вЂњA lot of the time, crossword people are musicians,вЂќ he said, noting that Jon Delfin, who has won the tournament seven times, is a pianist and music director. What they all have in common, he said, is pattern recognition - as he begins filling in a puzzle grid, he starts recognizing what the words are likely to be, even without looking at the clues, based on just a few letters. He excelled at math as well as music, abilities that he thinks go together with crossword solving. Feyer said, it helps to have вЂњunderlying brain power and a head for trivia.вЂќ He always had high grades and test scores, he said. So how does that guy become a puzzle ace? Besides training like an athlete, Mr. Off Broadway, itвЂ™s the guy sitting at a piano conducting with his head.вЂќ вЂњOn Broadway, the music director is the guy with the baton in the pit. вЂњMusic directors teach actors the music, accompany them in rehearsals and conduct the band,вЂќ Mr. His most recent shows were вЂњ With Glee,вЂќ which ran Off Broadway in Manhattan last summer, and вЂњDracula, a Rock Opera,вЂќ which ran in Rochester, Mich., in October. He does have another life, as a pianist and music director for musical theater productions. Was he in trouble? He wrote something, looked up, put his pencil down. He mumbled once and erased three more times. Nearly five minutes had passed and he still seemed to be working the top left corner of the puzzle, the very beginning. Then he paused, erased again, and resumed skittering. He erased, and rapidly filled in more boxes. He pressed his lips together and grimaced.

His left hand tracked the clues while his right skittered over the grid. There are people who spend hours on this puzzle, people who give up, people who wonвЂ™t even touch it. Not just any puzzle, but the Saturday one from The New York Times - the weekвЂ™s hardest, notoriously clever and tricky. With the clock ticking and the shutters clicking, he put pencil to crossword. Feyer (FAY-er), 33, a soft-spoken, balding musician, had come to a photo studio at The New York Times to demonstrate one of his odder talents. вЂњOh, it wonвЂ™t take that long,вЂќ Dan Feyer said, with the hint of a smile. The cameras were set to shoot for only eight minutes.

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