Solutions to TCTMD’s 2023 Cardiology Crossword Challenge

Thank you, TCTMD Puzzlers, for playing along with the 2023 Cardiology Crossword Challenge. We’re excited to announce that Pok-Tin Tang was the first name drawn from all the entries in this year’s contest and has won free registration for the TCT 2024 meeting.

The next three names drawn were Shunsuke Aoi, Dragana Sarenac, and Davide Capodanno—all three have won Platinum memberships on TCTMD.

No one got a perfect puzzle, based on what I’d intended, but in most cases it was hard to argue with the substitutions—most notably ‘STE” instead of “CTO” for the clue “Complete coronary blockage, briefly.” For those of you who did not get “FOMO” for the clue “Oft-cited reason for attending meetings in person,” trust me, you’re really not missing out on much. After 3 years of online conferencing, Sarenac’s guess for this same clue, “loco,” is actually an excellent substitute. Correct answers to all clues can be found below.

Special mention goes to Muhammad Shuaib Abid, the winner of last year’s Cardiology Crossword Challenge, who submitted a near-perfect puzzle again this year and was the only Puzzler to enter our contest using old-fashioned pen and paper. We’ve honored that effort by using a snapshot of his submission to accompany this story.

This year, like last, we’ve been rolling out some “spoiler alerts” (prompting a complaint from one advanced Puzzler, who claimed we were making it too easy). Based on subspecialty, these spoilers recapped the top news of 2023 by topic: Coronary, Structural, Endovascular, General Cardiology and Prevention, Heart Failure, Heart Rhythm, and Policy and Practice.

If you have any comments/complaints on this year’s puzzle, let us know.