My upper-case E takes two strokes – it’s what they call a Greek E, like a C with a horizontal stroke halfway down. 
I did indeed, thanks to twickster’s encouragement and having won Voyager’s contest. I placed 81st out of about 450-500. I placed 9th among rookies, and 4th among Southerners.
I wasn’t there for Mike Shenk’s Friday night puzzle-construction; I had a friend in Manhattan I wanted to visit, so I only attended the actual competitions, and not the banquets and such. Friday night I think I was at a bar in Brooklyn, but I can’t say for sure.
This was my first such competition, but if anyone has questions I’ll answer as best I can.
Fish eggs = roe
Building addition = ell
There are quite a few. I’ve picked up a few already. 
Personally, though I’ve been working crosswords for years, I’ve never timed myself - not even on a Monday puzzle. I still often have trouble finishing the last few days of the week, and occasionally I can’t finish a Monday or Tuesday without consulting a reference.
I have a long way to go before I’m in the same league as you guys.
jackelope,
I liked astorian’s suggestion to use small letters for speed.
But I have never seen anyone do puzzles cursively. It’s always been capitals.
At Stamford, did you see any of the other completed grids? I was wondering if there is a legibility problem using small cursives. For example:
Judge: Nope. This one’s wrong. That’s an “e”. The right answer is BELT, not BEET
Contestant: Bullshit! That’s an “l”, and b-e-l-t is what I wrote.
I don’t understand where you get TUESDAY. I dredged up the WEDNESDAY, 3/23 puzzle, and here’s what Shortz prefaced it with (emphasis mine):
“As a demonstration of speed puzzle construction at the 28th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, on March 11 in Stamford Coon., Mike Shenk took a theme proposed by the audience and created this puzzle, start to finish, without computer-assisted fill, in 60 minutes. Later, in a race to solve it, Trip Payne, of Boca Raton, Fla., finished first in 3 minutes. About two-thirds of the audience completed the puzzle correctly within the 15 minute time limit.”
I’ve done some of these American crosswords and I just can’t seem to feel any kind of satisfaction from that kind of thing.
Y’all need some good old British cryptic clues.
[ul]
[li]Stands for Fiona’s first dance (7)[/li][li]Silicone Valley? (8)[/li][li]American jugs (14)[/li][/ul]
I can respond to that – when I do go (and I didn’t this year, or last), I’m a judge.
We LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE people who write legibly. Not everyone does. Most people don’t.
Generally, if we’re not clear what a letter is, we’ll look at other incidences of the same letter elsewhere in the grid (“Yeah, goofy-looking, but that’s how he makes his T’s”), and actually try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Generally it’s a problem where someone wrote over a letter, or didn’t erase completely, something like that. You will get situations where three judges are all squinting at the same paper trying to decide what’s going on.
Actually, where I got it was from listening to Will Shortz on that NPR Sunday morning puzzler segment.
He was talking about the competition, and that puzzle, and said, “I think we’re going to run it in the NYT on a Tuesday.”
I guess in the end it was deemed a “Wednesday”, and, I probably had no idea what day of the week it was when we were discussing it in this thread.
Fair enough.
You’re absolutely right. The cliché about English cryptics is true: Every clue is a puzzle in itself.
And compared to the American puzzles, yours are much more satisfying to solve.
By the way, for those who are wondering what Jackelope’s rankings “mean” – i.e., how he “really did” – he kicked all kinds of ass. This is a very tough, very, very competitive field, and rookies are usually just cannon fodder. I was truly very impressed with how high he scored!
twickster answered this already, but I’ll add that the only completed puzzles I saw were those of the top three finishers in each of three skill divisions; those were done on big dry-erase boards at the front of a big conference room, with a couple of hundred people watching and a clock running. (Talk about pressure.) Everyone, as near as I recall, wrote them out in printed capitals, LIKE THIS. Then again, I confess that my attention wandered a bit; championship or no, watching someone else solve a crossword is not the world’s most absorbing activity.
Interesting side note, by the way: On the final day, Sunday, I had a plane to catch that afternoon out of LaGuardia, so I didn’t stick around for the awards banquet (which I hadn’t paid for anyway). A friend of a friend who was there told me later that they’d called my name and I didn’t come up; apparently the top ten rookies all get a prize of some kind. Rats, thinks I, and I sent an e-mail to the tournament organizers asking about the trophy.
The next day, I got an e-mail from Will Shortz himself, saying that they’ll get my trophy in the mail ASAP! I’m more excited about getting e-mail from Will Shortz than the trophy.
BY THE WAY, I have copies of all seven puzzles used in the contest, plus all three versions of the final puzzle; if anyone would like to have scanned jpgs of them, send me an e-mail (it’s in my profile) and I’ll send them to you.
And thanks for the props, twickster; I’m still pretty well pleased with myself for how I did.
Congratulations Jackelope — and not just on your excellent finish at the tourney.!
I too would be thrilled to have gotten an email from W. S.! That’s very special.
Cleavage