UK Puzzle Association

Sorry to sound silly, but by parity properties you mean like a checkerboard and it has to go white black white black? The observation I used for the example was that if you colour the grid as you say, all of the tens digits of the primes share a colour, and all of the units digits share a colour. A...

Oh no, I hope you have better luck for the puzzle GP. Thanks for the tips! I was wondering, though, what is the no battenburg rule? In Cave, you have two things to keep in mind: - The white cells must be connected - The black cells must all connect to the edge of the board Imagine you had a 2x2 squ...

In the same vein as the GP thread, let's combine these two threads this year. The first Puzzle Ramayan round has started, and runs throughout the weekend.

https://logicmastersindia.com/live/?contest=PR202101

Preliminary results are out, the UK top 3 are: 32. Sam Cappleman-Lynes - 495 41. Jeremy Kong - 468 58. Tom Collyer - 412 The overall top 3 (Kota, Tantan and Tiit) are well clear of the rest of the field. Puzzles-wise, I did not regret my decision to just keep guessing at the endpoints of the lines i...

Yes - that's essentially all there is to it. Any clue in the range 1-4 must start with a 1, in the range 5-8 a 2 and so on. The rest is standard Sudoku and comparing the values within each range of four to get further restrictions. It can be a lot to keep track of so I strongly suggest crossing a cl...

Sudoku Round 1 starts tomorrow, and the instruction booklet is available here: https://gp.worldpuzzle.org/content/instruction-booklet

As an aside, for us that are not great at solving Sudoku it would help if the grids were larger to give us more space for having to put candidates in etc. Thanks Liane, I'll bear that in mind in future. Tom/David, I'm glad you enjoyed them. They were a lot of fun to create. I am intrigued which one...

I'm only just getting round to looking at the examples for these: the diagonal fillomino example has two solutions, I believe (you can swap R2C3 and R3C2 in the given solution).

I've been making some more puzzles. A whole bunch of Classic Sudoku this time. Enjoy!

This is an interesting question which as far as I know does not have a common consensus. There is some discussion and food for thought here: https://hausigel.de/blog/2020/03/08/screen-vs-paper/ Personally, if a contest is designed to be solved on paper, I think it's cheating. Not just because of fun...

I haven't used the site so this is pure speculation, but my intuitive feeling is that anyone with a mouse is likely to be able to make accurate movements significantly more quickly than me using a trackpad.

Regarding Puzzle Duel, I don’t see an issue with giving everyone the same solving medium. After a very interesting discussion about writing speeds and notations, I like the idea of levelling that particular playing field. If it doesn’t work well, we can change it for 2021-2022. It's only level if I...

Don't worry, everyone else is baffled by that too.

Thanks Liane :) 4. Yin Yang appears to be missing the rule about 2x2 areas In 8. Anglers, are all cells used by a fishing line? I think this is a standard rule but I have seen contests where it isn't used. What does "excluding directions pointing away from the edge of the grid" mean in 23. Panoramic...

Very nicely done, Freddie!

It doesn't read to me, Tom, as if anyone is shooting down your ideas or trying to have an argument. Just like you have expressed your views on the matter, so have others. No bad faith to my eyes.

For a dissenting opinion, I find the puzzle GP rules to be written very clearly, and I think it's been particularly noticeable this year that there has been a push for consistent terminology between puzzle types and consistent phrasing of common rules - for example the definition that is used for a ...

I ended up eating my words about the Triple Sum Sudoku. When I came to it during the test I thought it didn't look as fiddly as other puzzles I've done of the type, so I gave it a go and flew through it.

That is what I did - maybe I did get it after all then! I was also looking at something for some clone interactions that might have involved the four cells at R5 C1,9 and R1,9 C5 for example. The polished way of looking at it is (ROT13): Vs gur zvqqyr nern vf gur rkgen ertvba, fb gung gur bgure gjb...

detuned wrote: ↑

Mon 27 Apr, 2020 3:16 pm

I think I might have missed this neat break-in. After a lot of staring at it, I did a short bit of trial and error to determine the extra regions area (which I'd already narrowed down to one of two possibilities). Any chance of a hint?

You can work it out using only the 1s.

ashaash11ash wrote: ↑

Mon 20 Apr, 2020 11:35 am

And i think you are motivating me to author next year

I'll have to get some practice in then!

You may revisit your opinion after seeing the competition puzzle for number 10, Freddie. They can be very fiddly, and may be given with a completely empty grid. Pure conjecture, of course, but I expect I won't enjoy that puzzle and will probably avoid it if at all possible. I'm somewhat relieved not...

I'm back with some more puzzles. These are, I think, all quite difficult. Nonetheless, they are all logically solvable. Have fun!

Nice puzzles - were you approached to write them specifically for the article, or were they pre-existing?

Round 4 results - two UK finishers:

37. Tom Collyer - 102.2 (87:46)
40. Sam Cappleman-Lynes - 100.7 (89:16)
51. Freddie Hand - 88.6

Have you been practising your Sudoku, Freddie?

The 9x9 Little Killer was obviously the big story of this test. It took me over 30 minutes to solve