The tournament has grown substantially since it was featured in the 2006 documentary 'Wordplay,' but Kedlaya thinks that, even with the increase in competitors, he just needs a little luck, a couple clues to fall his way, and he'll be back in the finals (he finished second in the three-person finals in 2006). 'I'm OK with getting most of my pop culture from crosswords.' But he said, no matter how much it might help him, he can't force himself to pore over the latest entertainment gossip. What he won't do is buy a TV.īeing removed from the pop culture grid - Kedlaya said he doesn't watch many movies, either - puts him at a natural disadvantage for pop-culture clues. When he's preparing for the tournament, Kedlaya said he will time himself doing a couple of crossword puzzles a day and practice little tactics to shave off a few seconds, such as filling in one answer while he reads another clue, or practicing his crossword alphabet (many puzzlers write in a combination of capital and lower case letters, based on which form of the letter is faster to write). So, how does one get serious at crosswords? They do more crosswords.

He did well for a rookie - top 50 - and got encouragement from what he describes as the 'tight-knit' crossword community to get more serious. Kedlaya first started doing the Times crossword as an undergraduate at Harvard, and got good enough that he decided to make a trip down to Stamford, Conn., to try his hand at the tournament in 1997. It's good to see us struggle with puzzles that nonmathematicians would struggle with, too.' 'One of my goals is to make math more accessible, and something like this helps that. 'I think that mathematics does, for various reasons, have this feeling of remoteness,' Sipser said. Grad students in the department get together every afternoon over tea to tackle the Times crossword (Kedlaya doesn't read over their shoulders, but he's there to 'help' if they get stuck).Īnd Sipser thinks that the attention afforded to Kedlaya for his hobby can only be a good thing for the mathematician's image. Mike Sipser, the head of MIT's math department, said that many mathematicians have a natural attraction to puzzles (Kedlaya isn't the only one in MIT's math department with a Rubik's Cube in his office). So he doesn't think it's much of a leap to see why a mathematician would be a fixture in the top 10 of the country's premier crossword puzzle tournament, as Kedlaya has been for the last half-dozen years. Many top crossword solvers have a background in music, he said, which has a well-documented connection to the mathematical mind (many, he added, are also jugglers, which has a similarly documented connection to math). 'In my day job, that doesn't happen enough.' 'What I like is that everything comes together, both literally and figuratively,' said the 33-year-old Kedlaya, whose research focuses on number theory and algebraic geometry. He views crosswords as a blend of language and math skills, a logic puzzle of intersections. The hallowed halls of MIT's math department might seem an unlikely place to find a star in game that is about words and trivia, but Kedlaya doesn't think it's that far-fetched.

'You can't get hung up on one answer, because in crossword puzzles, it's going to be something else the next time.' 'I don't have my white whale like Ahab,' he said, finishing the puzzle with a 'slow time' of 5:19. Kedlaya said he doesn't obsess over mistakes. Last week, as he twisted the cap on a mechanical pencil and prepared to tackle a Wednesday New York Times crossword puzzle in his office at MIT. At this level, getting the answers right must be a given, because to win you've got to finish the fastest. One little mistake - that was the only one Kedlaya made in the four-day tournament - and you're toast. That's how it goes in the highest ranks of competitive crossword solvers, Kedlaya said. Unfortunately for Kedlaya, he had never heard of Lindo if he had just known Lindo's first name, he would have made the finals of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, instead of finishing ninth. Kiran Kedlaya is an associate math professor at MIT. MATHEMATICIAN KIRAN KEDLAYA | MEETING THE MINDS His puzzling avocation is no trivial pursuit

Trivial matter crossword clue