Will Shortz and Robert Roberts visit our club!


Image by kidmissile
Last night we were fortunate to have Will and Robert visit our club. Will is on a quest to visit more TT clubs than anyone else. In 2009, he was up to 60 US clubs & 84 total. In 2010, his number was up to 113 US clubs in 31 states.

Will loves the sport so much that he recently opened his own club in NY. Robert manages the club and is a coach there. He’s is a highly rated player (a former national player of Barbados, currently #43 in the nation) and it was amazing to play him. Didn’t matter how hard you hit it, he got it back without much effort; and he put some wicked spin on the ball. Half the time I didn’t even know what was on it, the other half I could see the spin but couldn’t handle it! Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to play Will. They could only stay for a couple hours before driving on to Indy, and there were plenty of people who wanted to play and talk to both guys.

I couldn’t dig up my copy of USATT magazine with Will’s travel article in it. But I did bring a copy of a Best of NYT’s Crosswords and Will was kind enough to autograph it for my brother, who is a xword freak.