By Zack Butler (USA)
In a word, it was wonderful. Again. Organized with typical Dutch efficiency
(or at least the efficiency of a great puzzle mind or two), we spent five days
eating, drinking, puzzling, laughing, sightseeing, puzzling, shopping, dancing,
puzzling, bowling, 
sleeping a little, and puzzling. All
of it went very well. The puzzling went better for both me and the team than
last year. The puzzles were excellent, created in large part by Peter Ritmeester,
perhaps the best non-mechanical puzzle creator anywhere. As a team, we finished
first by a large margin over the Czechs, and retained the Puzzle
Star. I used a strong first-round performance to hold on to second place
individually. The other team members were 3rd (defending champ Wei-Hwa Huang),
5th (Ron Osher) and 7th (Nick Baxter in a personal best), making for a dominating
show, especially when combined with the best score in each of the three team
rounds. Robert Babilon of the Czech Republic won the individual title quite
handily, with two of his teammates, Pavel Kalhous and Petr Nepovim, in 4th and
9th respectively. Results.
After arriving
on Tuesday, we took it easy before the welcoming dinner that night. After a
short bit of folk dancing (a friendly jab at the Romanians), we had a good dinner
followed by bowling at the hotel bowling alley. (Here Kamer of the Turkish team
won the Helene Hovanec Memorial Ankle-Injuring Award by attempting to kick the
ball down the lane while wearing no shoes...) Wednesday we were taken to Amsterdam
for lunch and an afternoon of sightseeing, although I would say that there are
few things more frustrating than going to a wonderful art museum with barely
more than an hour to look around. Dinner that night was at a ship-themed restaurant,
where the theme was taken beyond the realm of anything I've seen in this country.
(The picture to the right here is of Helene and the "Captain" of the ship.)
Thursday and Friday were full puzzle days, with not much in the evenings, although
I did learn a very complicated card game called "Kings" from the Turks, at which
I was soundly defeated.
Saturday morning was the final bit of competition, including two very nice team
puzzles. (Nice because having four people actually meant spending about
1/4 the time on them, unlike most team puzzles.) In the afternoon, most of the
Americans, Turks, and Hungarians skipped the cultural programme in Rotterdam
to go shopping in Utrecht. The downtown district there has an amazing density
of clothing, shoe and music stores, to the exclusion of almost everything else.
I bought music and chocloate, but no shoes, wooden or otherwise. I was also
amused when passing a coffeeshop to see a _5 kilo_ bag of marijuana in the window.
(For those of you that don't know, pot is not very dense. 5 kilos is a lot.)
Anyway, we returned from shopping and went back out to the
awards banquet and party. This was also wonderful. We listened to a
speech from the mayor of Koprivnica, Croatia, host of next year's
WPC. The trophies were then awarded, and are very nice, each
containing a simple mechanical puzzle. (Come visit me and you get
to see one.) The Turkish team squeaked out a 3rd place finish over
the Dutch team, which had its best finish ever. (Of course, it was
the first time the Dutch team wasn't comprised of the sponsoring
magazine's editors.) After the awards was some dancing with a cover
band called the Clarks. I was momentarily confused, since there is
a Pittsburgh band by that name, but apparently this is a different
bunch of guys. We then retired to the hotel bar at about 1, bought
some beer from the soda machine at about 3:30 (another great Dutch
thing), and I caught a short nap before our return trip.
Photos courtesy Nick Baxter
