Wordplay (2006): Ellen Ripstein Wins Crossword Tournament

The clip Ellen Ripstein wins crossword tournament from Wordplay (2006)

Nine-letter word for "cocktail with a cherry. "
Fifteen-letter word for "resistant to moisture,"say.
Five-letter word for "clued in. "
Great. Oh.
I'm Ellen Ripstein. We're in the back of Park West Village.
I went to the very first tournament in 1978, and I came in in the thirties.
So really, just at the tournaments, as I gradually started getting better...
you know, I guess I realized, "Gee, I must be really good at this. "
But it still sort of amazes me, 'cause when I see a Saturday Times puzzle...
and I do it in 10 minutes, and then on the forum...
they're saying it took all afternoon, that just seems so strange to me.
What was their problem? Why couldn't they do the puzzle?
Or I guess I've just accumulated a lot of useless knowledge...
that often is in the puzzles.
For 18 years in a row, I was so close to the top.
I was in the finals, I think, 11 times the top three and didn't win.
So then, every year, you know, I kept not winning...
until finally, um, in 2001, one of the contestants was having lunch...
with a friend of his who worked for the Wall Street Journal...
and telling him about this tournament he was about to go to.
So the Wall Street Journal did a front page piece on me...
a week before the tournament with a picture and everything.
And this is just mind-boggling. I'm just a little nerd girl...
and here I am on the front of the Wall Street Journal.
This tournament, we had ABC News, CBS
uh, you know, just tons of press.
So the top three were me, Al Sanders and Patrick Jordan...
who are all really good.
But it wasn't people who've won.
So Patrick finished the puzzle first...
and they were saying that all the air just got sucked out of the room.

1. By: AnyClip
2. Categories Entertainment
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4. Added :29-Nov-11
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