Handwriting, part 1 (Puzzle No. 3,300)

Is that a 2 or a 3?

While Sabers was refereeing at the Swarthmore Invitational Sunday, I was working the Bout Committee desk: setting the schedule, checking in fencers, sending referees out to their matches, and compiling the results.

It was a huge event: 8 schools, 9 rounds, 20 strips, 23 referees, 207 athletes, 216 scoresheets, 1813 bouts, and 11,576 touches all had to be accounted for.

Now I thought Sabers had bad handwriting (he probably inherited it from his father...).  But it wasn’t nearly the worst I encountered, either from the referees or from the fencers.  Take a look at that example on the right.  Next year I’m giving a prize to the ref with the neatest scoresheets.

As I said, I’m not the neatest writer.  But I’m pretty careful when filling in scoresheets, so the commissioner and statistician will not have to puzzle out what penalties were given.  And even though nobody ever looks at them but me, I’m equally careful when filling in crossword grids.

Part of it is because I usually work in ink rather than pencil (I’m a lefty, so pencils and bad pens smudge my knuckles).  But I guess that if crosswords are about being precise, my writing ought to be too.

Link to puzzle:  http://www.thenation.com/article/176777/puzzle-no-3300

Degree of difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle): moderate to hard

Hozom’s comment: One on One, Part 1 in which Hot introduces us to Trazom and we learn that Trazom likens the conventions of cryptic construction to the conventions of baroque counterpoint.  I can certainly see that.