UK Puzzle Association

Did you do many of the number puzzles then Neil? I only noticed the massive 150 point whale at the end, kind of glad I didn't do that during the test as I had plenty to keep me occupied, and what I did do I enjoyed a lot. The unequal length Slitherlinks solved very nicely, the Doppelblock with the F...

Some really lovely puzzles in this round, I think it might be my favourite so far!

Round 4 is happening this weekend, if you haven’t already seen

Looks like the issue has been fixed for the preliminary results. Top 3 UK:

28. Sam Cappleman-Lynes 508
44. Tom Collyer 454
45. Mark Goodliffe 451

Round 4 is happening this weekend

Round 4 results:

8 James McGowan 108.2
22 Tom Collyer 87
35 Adam Bissett 78

Preliminary results from round 3. Great to see a top 10 result from James! 8. James McGowan 645 21. Neil Zussman 535 50. Tom Collyer 412 I personally felt like I left a lot of points on the table - after hours the compass didn't really feel that hard, although perhaps the tweaking at the end under t...

Saw an email in my spam folder - the schedule for 2019 is out: https://msoworld.com

Of most interest to these parts are the following competitions, both happening on Tuesday 20th August 2019:

10.00am: Sudoku and Killer Sudoku
2.15pm: Puzzles (Various)

Round 3, by Serbia, is happening this weekend

Top 3 UK - very good result from David here, finishing ahead of the world champion no less!

12. David McNeill 100.5
19. Sam Cappleman-Lynes 84
63. Tom Collyer 59

Top 3 UK round 3: 35 Sam Cappleman-Lynes 516 45 Mark Goodliffe 483 49 Jeremy Kong 482 Jeremy Kong I think is a new name name for me, but a top 50 result is very creditable! On a personal note, after I clicked go on this I had a good 15 minute battle with my printer and the wifi here before I even ha...

Round 3 results:

16 James McGowan 133.6
38 Tom Collyer 115.1
56 Saul Glasman 100.3

Hi Liane - any chance we could get a combined PDF for each competition?

Yes, would be great to come along, but as with Neil I might just see which way the Brexit wind is blowing over the next couple of weeks before booking.

If I am going, I will definitely do the usual Thursday through to Sunday/Monday schedule

Preliminary results for round 2:

17. Neil Zussman 545
23. James McGowan 527
49. Tom Collyer 403

Yes I would agree this is very similar to Blackout

A definite no for me - not only have you got the repeated numbers having to be placed, there is also something of a Heyawake or Hitori like constraint in terms of packing the 4's and 3's into fairly limited regions.

I think it's certainly a very poorly designed variant - the constraints of the geometry mean that it isn't really possible to get anything approaching an interesting solving path...

Is point 1 true? I can't remember enough from my uni days frustratingly! Can't find flaw in points 2-4 though. At the risk of going waaaay off topic, yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clopen_set. Somewhat trivially, the empty set and the entire space are always both open and closed. In general the...

Top 3 from Round 3 - again no finishers this time:

27. Tom Collyer 95
42. Sam Cappleman-Lynes 81
76. Matthew White 62

I can't say that surprises me - I get the impression that there's something of a closed shop within puzzle publishers, particular those which churn out mostly computer generated content (which I think is going to be most puzzles that appear in a newspaper). My approach would be to try and find at le...

They look more like tetrominoes to me, but I take the point

We haven't discussed Odd Lab(yrinth) Sudoku yet either have we? A very similar idea

So I'm not sure blank cells is exactly the right way to be thinking about things. At the start of the puzzle everything is blank, but that blankness has the meaning of ambiguity - in the final solution there will either definitely be a star/character/whatever there or definitely not be a star there....

I'll also add that on reflection, this example isn't a million miles away from Tripod Sudoku