Patrick Jordan on MGC

Patrick Jordan—who is familiar to many of you from his appearance in Wordplay and because he's a constructor (he's had about 20 crosswords published this year)—was on Merv Griffin's Crosswords today.

Edited to add: For those of you who missed the show, it's on YouTube—Part 1 and Part 2.)

The show opened with two contestants at the podiums. The woman was blazing through the clues, answering correctly and racking up dollars, while her opponent mostly stood quietly behind his podium. (And when he wasn't silent, he had an unfortunate tendency to spell words with too few letters.) When the trio of spoilers strode down the ramp, Patrick was on the right. He made quick work of the puzzle, amassing more cash for his podium. And then a spoiler yoinked the podium out from under Patrick! I think it was the very first correct answer that guy had given, however, and he quickly yielded the podium back to Patrick. Patrick wagered $2,000 on a Crossword Extra clue and got it right, so he took $5,050 and a trip to San Francisco into the grand prize round. He blazed through the final puzzle, adding another $2,000 of prize money and a trip to Cancun.

Congratulations, Patrick! You looked great, you played smoothly, and you looked convincingly excited about winning the trips.