..

T HE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION TUESDAY, JULY 30, 2019| 13

NON SEQUITUR PEANUTS

GARFIELD

KENKEN

Answers to Previous Puzzles

WIZARD of ID

DOONESBURY CLASSIC 1993

CALVIN AND HOBBES

DILBERT

Created by Peter Ritmeester/Presented by Will Shortz

SUDOKU No. 3007

Fill the grid so

that every row,

column 3x3 box

and shaded 3x

box contains

each of the

numbers

1 to 9 exactly

once.

Fill the grids with digits so as not

to repeat a digit in any row or

column, and so that the digits

within each heavily outlined box

will produce the target number

shown, by using addition,

subtraction, multiplication or

division, as indicated in the box.

A 4x4 grid will use the digits

1-4. A 6x6 grid will use 1-6.

For solving tips and more KenKen

puzzles: http://www.nytimes.com/

kenken. For Feedback: nytimes@

kenken.com

For solving tips

and more puzzles:

http://www.nytimes.com/

sudoku

KenKen® is a registered trademark of Nextoy, LLC.

Copyright © 2018 http://www.KENKEN.com. All rights reserved.

(c) PZZL.com Distributed by The New York Times syndicate

Solution No. 2907 CROSSWORD | Edited by Will Shortz

Across

1 What a coin may go in

5 ___ & Allies (classic

board game)

9 Lies lazily in the sun

14 Stun with a gun

15 Brad of “Fight Club”

16 Someone’s in the

kitchen with her, in an

old song

17 Wreck

18 Petty set of

procedures

20 Woman who’s bid

good night in an old

song

22 “___, old chap!”

23 “With this ring, I thee

___”

24 Local officials in

dioceses

28 Seats in many bars

29 Car

32 Car with a meter

35 Sites of biceps and

triceps

36 More cunning

38 & 40 Money required

to open a business ...

or a hint to 18-, 24-,

47- and 57-Across

41 Permeates

42 Feature of many an

old car

43 Cunning

44 Some beans

45 “Here’s how experts

handle this”

47 Longest-serving

Independent member

of Congress in U.S.

history

53 Vaccine target

55 Greeting in Guatemala

56 Generate by dubious

means

57 Part of a Juliet

soliloquy

61 Crème ___ crème

62 Juiced (up)

63 Noted terrier in a

1939 film

64 Scott of an 1857

Supreme Court case

65 Inventor with a coil

named after him

66 Lead-in to chat or

dragon

67 Time long past

Down

1 Unit of bacon

2 Actress Linney of “The

Truman Show”

3 Common basket-

weaving material

4 Something you’ll have

to go to court for?

5 Financing letters

6 Midnight, on a

grandfather clock

7 Edie Sedgwick and

Kendall Jenner, for two

8 Condition of inactivity

9 They’re almost always

shared by twins,

informally

10 Televise

11 Winter play outfits

12 Leafy vegetable that

can be green or purple

13 Place to store a lawn

mower

19 Fannie ___

21 Locale for a manor

25 Falcon-headed

Egyptian god

26 Circumstance’s

partner

27 Car with a meter

30 Blue-green shade

31 Alternative to Charles

de Gaulle

32 Some CBS police

dramas

33 Prefix with sphere

34 Obvious signs of

pregnancy

36 Fruity soda brand

37 Selecting, with “for”

39 Ploy

40 Tops of corp. ladders

42 “That’ll never

happen!”

45 Ones doing loops and

barrel rolls

46 Onetime stage name

of Sean Combs

48 “The Mary Tyler

Moore Show” spinoff

49 ___’easter

50 Month after

diciembre

51 Side of many a

protractor

52 Garden tool

53 ___ row (some blocks

in a college town)

54 Togolese city on the

Gulf of Guinea

58 Fish that can be

electric

59 Second letter after

epsilon

60 “Alley ___!”

PUZZLE BY CHRISTINA IVERSON

Solution to Jul 29 Puzzle

12345678910111213

14 15 16

17 18 19

20 21 22 23

24 2526 27

28 293031

32333435 3637

38 39 40

41 42 43

44 45 46

474849 505152

5354 55 56

57 58 596061

62 63 64

65 66 67

BIGIFSKINWEST

ARESOTACOEXPO

BALLPLAYERREIN

ANTEERATERRE

PARKVISITOR

GETBUSYEBAN

ATALLHEELEAK

TRIALCOURTJUDGE

EELSASHICARE

TONSMILKMAN

JAZZPIANIST

ADIOSUSEBAAS

PENNONTHEBENCH

ALEEROSABANTU

NESSSTOPQUEST

Sports

Next month, Arthur Ashe Stadium in

New York will be teeming with Lacoste

polo shirts and tasteful chinos. Tennis

fans will order $69 caviar plates (one

ounce of hackleback) and $17 signature

cocktails (vodka, lemonade, raspberry

liqueur and honeydew melon balls) at

Lure Oyster Bar. The fortunate few will

watch Federer, Williams and Nadal from

suites paid for by credit card companies

and white-shoe law firms.

That is all in the future, though. In the

past weekend, Arthur Ashe Stadium

was teeming with, well, teenagers.

There were also preteens (with their at-

tendant parents) and men in their 20s,

and occasionally 30s.

But there were a lot of teenagers.

