These are no middling riddlers
It’s been around for 122 years, but chances are you don’t know it exists. It has more than 400 members, but chances are you couldn’t pick them out of a lineup. This weekend, about 140 of them -- teenagers, 80-year-olds, professors, students, musicians and mathematicians -- will gather at the Omni Hotel in downtown Los Angeles to share their passion, sometimes into the wee hours.
What could it be? Puzzling, isn’t it?
Yes, in fact, it is.
The National Puzzlers’ League will hold its annual convention for the first time in L.A., featuring four days of puzzle solving, including two days open to the public for $25 each. And no, the puzzles aren’t made of cut-up cardboard pieces that form a picture of a kitten. We’re talking word puzzles: anagrams, cryptograms and all sorts of other grams.
The organization, which bills itself as the world’s oldest puzzlers’ league, brings together prominent makers of puzzles and the people who solve them.
“What they have in common is a love for words, flexible minds, they read a lot, they have a good sense of humor and are very creative,” said New York Times crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz, who has been program director of the conventions since reviving them in 1976.
Though there are organized competitions throughout the afternoons and evenings, some of the most intense action takes place after-hours.
“People will hang around, sometimes until 2, 3, 4 in the morning playing games,” said Leon Marzillier, a mathematics professor at L.A. Valley College and this year’s league organizer. “Some of them look like zombies come Sunday.”
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National Puzzlers’ League Convention
Where: Omni Los Angeles Hotel, 251 S. Olive St., L.A.
When: 8 p.m. today and Friday
Price: $25
Info: www.puzzlers.org