The top three players in division C compete in the playoffs, solving a puzzle on stage in front of a live audience. (Cristabelle Tumola / The Brooklyn Ink)

Crossword puzzles are a solitary activity. Something you do on a lazy Sunday morning or to pass time on the commute home. But for about 1,000 crossword enthusiasts, solving them became a spectator sport this weekend when they gathered at the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn Heights for the 35^th Annual American Crossword Tournament.

The world’s oldest and largest crossword competition, it was founded in 1978 by New York Times Crossword Puzzle Editor Will Shortz, who also hosted the event. For the first 30 years, the tournament was held in Stamford, Conn. For the last five it has been held in Brooklyn because the tournament outgrew any available hotels in Connecticut, and Brooklyn was a great economical alternative to holding it in a Manhattan hotel, says Shortz.

“New York City in general is a hotbed of crosswords,” says Shortz, adding that this is partially because it’s the intellectual capital of the country and is home to the New York Times, which has the best-known crossword.

This year’s approximately 600 competitors battled against each other in eight different rounds, in different divisions, divided by geography (including a category for foreign competitors), by age (competitors this year ranged from 15 to 87) and skill. Contestants are allowed to play in more than one division. Special puzzles were created especially for the event, one for each round, with varying difficulty of clues. Puzzle solvers earn points for accuracy and speed.

What makes a good crossword solver, says Shortz, is that “you have to be a good speller, you have to know a lot of words, and you just have to know a lot of stuff—everything from classical subjects like history, mythology, opera, geography, up to modern things like TV, movies, sports and rock n’ roll.”

But it’s just not a matter of what you know, he adds, to be a top solver you have to also be fast.

The reigning champ, Dan Feyer from New York City, won this year’s tournament, with Tyler Hinman from San Francisco coming in second. Both men solved the puzzle perfectly, and the third place player, Anne Erdmann from Champaign, Illinois, was missing just one letter.

The finalists were determined during the previous seven puzzle rounds where competitors sat at rows of tables in the hotel’s large ballroom. The puzzles were done on paper, using either a pen or pencil, whichever a competitor preferred. Expert crossword referees and judges watched carefully over each round, while the participants sat hunched over their puzzles.

Though the competition required quiet, intense concentration, in between puzzle solving, tournament attendees enjoyed socializing with their fellow crossword lovers.

What made this year’s event stand out, however, was a competitor known as Dr. Fill. This crossword expert had a big advantage over the other players—it’s a computer program. This new crossword-solving program made its debut at this year’s tournament, and is supposed to be one of the best ever created.

But Dr. Fill wasn’t smart enough to win and ranked 141st overall. Those that beat the computer during the first seven rounds, got to take home a button that read: “I beat Dr. Fill.”

2012 American Crossword Tournament champion Dan Feyer poses in front of his winning puzzle. (Cristabelle Tumola / The Brooklyn Ink)

During the eighth and final round, the top three players from each of the top three skill divisions competed on stage, in front of a large crowd of the other attendees, and had to solve a puzzle on gigantic wipe board crossword grids. Each division had the same puzzle, but with clues based on the difficulty of the division.

For example, one clue for one across (Super PAC), was “Fund-raising org. resulting from the Citizens United Case” for division C, “Many an attack ad funder” for division B, and “Often adversarial advertiser” for division A.

In the playoffs for the C and B divisions all the competitors solved the crossword perfectly, and within about half the time of the approximately 15 minutes allotted.

The audience members had copies of the puzzles so they could play along and see if the finalists were making a mistake (the finalists had to wear noise canceling headphones while competing). It was at this point that this crossword competition truly became a spectator sport.

A couple of commentators gave the play by play to the audience, remarking on the finalists’ solving methods—“Looking at Erik, he’s very random,” and if they were having trouble with certain words. During the same time audience members could be heard gasping and then sighing in relief, such as when one finalist erased a correct answer and then wrote it again.

