Every year since 2008, a gaggle of crossword fanatics have converged in New York City for a fantastic battle of wits. What started with just a small roomful of puzzle nuts has grown to a community of hundreds of participants who compete both live and online.
Brian Cimmet, the organizer, and Rachel Fabi, who has been a puzzle constructor (2020), test-solver (’21), and competitor (’22) at Lollapuzzoola, volunteered a little of their time to chat with me about the increasingly popular event.
TK: Can you tell us how Lollapuzzoola came to be, as well as a brief history?
In 2008, my friend Ryan Hecht told me about the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT) and the documentary neither of which I knew about. He thought it would be fun to go to the ACPT, even though neither of us knew anything about crosswords and were pretty terrible at them. But we went and were kind of fascinated with the world of it. Shortly after that, we began to collaborate on three crosswordrelated projects. One was a blog (which lasted a couple years,