They made their way to the U.S.T.A. Bil-

lie Jean King National Tennis Center to

watch their favorite competitors play

their favorite game: Fortnite.

Fortnite Battle Royale is a video game

in which up to 100 competitors are

dropped onto an island and must try to

survive, via fight or flight. Almost all of

them are killed; the lone surviving indi-

vidual or squad is the champion.

If you have never heard of Fortnite,

you are almost two years behind. If you

think it is silly that people pay to watch

strangers play video games, it is more

like 10 years.

For the first Fortnite World Cup, Epic

Games, the publisher, struck a deal to

take over the tennis center for three

days. It was the last possible weekend to

do so before the United States Open

build-out begins in earnest.

“If I was sane, that last weekend prob-

ably would’ve been about 30 days ago,”

said Daniel Zausner, the chief operating

officer of the tennis center.

With a limited window to host events

in nice weather that do not interfere

with the Open, Zausner said, the Fort-

nite World Cup was attractive because

of its young audience. “This just breaks

down a barrier for people that are not

that familiar with tennis or not that fa-

miliar with the venue,” he said.

A multitiered stage weighing almost a

quarter-million pounds hung from hun-

dreds of cables fastened to the roof of the

stadium. Needless to say, structural en-

gineers were required. Racks of servers

were assembled in the commissary, con-

nected to hundreds of computers and

video cameras with 25 miles of fiber-op-

tic cable. Over 60 tractor-trailers of

equipment were unloaded, including

one filled mostly with game chairs.

Like an inverted panopticon, 100

screens featured the views of 100 cam-

eras, letting the audience in the far

reaches of the stadium watch the com-

petitors. Giant 4K LED screens showed

in-game action, and smoke machines,

spotlights and confetti went off after

matches. The sound of virtual battle was

so deafening that earplugs were includ-

ed with media credentials.

“That will make everything better,”

one mother said while buying a cocktail

during Friday night’s celebrity pro-am

event. “I can’t take it in there anymore.”

On the other end of the spectrum, one

family of three wore T-shirts that read,

“We’re Not a Regular Family, We’re a

Fortnite Family.”

Fortnite’s aesthetic is silly — the

game is cartoony, there is no blood or

gore, and characters do comical dances.

But the World Cup is deadly serious.

Forty million players participated in on-

line qualifiers, and Epic Games will give

out $30 million in prize money, including

$3 million to the winners in both the solo

and duo competitions. That is more than

Novak Djokovic and Simona Halep

earned for winning Wimbledon this

month.

The biggest e-sports tournaments are

typically held in N.B.A. arenas, but Epic

Games prized the tennis center because

its acres of grounds could support an im-

mersive Fortnite festival that felt quite

different from the typical “sponsor acti-

vations” seen at sporting events.

Various carnival-style games, with

names like Glider Zipline and Pickaxe

Pit, were set up. Fans who wore RFID

wristbands that connected to their Fort-

nite accounts could earn rare virtual

items to be used in the game. They could

drink Slurp Juice and chomp on a

Tender Defender Sandwich or choose

Uncle Pete’s Pizza Pit.

The preceding paragraph makes a lot

more sense if you play Fortnite, and the

deep immersion is the point. “This is

about their subculture and people enjoy-

ing that,” said Stuart Saw, the head of e-

sports at the sports and entertainment

conglomerate Endeavor. Endeavor was

partner with Epic Games last year and

led the event logistics and venue opera-

tions for the World Cup.

Saw compared the fan experience to

the newly opened “Star Wars” theme

area at Disneyland Park in California.

“If you bring ‘Star Wars’ to life, like they

have done, there is a level of detail that

has to go into it,” he said. “Because it

means so much to people.”

Given the expensive construction and

the gobs of prize money, it is difficult to

imagine that Epic Games will directly

profit from the World Cup. The suites in-

side the stadium were not sold, nor were

sponsorships and television media

rights. Tickets for the entire weekend

cost about $50 to $150.

“Their ticket prices could’ve been 10

times what they were,” Zausner said. He

added: “As you can tell from their mod-

el, they are not out there hawking spon-

sored products. They are about their

brand identity.”

Befitting a virtual game entering the

physical world, the entire experience

was aggressively online. Signs posted

everywhere warned spectators that

they were consenting to being filmed by

Epic Games, and they were not the only

ones filming. At one point, four men in

their 20s walked by chanting indeci-

pherably, pointing a phone at their faces

to livestream.

Looking at his phone while going up

an escalator, one competitor marveled

at his social media performance. “Bro,

I’ve gained so many followers since I got

here. Like 600.”

“Just wait until you compete,” his

friend told him.

From left, Fortnite World Cup attendees with Nerf blasters inspired by the video game; the D.J. Marshmello, left, and the Fortnite player Tyler Blevins, known online as Ninja, in the celebrity pro-am event; the Pickaxe Pit outside Arthur Ashe Stadium.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY VINCENT TULLO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

New York Battle Royale: Fortnite anyone?

BY KEVIN DRAPER

As thousands of spectators watched the competition on over 100 screens inside Arthur

Ashe Stadium, carnival-style games like Glider Zipline were set up out outside.

РЕ

ЛЛИ

З

ПО

Д

ГО

ТО

ВИ

ЛА

ГР

УП

ПА

"What's

News"

VK.COM/WSNWS