Right before the playoffs, trophies were handed out to those that were top ranked in each division in a ceremony on the third and last day of the tournament Sunday.

It was the first time at the competition for Peter Anderson, who traveled all the way from Ann Arbor, Mich. He was inspired by the 2006 documentary “Word Play,” which centers on Shortz and other crossword makers and solvers, and the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

“I thought ‘It looks like fun, I should give it a shot,’” says Anderson. He managed to place ninth in the Rookie division and received a trophy, but he ranked 135 overall and was hoping to place in the top 100.

Feyer, the winner of the highest skilled division, A, received a large trophy and $5,000. He came into the tournament having won the two prior years. Hinman was a former five time champion, and Erdmann, the only woman to compete in the playoffs, was a third time A division finalist.

At the top level the tournament has been male dominated for a while, says third place winner Erdmann, adding that a woman hasn’t won the championship in about a decade. But there are a lot of great female crossword solvers who come each year, she says.

For Erdmann, who has been doing crosswords since she was a child, puzzle solving brings her a sense of satisfaction. “I really like completion,” she says.

Crossword puzzles have a lot to do with putting the world in order, says Shortz, and that’s one reason why people love doing them.

“We almost never find a perfect solution to any problem we face. We just do the best we can and move on,” he says. “With a crossword or another human made puzzle, you have the joy of completing, doing the project from start to finish and getting the perfect solution. And that’s a very satisfying feeling.”

In honor of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, The Brooklyn Ink has created its own crossword puzzle, Famous People Born in Brooklyn. You can play online or print the puzzle out.

The Avalon Fort Greene is one of many high-rise luxury buildings in Brooklyn. (Cristabelle Tumola / The Brooklyn Ink)

From Woody Allen to “Sex and the City,” film and television have glamorized living in Manhattan. And for years, if you could afford it, Manhattan was the only place in the city to live. In a 2004 “Sex and the City” episode, one of the main characters decides to move to Brooklyn with her family for more space. This choice is portrayed as a great sacrifice. As she recalls all of her horrible Manhattan apartments, she wonders, half-jokingly:

“Why do I think living in Manhattan is so fantastic?”

“Because it is,” says her friend.

But the notion that Brooklyn living is only for bargain hunters is gone. Although Manhattan rents overall are still more expensive, in the last few years more areas of Brooklyn have began to catch up. Expensive Brooklyn areas, such as DUMBO and Williamsburg, are now comparable to rents in several Manhattan neighborhoods. And more people are choosing Brooklyn for its lifestyle than its rents.

“You see people going there because they want to actually live there,” says Andrew Barrocas, CEO of the real estate company MNS, “and they are willing to pay a premium in order to do it.”

Related: Why Brooklyn Foreclosure Numbers Could Get Worse

In January, the average Manhattan rental prices for studios, one bedrooms and two bedrooms in doorman and non-doorman buildings exceeded those in Brooklyn. But the priciest Brooklyn areas were comparable to, and even more expensive than some Manhattan neighborhoods, according to MNS’s January 2012 Market Reports, the only research on the city’s rental rates published on a monthly basis.

For example, the average one bedroom rental price in DUMBO was $3,584. The average one bedroom on the Upper East Side was $ 3,466 for doorman buildings and $2,562 for non-doorman. (More Brooklyn and Manhattan rental comparisons)

Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill are also neighborhoods that have comparable price points to Manhattan, says Samantha Behringer, a Prudential Douglas Elliman Associate Broker who handles sales and rentals in Manhattan and Brooklyn. In Williamsburg average rentals prices were $2,398 for studios, $2,960 for one bedrooms and $3,776 for two bedrooms, according to the MNS report.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO have been comparable with Manhattan for the last three to four years. And in the last two years Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill have accelerated in price, she says. In Boerum Hill one bedrooms went from $2,170 in January 2011 to $2,750 a year later, an increase of about 27 percent.

