UK Puzzle Association

If you don't normally try optimizing, this is a good one to start with. The rules are simple: Fit a fillomino solution into the mostly-empty grid, using digits 1-9. Your score is the sum of all digits used, so using big numbers is good. But also for every row and column: if there are x different dig...

I found this year's contest to be harder, or at least to contain more puzzles in the same time-frame, which I guess matches your first chart. I feel that the time length of 2.5 hours needs further discussion here. 6 years ago I recall there being other contests of this length, now I think there's on...

Thanks Liane, a great contest, and well done to Hideaki and Neil!

Hi all, I've been collecting links to sites that have relevant practice puzzles for this weekend's UKPC contest. For most of the 'classics' I've put a link to Otto Janko's large website, but I've found some less common types also. In most cases they'll be enough to get you started, and you can decid...

Well the next step was obvious, once you put down that coffee cup and thought a bit harder about it!

It looks like a great set of authors.
(Seriously, there's David and myself and a great set of other authors)
Even if you don't 'compete', they're usually well worth printing off to do in your quiet time.

I notice Palmer has made another marathon Hidoku this year (I made the one last year).

Agreed, it's a very nice puzzle.

It looks like the croco-puzzle Marathon is running over the next fortnight. Some time between 18th March and 4th April you can choose a 24-hour period, within which you solve as many of the 87 puzzles (3 each of 29 types) as possible. Ties are broken by total overall time. Each puzzle has a 10 minut...

Well done to Adam Bissett, 1st= in Casual. The Competitive section was a (Kropki-) sprint this time, with Neil and I in the top bunch. My main rule with sprints is to really double-check every answer before claiming Bonus. Sure it costs a couple of minutes, and in non-sprint contests won't matter hu...

The Instructions for Round 2 - Slovakia are out.
Competitive is comprised of:

Masyu: 37 points
Spiral Galaxies: 56 points
Yin Yang: 34 points
Snake: 89 points
Kropki: 295 points
Total: 511 points

Doesn't matter what the type is, having anything be 60% of a GP test is rather disappointing.

Thanks guys. And well done to the UK solvers at the top of the Casual list! I did a bunch of casual puzzles at the start while waiting for the printer, it was worth having a quick guess at the maths sequences (they seemed to be worth a lot considering they only take a couple of seconds if you spot t...

My understanding is there will be three leaderboards, so you may want to consider beforehand which style of puzzles you enjoy more. The Competitive leaderboard is the main one, and will look similar to previous years. Note, it has been common for nobody to finish this set within the time limit. The ...

Ooh well done AJ, top UK entrant for the Snakes round. I was happy with how I went, not naturally fond of Snakes but I'm getting better at mixing logic and guessing while doing them. You may have noticed I'm labelled as New Zealand on LMI currently, I'm trying to encourage some others in my office t...

This was mentioned in the local newspaper here.
GCHQ is a UK intelligence/security agency.
I haven't tried it myself yet, but apparently there are a sequence of stages to solve...

http://www.gchq.gov.uk/press_and_media/ ... -2015.aspx

Excellent contest Roland, thank you.
You have reminded me of the joy that I get from top-quality puzzles.

Yes, we hope the qualification process improves and we will see you again soon.

On a different topic, Ko, Ken and Yuki will be selling Toketa volume 3 in Sofia for 10 euros each.
http://puzzle-toketa.blogspot.jp/2015/1 ... -vol3.html
Over 300 puzzles, highly recommended.

david mcneill wrote: I spent ages on the ABC skyscrapers. Loved the Kakuro, especially the Kropkuro.

Yeah, I was the other way around. Found the ABC skyscrapers fairly quick.
Of course it turns out the fastest way to solve it is to just open up the last page of the instruction book, but that was too unexpected for me!

(...or needs to rethink whether a single test should decide the team?)

Hideaki was 5th (or perhaps you could consider it "3rd=") in the JPC and 2nd (1st=) in the JNPC.
But he is not in either Japan A-team, so maybe it is his choice.

Thanks Tom. A shame that Yuta Nagata and the mighty Hideaki Jo have not qualified for Sofia this year. Japan has too many excellent puzzlers! An interesting point about the GP Finals (that I've not seen before) is that although instructions for 15 puzzle types are given, we are told only that there ...

The ten GP finalists with starting times have been announced, and the Instruction Book can also be found at http://www.gp.worldpuzzle.org/content/finals-1.

0 points.
Slept blissfully through the whole thing due to time-zone incompatibility.
Will have a look later.

I've been refreshing myself on Hitori logic this week, before the LMI test this weekend . For practice you can solve some handmade Hitoris online at Nikoli or Puzzle Picnic . The main rule to start with is: * If a cell is between two identical digits, then it must be white. But I came across a few i...

I noticed some nice logic that solves it for you (in a spoiler so that others can think about it first): The 4th row contains two pairs. If the marked "O" is in the right pair of the two then the rightmost 3 cells are all empty, and so the 2nd row must end with three full cells. Not OK. So the marke...

Thanks Tom, When I got to my current score there were at least 5 others above me, but one by one they slipped down. I was even 70 points above 2nd place recently, but I see Hideaki climbing up again. I'm not very active these days, although the authors are all top-quality and these daily handmade pu...

The final round (8) is this weekend, by the Japanese authors.

The hardest type is Consecutive Kakuro, which Thomas Snyder wrote about 4 years ago.