UK Puzzle Association

I've seen a few versions, under different names. There've been a few optimisers (how many of these words can you fit inside this grid), and it was in the WPC maybe 6 years ago.

Yes. To elaborate: e.g. Look at the 32, 38, and 39 regions. They sum to 109, the whole puzzle sums to 136, so the left most pair of regions sum to 27. Now look at the 47. The left 2 are 27, so the right 2 are 20. This can continue along the lower edge. You'll find that the 50 and 37 sum to 30, so mu...

I also 'did a Yanzhe', so hoping to rise 5 places more.
Great start to 2021 Freddie!

Wow, that was close (and fortunate). I predict many victories for you in coming years Freddie, with Neil and I not far behind. 8-) Which is great news for the strength of the UK team! Thank you to Ashish Kumar, Bram de Laat, Hatice Esra Aydemir, David McNeill, Nikola Zivanovic, and Prasanna Seshadri...

Well done Freddie! When I last looked it said you spent 16 attempts and 50 minutes struggling with one puzzle. Was it a bad answer key in the end?

Well done Freddie!
I thought it said 11:59pm finish, not 11:59am, so I started at 11:53am and found out two hours later that it didn't care about my answer keys

Don't get their hopes up Tawan, my Google-fu is just too strong. But they are welcome to compete for second place!

Yes, obviously finding points where 4 cells meet help you propagate information quickly. Another thing that sometimes pops up is having a chain of cells where every 2nd cell must be a 4. If this chain loops back on itself then it must be even length, so you may be able to rule out options that would...

Thank you for the contest Jonas, they were an excellent set of ideas and puzzles, and I recommend them to anyone that enjoys Yajilins!

I just spotted on gmpuzzles that there was a bundle of ~30 puzzle and other books last week, which I am sad I missed. After missing two similar bundles over the last 3 years, I had asked Humble to email me about every new bundle... except no email for this one, I don't know why. Did anybody here get...

Can someone remind me, I think there is a thread here containing the UK records and achievements?

Originally I was only going to post about notation, but then decided to start solving the puzzles as an example. I hadn't read Freddie's interesting posts at that point, so have repeated some of his observations in my own words. I haven't thought about that 4-1-3-5 square logic before, a great start...

I have a fast notation. I use a small ruler, and quickly draw a long line wherever I know an arrow points. Each 'row' can have 0, 1, or 2 lines along it. Initially it's not important to know which direction the line comes from. e.g. let's say there is a 6 and a 1 that can see each other (same 'row')...

it's almost like watching a world cup semifinal!

Nice work Sam! I had a bad start, I'd practised for the big Slitherlink at the end, but after 25 minutes I'd broken it 5 times, printed it twice, and made myself move on to start getting some points elsewhere. During my guessing start I thought I'd proved that the bottom-right cell must be in the lo...

Similar to previous years, Tawan has written a puzzly quiz on his blog.
https://roygbivpuzzles.wordpress.com/20 ... z-2018-19/
A fun diversion if you've got some free time over the New Years period.

Thanks for the recommendation Tom, I'm really enjoying these.

Just found some old conversations between Alan and I, after that contest finished and we were annoyed with the organisers. One hard puzzle they ended up removing from the results. One puzzle they allowed a couple of correct answers, due to different assumptions made by people. And one true optimiser...

I played in 2013. Most puzzles were fun and enjoyable. But the contest ends up decided by the few frustrating ones. A lot were optimizing style, so I remember some ambiguous rules where you're not certain which answer to submit. I also remember poorly created optimizers, where the obvious easy answe...

Thanks Tom, looking forward to teaming up with you, Neil and Emma in November!

Yes, mirrors just refer to wherever the line changes direction. Laser is an old CrocoPuzzle type - if you want to test your understanding of the rules (or just practice) then look through the archive at https://www.croco-puzzle.com/Raetselspass/Raetsel-der-Woche/index.php It's also the main place to...

Thanks Tawan, two great contests.
I was quietly confident in my Scattergories skills for the Hurdles...
Turns out I was completely wrong, and finished down the bottom of the leaderboard!

But the quiz was fun, good for people that enjoy puzzle trivia.

The hunt has started now. It'll go for a few weeks I expect. I'm involved with a puzzle hunt team in Australia who are making some initial progress. The 12 pages can be joined together to make a large 'map'. At the moment I am looking at constructing some French coat of arms, and a list of galaxies ...

I'll help out.

The solution briefly mentioned Fibonacci.
That was referring to the observation that the the number born today equals the number born 2 days ago plus the number born 3 days ago.
So that gives a Fibonacci-style sequence, and from that sequence t18 + t19 + t20 = 200.