In Manhattan neighborhoods, such as Harlem, certain areas of the Financial District, Northern Manhattan and Midtown West, a renter can find a comparable or even cheaper apartment. Of those places, Harlem is probably the best known for affordable apartments, and was by far the lowest priced area in the MNS January report. Doorman building rents were $1,433 for studios, $2,023 for one bedrooms and $ 3,300 for two bedrooms. In non-doorman buildings studios were $1,398, one bedrooms were $1,793 and two bedrooms were $2,218.

But the far Upper East Side, typically east of Third Avenue, is another neighborhood that is a great choice for renters, says Behringer. Though it’s not as economical as Harlem, it’s one of the lowest priced areas in Manhattan. Many students live there, so there’s plenty of inventory and a large turnover, which slows down the market somewhat.

If you’re living in a more expensive Manhattan neighborhood like Chelsea, says Behringer, “a great option is to go a little further up and a little bit further east. That tends to be the trend.”

A mason working on the roofline of a condominium and townhouse development in 2008. Today, the neighborhood is one of the most expensive in Brooklyn. (AP)

But Behringer likes Brooklyn. She has lived in Fort Greene since 1997. “People thought I was a little bit out of my mind,” she says. It was a rough neighborhood when she first moved there, but she knew from working in real estate that the area had potential and would see future growth because it was so close to the city.

She was right. And in the last three years Fort Greene has become very expensive, says Behringer. “You can’t find a one bedroom here for under $2,000,” she says. “That’s not a bargain to me.”

Brooklyn’s best selling point is no longer affordable rents.

As pioneers like Behringer came over to Brooklyn, businesses followed, expanding the shopping and entertainment options. Today this growth continues, and is characterized more by independent business rather than chain stores.

People come for the residential feel that Brooklyn’s always had, and is lacking in most of Manhattan, but now there are more amenities. Behringer never hears people say they want to move back to Manhattan, and many want to stay in Brooklyn long term.

When Barrocas started in the real estate business 12 years ago, he used to encounter people that weren’t familiar with Brooklyn and didn’t know how close it was to jobs and life in Manhattan, but its proximity no longer seems to be an issue.

Convenience to Manhattan is an important factor in rental prices. But Williamsburg and Downtown Brooklyn have also benefited from the development of high-rise luxury buildings. These areas have fewer height restrictions, and there’s been a lot of development to meet demand, particularly in Williamsburg.

“It’s certainly, if not the fastest, one of the fastest growing neighborhoods that I’ve ever been involved with in the last 10 years,” says Barrocas.

In Williamsburg, the rental inventory consists of many condominiums that were bought as rental investments, says Behringer. And owners can charge a premium for them.

Rent only buildings are also being developed. The development company Avalon Bay already has a high-rise luxury building in Fort Greene, and is opening one on Willoughby Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn that will have about 800 units, says Behringer. People are willing to pay a lot for these amenity-packed Brooklyn buildings, and are quickly filling up the units.

Renters priced out of Williamsburg are now going to more affordable neighborhoods such as Bushwick, Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights, says Barrocas. 

For now Prospect Heights and Clinton Hill remain on the cusp of the more popular neighborhoods, says Behringer. But those places won’t stay on the edge for long, she says, and others, such as Bed-Stuy, could see a real turnaround in a couple years.

What You Can Get for $2,000 in Brooklyn and Manhattan

Brooklyn’s priciest neighborhoods are now on par with some of Manhattan’s neighborhood deals. All monthly rents are from January 2012. (Source: MNS Real Estate)

Read more at The Brooklyn Paper

Former Wall Street banker Tom Vasquez left the hustle and bustle in downtown Manhattan and opened Perfect Paws, a pet grooming shop in Brooklyn Heights, to embrace his love for animals. Now he finds joy in keeping man’s best friend cleaned and well groomed.

Her new show, “Oprah’s Next Chapter” will air on OWN and reportedly will focus on Oprah interviewing real people, newsmakers, and celebrities outside the studio.

