too: As it turns out, racking your brain to think of a five-letter word for “performed reasonably well”¹ was a decent way to distract yourself from all that existential dread.

Of course, none of this prepared me for the balls-to-the-wall world of competitive crossword tournaments, where puzzles are scored on both speed and accuracy. The largest, most prestigious in-person crossword competitions, like the Will Shortz–hosted American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, can draw more than 1,000 participants. The most expert among them have been known to fill out a grid, error-free, even faster than the puzzle’s constructor (who, presumably, knew all the answers ahead of time).

Among the 150 or so who’d crammed into the synagogue library for Westwords, I learned that most of my tablemates were also first-timers — a lawyer, a video game designer, a couple of sleepy-looking college kids. We sat with our papers turned upside down until the proctors started the timer, like we’d all gone back to high school to take the SATs. Wielding the mechanical pencil and fancy Japanese eraser I’d purchased for the occasion, I started working my way through the first puzzle — an easy warmup, we were told. A three-letter word for “hullabaloo.”² Six-letter word for “pandemonium” starting with “B.”³

Everything was going swimmingly until about two minutes in, when people started raising their hands to indicate that they’d finished. (I’d filled in maybe a dozen answers at that point.) Nothing can prepare you for that very specific form of stress — the way my hands were sweaty and my pencil started to shake — when 5 contestants, then very quickly 10 and then 50, turned in their puzzles and trickled out of the room. Soon enough, there were only a dozen of us left. Meanwhile, the clock continued to tick down, and half of my puzzle was still blank.

By the time the clock ran out on the second puzzle, which I didn’t come particularly close to finishing, I was thoroughly demoralized.

[aside postID='arts_13969423,arts_13983150']I’m the sort of person who’s spent most of my life focusing on things I knew I excelled at: getting good grades, being cutthroat at board games and Big Two, eating large quantities of noodles late at night. I quit organized sports and the jazz band before I started high school because I didn’t think I was any good. I never really gave writing that novel a serious shot.

Yet I tell my kids all the time how they shouldn’t be afraid to try new and difficult things — how they should challenge themselves and enjoy learning for learning’s sake. That they shouldn’t worry about failing or looking foolish. Sitting in a soondubu shop across the street from the crossword competition during our lunch break, I thought about how so many of my favorite memories were from letting loose at things I’m genuinely bad at — rock climbing, or karaoke, or those six months in college when I tried to become a breakdancer [screaming face emoji].

There is a kind of freedom that comes with embracing your own mediocrity — or at least in not worrying how well you’re going to do compared to anyone else. I wish I could say that I came back from lunch and aced the last three puzzles of the tournament, but the truth is, I only finished one of them, and even that one was riddled with mistakes. But I did finally manage to relax a little. To just fill in one square at a time and enjoy the thrill of solving for solving’s sake. To have fun with it.

The leaderboard of a crossword competition. Luke Tsai is in 134th place. — Luke Tsai’s final ranking and score in the crossword competition.

In the end, I didn’t wind up finishing in last place after all — though my 134th place ranking (out of 144 competitors) was almost low enough to be a punchline.

Of course I decided immediately that I’d be back to try again next year.

¹DID OK

²ADO

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³BEDLAM

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