Morgan Hill - It's hard to judge a book by its cover, especially when it comes to guessing who's a word wizard and who's a numbers guru.Take mathematician Byron Walden. You might think he prefers sudokus over word games - but then you'd be dead wrong.
Walden has published more than 40 crossword puzzles in the New York Times, and this month he's donating one of his masterpieces for an upstart wordplay and sudoku tournament in Morgan Hill called Silicon Valley Puzzle Day.
"I've always been fascinated by words," said Walden, a good-humored associate professor of mathematics and computer engineering at Santa Clara University. "In my day job, I'm a mathematician ... and there's definitely a mathematical aspect in word puzzles. It's breaking things down into letters. You take a more algebraic approach to doing crossword puzzles than writing poetry."
Silicon Valley Puzzle Day will feature tournaments, workshops, books and merchandise and even a giant Silicon Valley-themed crossword puzzle. Proceeds benefit the Friends of the Morgan Hill Library's Beyond Books Campaign, a grassroots effort to raise money for art and equipment for the new library under construction and expected to open this summer.
Puzzle Day will also feature a competition for fans of sudoku, a hot numbers game that spread through Europe and Japan before getting popular in the United States during the past couple of years.
"I really liked the idea of having a California-grown tournament," said Morgan Hill resident Emily Shem-Tov, who is spearheading the event. "It's so unique it's happening here on the west coast ... nobody else is doing anything like it."
Shem-Tov is a member of the Beyond Books Campaign's steering committee and a research librarian at Adobe Systems in San Jose. She's also the grandniece of late crossword puzzle author Eugene Sheffer, whose name still appears on King Features Syndicate puzzles.
A Connecticut transplant, Shem-Tov said crossword puzzle tournaments are more common on the east coast.
"There's a great tie-in between people who love books and people who love wordplay," said Shem-Tov.
Throughout the event, puzzle know-it-alls including Java programming expert Josh Bloch will present workshops and reveal secrets on how to improve sudoku and crossword skills.
Is there a cross-over between word lovers and number nuts?
"There's an overlap, but it's not total," laughed Walden. "There's definitely some people who find sudoku superior. It's pure logic. A computer could do sudoku much better than a person. But with crosswords, it's the opposite ... they definitely massage different parts of your brain."
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