Riders, particularly the elderly, say the MTA has failed to fulfill multiple promises after the down escalator at the High St. A/C station broke down on Thursday, Sept. 9.  MTA officials said the escalator will be up and running today.  State Sen. Daniel Squadron (D-Brooklyn Heights) led a rally at the station yesterday to demand repairs for the escalator.  He said to press that “a broken escalator is frustrating, but missed deadlines and broken promises make a bad problem a whole lot worse.”

From Verrazano Bridge to Borough Hall. (Alexandra Alper/The Brooklyn Ink)

The sign, “Welcome to Brooklyn, the fourth largest city in America,” hung on the Verrazano Bridge only for a few years, over three decades ago. But in that time, it became a national symbol for Brooklyn, seen on television screens across the country in the opening credits of the hit 1970’s sitcom, “Welcome back, Kotter.”

As of this week the sign has a new public home, on display in the lobby of Borough Hall. In a ceremony last week, current and former borough presidents Marty Markowitz and Sebastian Leone pulled off a red cloth to unveil the wooden sign, bearing  Leone’s name in small black letters, 35 years after he ordered it put up on the Verrazano Bridge.

A fond piece of history from a period darkly remembered for urban decay and racial tensions, the sign reflects the borough’s revitalization.

“It’s a piece of Brooklyn history and really represents the great ethnic diversity of a borough,” said Markowitz. “Brooklyn has changed a lot since 1975.”

Leone commissioned the sign in 1975 and order it put where everyone driving over the bridge into Brooklyn would see it. He did it, he said, “to remind visitors and residents of Brooklyn that our borough would be the fourth largest city in America.”

Would be, because of course Brooklyn was then and still is a borough. The fourth largest city honor, after New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, belongs to Houston.

The sign that appears in the sitcom credits amid outdoor scenes of 1970’s Brooklyn was slightly different, either an earlier version or the same one, lacking embellishments added for the 1976 bicentennial.

The sitcom starred John Travolta and Abe Kaplan and ran on ABC from 1975-1979. The story line revolved around a teacher, Kotter, played by Kaplan, who returned to his alma mater, fictional James Buchanan high school, to teach remedial classes to a new generation of mischievous kids, called “the sweathogs.” In an era plagued with race riots, protests and busing, some cities refused initially to air the show, but the sitcom put a positive face on urban youth culture.

“Those were not the best days in Brooklyn back then,” said Markowitz. “This show brought a smile to us and it still brings a smile to us.”

To get to its new home in the lobby of Borough Hall, the sign took a circuitous route. Leone first commissioned it in 1975 to welcome visitors across Hudson Bay from Staten Island and boost morale among Brooklynites. From its perch on the concrete southern wall of the bridge, it became immortalized by the sitcom. The sign came down in 1977 when a new Borough President, Howard Golden, took office, and wanted his name to appear on a newer version.

At Leone’s retirement dinner that year, the outgoing Borough President gave it to Russo, owner of one of his favorite restaurants, Garguilo’s, in Coney Island. There it was etched with dozens of customers’ initials until Russo eventually took it down and stored it in the basement.

In 2002, Russo showed it to Markowitz, the new borough president, who was attending a dinner for the Cyclones, Brooklyn’s baseball team. Markowitz asked for it, Russo initially refused, but eventually gave it to him last January after he had won a third term.

“I didn’t want to give it to him,” said Nino Russo after the ceremony. “I didn’t want to part with it. But then I said at least people appreciate it more here [in Borough Hall] than in the basement of my restaurant.”

Retired schoolteacher Jack Zukerman, 86, interviewed on the street, was happy to hear about the sign’s new home. He said he still identifies with the show’s main character. “What Kotter did, which was excellent teaching– trying to reach out to [the students] with what they knew,” he said. “[That] is what I tried to do.”

John Casella, 57, a realtor from Long Island City, said the show’s use of the sign, “brought a lot of good attention to Brooklyn.”

