Confidence, trash talk and 'out of control' egos: A look inside Toronto's 'Puzzlepalooza'

HOUSTON – A matter of trust threatens to tear a small part of the Toronto Raptors apart. The accusations are flying around. A neutral tribunal might be necessary.

“I know I would be the first person to mess them up,” Raptors center Jakob Poeltl said late last week.

“All my confidence went out the window,” he added. “I call this tournament completely rigged – officially in the media.”

“The losers of the group, I think, are the ones where the group comes from,” said Raptors physical therapist Amanda Joaquim.

“Egos have gotten out of hand. The complaining – sacred. The rules are the rules. What should I do? I just have to enforce the rules. There is no room for these rules. But now people want to change the rules. They want to add rules. I told them: if they want that, they should run their own Puzzlepalooza.”

The Puzzlepalooza has become a topic of discussion for the Raptors, or at least for the seven staff members and one player, the six-foot-tall Austrian Poeltl, who went public with his accusations of match-fixing.

Joaquim is the commissioner of the Raptors' New York Times Puzzle Tournament, which will wrap up later this week. The group has competed in three separate mini-tournaments so far: one for Wordle, one for Connections and one for the Mini Crossword. (All three games are owned by the Times, which also owns The Athletics.)

The tournaments are single-elimination, with matchups determined by random drawing. Winners and losers follow to determine seeding. The winner of each tournament receives eight points, the last-place player receives one, with corresponding rewards for intermediate results. Each tournament lasts three days, with a few days of load management in between. (When Joaquim was told the term was now frowned upon by the league, she called it “spiritual rest days.”)

There are also some, um, personal touches in the scoring system.

“There are random bonus prizes that are given out mainly based on how I feel,” Joaquim said. “There are those who have (real merit).”

One of the current bonuses is for whoever can beat the crossword score of Jennifer Quinn, the team's communications director.

“Even if they don't compete against her, two bonus points,” Joaquim said. “She's the queen of crossword puzzles.”

Yes, perhaps some codification of the rules is in order.

The idea took shape early this season, when a “group of nerds,” as Joaquim put it, started sharing their scores in various games in a WhatsApp group. Poeltl and Quinn's competitors come from a wide range of departments within the Raptors: social impact manager Katherine Allen, Wayne and Theresa Embry colleague Gregory Ho, nutritionist Jennifer Sygo, massage therapist Melissa Doldron, technology lead Brandon Moita and player services and advancement specialist Rae-Marie Rostant . Garrett Temple entered the chat and shared his scores, but arrived late for the tournament.

Sygo won both the Wordle and Connections tournaments, with Quinn winning the Mini Crossword competition. They tied for first place heading into what Joaquim has called “the big championship.”

“The rules have not been released yet,” Joaquim said last week.

It's hard to understand why there are trust issues here.

Joaquim ultimately decided to hold a final eight-person tournament as the grand championship, with single-elimination matches in which the participants compete in all three matches on the same day. The matchups were determined by seeding from the first three rounds, with an awards ceremony next week. Poeltl drew Quinn again in the first round. Quinn won the Mini Crossword, but Poeltl won Wordle and was able to 'repel' faster than his competitor. Neither got a line correct in a particularly tough edition of Connections, leading to a rock, paper, scissors tiebreaker. The match was streamed live to the bracket, with Poeltl winning and advancing to the semifinals of the championship round.

Reports suggest Poeltl was “a gracious winner,” perhaps a bit of a surprise. Poeltl was completely beyond reproach during the tournament. One source said Poeltl manipulated his time in the Mini Crossword tournament – ​​presumably for his own amusement – ​​before coming clean.

“As far as trash talk goes, I think there are some dark horses out there. I count myself among the group that talks nonsense,” Poeltl said. “I know Amanda is high up on the trash talk crew too.”

Poeltl has been interested in various puzzles all his life. (Coincidentally, the NBA player guessing game was launched after Wordle became popular in late 2021 is called 'Poeltl', for rhyming reasons. Poeltl said he has become involved in that game on an official level, with an announcement about further developments.)

Like many people around the world, Poeltl started playing Wordle shortly after its release and playing some of its copy-cats, including Pokédle, based on Pokemon characters, shortly afterwards. Game fatigue set in, but he resumed playing when score talk took over the training room. He said he plays six or seven of the games regularly, although this has a drawback: German is his first language.

“They're just different types of problem solving,” Poeltl said. “To be good at that, you need specific knowledge. But at the end of the day, what I really enjoy and what I think I'm good at is trying to find the best way to solve any problem. I may not know all the words because (English is my) second language. For Connections: if there's a word in there that I just don't know, I'm pretty much done with it. At least I can try to understand it as best I can, for example try to work with a process of elimination. I think things like this really help me too, just working with the brain.

Poeltl said Connections is currently his favorite game because it encourages the most creative thinking and reasoning.

“Not only does Jak participate, but he was also able to reverse engineer what everyone's Wordle word guesses,” Joaquim said. “He spends a lot of time on it. He was able to work out our four guesses. He could figure it out. He is a master of planning and was able to get two perfect Connections games in a row by working on these puzzles for hours.”

Heading into the season, head coach Darko Rajaković said Poeltl was well suited to running the attack from the elbows, picking cutters and shooters based on how the opponent's defense reacts. Since then, the Raptors' roster has changed dramatically, with his assist numbers right at the levels of his final years in San Antonio.

Still, the Raptors will continue to use him in that role occasionally, and Poeltl sees a connection — sorry — between his hobby and profession.

“I think they are very similar concepts,” Poeltl said. “It's a completely different field, but they are similar concepts. It means understanding what is in front of you and trying to attack it in the most effective way.”

Another overlap: complaining to and about the civil servants.

“I don't want to expose myself to a lawsuit or anything like that (by being specific about complaints about Joaquim),” Poeltl said. “But something is going on, I can tell you.”

These accusations are the reason why Joaquim did not participate in the tournament. She didn't want there to be a conflict of interest.

“That would be extremely unfair,” said Joaquim. “I would award myself (points). I do send my scores for bragging rights and to show that I would be the supreme champion (if I were to compete).

(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton for The Athletic; Photos: Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)