UK Puzzle Association

Thanks - I'm sorry I didn't manage to submit this time. Incidentally, I find it interesting and mentally challenging that blocking out stuff is actually a positive rather than negative aspect to this puzzle. Perhaps I need to think of it and/or mark it in a different way, as I naturally think of the...

Thank you all for your responses. As someone who is used to the rigour of being required to get 81/81 correct (either absolutely or to definitively identify a well-constructed answer key), it may take me a little while to adjust to the acceptable bounds in this weird parallel universe of scribbling ...

Re. my testing time: for very easy puzzles, writing speed is certainly a huge factor, and may play more of a role than logical ability. Thanks, this is a fascinating comment. As someone from the sudoku side of the community, I have occasionally tried odd tweaks like changing the way I have written ...

Although the instructions to fillomino tell you to place a number in each cell, most of the time I will instead draw borders to identify regions of connected cells, and then maybe write in the relevant size In one representative cell of the region. It certainly saves a bit of time doing it that way...

Thank you for running this contest. After so many years of resolutely sticking to the Sudoku world - despite suffering incessant bullying and coercion from Liane as a result :-) - I am delighted to have dipped a toe into the waters of the puzzling part of our community. I really look forward to tryi...

Well done Tom!

Good luck to those of you currently taking part in the online MSO sudoku contest. I made a mistake with the registration requirements - I registered with MSO, and with Discord, and with vint.ee, several days ago. However I cut it fine driving home tonight and didn't realise about needing to register...

Thank you. It was good to see Tom and Neil, and Rodders for the first time in ages. There were some other familiar MSO faces too.

David

I contacted The Times generic mailbox a few weeks ago to find out about the qualifiers (as I would need to qualify this year after a stupid error last year). David Parfitt replied soon afterwards: "[...] I'll be in touch as soon as I'm in a position to update you on what is happening this year." Not...

Hello. 958 ?

Even more succinctly, a sudoku is about symbol placement not structure placement

More succinctly, a sudoku is primarily about symbol placement not structure placement.

For me, I think that it is the numbers (or symbols) that should need to be placed in a sudoku, not the structural components. I am happy when regions are marked out in the beginning. I am not happy with having to mark out regions myself. Thinking about it further, I think that I would be happy to pl...

This is OK for me. The list and white junctions are really just extra constraints that reduce the number of classic candidates. Subjectively, I also like the concept (but that's irrelevant).

This is a "no" for me. I expect to be asked to fill in a sudoku grid (including whatever extra shaded/region/other rules are relevantd). I do not expect to be asked to have to construct part of the puzzle itself. For me, this example goes too far beyond just applying rules and becomes actual realtim...

I'm not sure how to insert a diagram image, so maybe I'll refer to plotting a colour-coded diagram with a RAG Status list instead (Red=no, Amber=borderline, Green=OK), with Classic in the centre, other Greens surrounding, Amber slightly further out and Red much further out This is just an illustrati...

"Or the 2011 WSC round 12, which consist of a real cube (not a 3D representation on a 2D paper)."

I feel that anything involving physical handling/dismantling/constructing/manipulation is a distraction and a gimmick.

Any set of symbols will have some cultural baggage. In my opinion the digits 1-9 have less baggage than the letters A-Z and come from a smaller set of elements (implying less likelihood of confusion for contestants and markers). I don't think there is any other relatively small set of symbols that i...

I wonder whether an Euler diagram would help the discussion? I seriously don't want to trigger a distracting Brexit discussion, but a few years ago I found that Euler diagrams were a great way of drawing out some of the subtle differences between different terms used to describe the supranational Eu...

No because of:
(a) repeated symbols
(b) bias towards those used to the English (unaccented) alphabet
(c) potentially even more difficult for markers than numbers

I still have nightmares about this round in my only WSC appearance - I'll vote No before you even post the poll

Hi Tom. How would you like us to approach a situation like this? Without having the actual discussion here, my opinion of HALLOWEEN has two distinct aspects: the use of non-numeric symbols and the use of repeated symbols. Would you like me to simply vote on the specific example you have chosen, or s...

Congratulations to Mark and commiserations to Tom

David

Congratulations, Neil, on an excellent pair of victories, especially as the format changed this year. Thanks for posting the results - your post was how I heard the good news!

David

... and at https://web.archive.org/web/*/uk2014.org