Markowitz is known for his own love of signs promoting his borough. The signs, posted along Brooklyn gateways like the Williamsburg Bridge, Gowanus and Brooklyn-Queens Expressways, were inspired by the original Kotter show sign, he says. They include “Leaving Brooklyn? Oy vey,” or “Fuhgeddaboudit,” “heart of America,” and “believe the hype.” But the BP’s favorite among the signs he has commissioned is “Entering Brooklyn: How Sweet it is.”

“It’s from the Honeymooners, 1955,” he said. “And it was all themed in Brooklyn.”

More on “Brooklyn, the fourth largest city in America”:

Houston may pass Brooklyn as fourth largest American city

Cleanup in Prospect Heights (Manuel Rueda/The Brooklyn Ink)

By Manuel Rueda

If you thought solidarity was dead in the borough, think back to Sunday, when small clusters of Brooklyn residents joined a global day of action against global warming.

Glove-wearing volunteers with big black trash-bags carried out street clean-ups in Red Hook, Fort Greene and near the waterfront in Brooklyn Heights.

Solar panels were installed in Park Slope homes, bicycles were fixed in Williamsburg, letters for assembly members were written in Prospect Heights and in Gowanus, residents of one apartment building handed out energy efficient CFL light bulbs, for free.

The unusual activities were part of a Global Work Party, promoted by the environmental website 350.org, which provided maps to make it easy for participants to find locations and times of activities.

In Brooklyn, where volunteers held 13 separate activities attended by anywhere from two to 50 people, three strangers met in Prospect Park to share their knowledge of sustainable lifestyles.

“I’m happy I came because even though it’s a small group I feel like I got to share a lot of things that I know about that need to be shared” said Margaret Rose de Cruz, a massage therapist and longtime resident of the area, who talked with her new friends about environmental literature and personal energy saving measures after showing them how to sow damaged socks using a gourd.

“As far as this occasion turned out I was a little bit disappointed,” said event organizer Colin Reis “it made me sad but it’s a bit telling of the movement at large.” he added as he reflected on the difficulties of making people more environmentally aware when they are not under the threat of an immediate ecological disaster.

In nearby Park Slope, about 35 members of a local Buddhist temple,the Zen Center for New York City, took to the streets with large black and transparent trash bags, picking up plastic bottles, soft drink cans and old flyers and separating recyclable trash.

Kohl Suddeth, an actor who attends the temple and participates in its recently established Green Dragon group, found a car battery lying amongst the bushes in Gore Park.

“Realistically it’s a small gesture, it’s a small thing” he said of the cleanup initiative.  “But I can’t even count the number of people we talked to on the street that asked us about what we were doing…It’s as much about the visibility than about the gesture of the work itself.”

The 350.org website was funded by environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben, and it is part of a campaign to pressure global leaders to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

“’If we can get to work on solutions to the climate crisis,” the website reads, “so can you.”

350.org -–the number stands for the lowest number of carbon dioxide parts per million that experts say the atmosphere can handle– claims that people in 181 countries carried out environmentally friendly activities as part of the Sundays days of action, such as planting trees, campaigning against the use of plastic bags and forming human mosaics with green messages.

More than 7,000 separate activities took place worldwide according to the website, which shows pictures of Vietnamese volunteers planting a tree and a group of about 30 Israeli youngsters, posing with their bicycles in a lonely desert road.

More on environment:

Newton Creek needs massive cleanup

Fare hike threatens “Green” Goals

Construction of an addition to the Robert Fulton School in Brooklyn Heights is expected to be finished by Spring. (The Brooklyn Ink/Alex Eriksen)

By Alex Eriksen

After seven years of seeing their enrollment swell and their available space dwindle, relief is now in the works for The Robert Fulton School in Brooklyn Heights.

Construction of an annex, which began last year, is due for completion in seven to eight months.

“Space has gotten really tight,” said school principal Seth Phillips. “Where other schools have art rooms and other kinds of room we don’t because we don’t have the space for it.”

The school on Hicks Street, part of District 13, was built to serve 430 students. Today they have 550 enrolled in classes pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. The boosts in enrollment are all thanks to an explosion in the child population of Brooklyn Heights. DUMBO is also seeing new families move in and send their children to local schools. The Robert Fulton School has seen its population jump every year in the seven years Phillips has been principal.

The staff has nearly doubled in size to match demand, growing from 24 to 40 full time teachers. Due to the lack of space, teachers work without a lounge. They’ve taken to eating lunch in the library. Teachers have developed several methods for coping with the squeeze. A tight schedule is in place to shuttle students to different classes, to lunch, and to recess.

Some fixes, however, are not perfect. The art teacher pushes a cart of supplies from room to room. The dance teacher moves the desks against a wall to turn a classroom into a dance floor. The drama teacher teaches class in the auditorium. None of them have ever had rooms of their own. Everyone on the faculty is affected. For the past year, the principal shared his office with his assistant principal. He also held every staff meeting there, in a room that looks like it could hold ten people at most.

“It’s a scheduling nightmare,” says the school’s librarian, Amanda Green. Teachers are unhappy having to jump over so many hurdles she says, but can see the finish line up ahead. Green looks forward to moving into a brand new library once the annex is finished.

Teachers aren’t the only ones feeling the strain. For the students, the school’s playground says it all. To make way for the construction, the jungle gym was dismantled. All that remains is a small basketball court with a single hoop and a narrow stretch of concrete next to it. Trailers installed for the school’s two pre-kindergarten classes further shrank the playground. Luckily, this year, the New York State Parks Department allows the school to use the nearby and newly renovated Squib Park for recess.

School principal Seth Phillips looks at the building plans. (The Brooklyn Ink/Alex Eriksen)

Back in the classroom, the noise of a construction site intrudes. When the foundation was laid last February the noise was so loud and lasted so long that classes had to move and doubled up in rooms away from the site, jamming 50 into a room meant for 25, half sitting at desks and the other half on the floor.

“The entire building shook,” says Phillips, but says its gotten better over time. Most work now is done early in the morning before students arrive and on weekends. Rarely is their noise during classes, according to Phillips.

Local residents, however, hardly enjoy beginning their mornings to the sounds of jackhammers. The school lies in a far corner of the Brooklyn Heights’ historic district, surrounded on all sides by brownstones. “It’s pretty annoying, you can’t sleep in,” says Aaron Harnley, who lives directly across from the construction site.

Phillips says he gotten mixed reactions about the construction. “Some people are very supportive, some people are not,” he says. “As a whole the neighborhood is behind it, they understand a good school building makes a better neighborhood, it helps housing prices, it helps everything.”

While residents ask when the construction will be finished, teachers are asking why it didn’t begin sooner. Overcrowding has been a longtime problem and only after six years of it did the Department of Education decide to expand the school.

There have been some delays and unique problems when it comes to building. The school is over a hundred years old and so was built using asbestos. Special measures are taken to prevent exposure to it, which has been proven to cause mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer. Tents are used to seal off areas and work is often done on weekends and during this past summer, says Phillips. The School Construction Authority, who oversees and runs the project, could not be reached for comment.

Building codes are stricter in the historic section of the Heights, where things like telephone poles are strictly forbidden as to preserve the neighborhood’s iconic image born out of the mid-19th century. Gas lamps instead of electric ones line some streets.

The project first got it start when Phillips asked to downsize, not expand. When he asked permission to no longer have pre-kindergarten, the Department of Education said they would build instead.

“I never expected something to get built,” says Phillips. “District 13 is an undersized district, we’re the only school in District 13 that’s over crowded, and they usually give money according to districts by how overcrowded they are, so we’re a aberration.”

When the four-story annex is finished it will boast nine new classrooms, a library, and an exercise room, adding a total of 18,000 square-feet to the school. The addition will expand the schools capacity to 590 students, which Phillips says the school will likely reach in two years.