UK Puzzle Association

Puzzle_Maestro wrote: ↑

Sun 08 Mar, 2020 1:57 pm

EDIT: this puzzle is wrong, because I misread the instructions for the puzzle. I'll try to correct it as quickly as possible.

Are you sure? Looks good to me...

The IB has some points in it now: https://gp.worldpuzzle.org/sites/defaul ... IB_v01.pdf

Freddie, you star! Thanks so much for taking the time to write that up.

EDIT: So it turns out that these puzzles are called Sukoro in other places... https://www.janko.at/Raetsel/Sukoro/index.htm

Puzzle_Maestro wrote: ↑

Sun 08 Mar, 2020 7:44 am

Some infection puzzles can be found here:

I remember that round... Definitely the worst I've ever done on an online contest. Can anyone tell me how to actually solve Infection puzzles? I seem to remember finding even the supposedly easier ones very difficult.

Round 3 is active right now - it runs until Wednesday so you have several days remaining if you want to take part.

When I looked earlier there was a Sudoku Round 4 booklet, and the puzzles contained therein were exactly the puzzles from David's online test.

Thank you for a lovely contest, David! I enjoyed all of the puzzles, but particularly #3 (Killer & Clone) and #5 (Little Killer & Thermo).

I'd be curious to know what people thought of the hardest Classic. The pattern on 5s, (whether you want to call it simple colouring, finned X-Wing, skyscraper, 2-string kite...) is something that I have a lot of practice at spotting and is very much part of my repertoire. But I normally steer clear ...

Round 3 preliminary results are out:

26. Tom Collyer - 518
37. Sam Cappleman-Lynes - 464
61. Mark Goodliffe - 402

Tom follows up his strong Round 2 with another solid performance here. Well done!

Hello Glenn, Welcome! I hope you enjoy (or have enjoyed) this weekend's competition. I haven't yet taken part myself but I can vouch for David's credentials as a puzzle author and say with some certainty that we have a treat ahead of us. Always good to meet new people who have caught the puzzle bug....

Round 2 UK results:

23. James McGowan - 95
41. Jeremy Kong - 84.3
46. Sam Cappleman-Lynes - 81.8

Like with the Sudoku Round 2 (by one of the same authors), this was much tougher than Round 1. James is joint top among non-finishers.

The instructions for Hungary's Round 3 are live: https://gp.worldpuzzle.org/content/instruction-booklet

Looks to be a pleasant mix of well-known variants.

Thank you David

Onto an actual question about the contest. I assume that the Renban groups are the usual rule, where each shaded group must contain distinct consecutive digits? A pedantic reading of the IB would suggest that it is valid for a shaded group to contain e.g. the digits 1,1,2,2,3.

The apparent link from the contest page to this thread is broken due to the usual issue with the ampersand in the URL.

I am very excited to see this! I had been thinking recently about whether we should make use of our contest engine to host ad-hoc contests sporadically throughout the year (and whether I would be in a position to offer to create one) - so your announcement has made me very happy

Puzzle_Maestro wrote: ↑

Tue 18 Feb, 2020 9:07 am

it turned out to just be a cubic sequence (x^3+4x^2+3x+1 for anyone interested)

Or, if that looks ugly to you (it does to me) - how about (x + 1)^3 + x^2

Round 2 has just happened - forgot to post a reminder... Top 3 from the UK are: 24. Sam Cappleman-Lynes - 91 33. Tom Collyer - 85.6 101. Matthew White - 55 Slightly disappointed, personally, not to have finished the set. I broke the True or Lie twice, which was the only puzzle I didn't end up comple...

The DSM qualifiers are running this weekend and, as usual, they are open to international participation: https://logic-masters.de/DSM/2020/qualifikation.php If you do take part, do one better than me and make sure there is ink in your printer before starting the contest. I've just had to spend 2 hou...

I sent you a PM, Adam.

[Edit - how interesting, you used exactly the same pattern of givens I did for the windoku. Getting a windoku down to 16 certainly was not easy] It would seem so! If you look closely, I used the same "boxes" pattern for the diagonals too. But I thought it would look silly if there were four puzzles...

And after guessing multiple layers deep through the first 5 puzzles, I ditched the 6th only to find out after the test that it was, indeed, the easiest (at least for me). The Japanese community in the twittersphere seem to more or less agree. I was surprised by the order that the Classics ended up ...

I'm glad you enjoyed the round! I knew the Hidden Clone was a bit unusual, but ultimately I liked it too much not to submit it, and Nikola also felt reluctant not to include it. I at least made sure to construct it in such a way that it was still a decent Sudoku after the start, even if the start it...

The preliminary results are available, with the UK top 3 as follows: 19. Tom Collyer - 509 50. Jeremy Kong - 384 73. Heather Mitchell - 336 A strong performance by Tom, slotting in just above the 8 people who solved everything but the Hidden Clone. The overall winner was Tiit Vunk, who at 63 minutes...

A good UK showing, with 6 of us finishing the full set. Our top 3:

16. Neil Zussman - 126.1 (63:53)
39. Freddie Hand - 113 (77:01)
44. James McGowan - 106.8 (83:13)

My "for example" became "for the example" in Nikola's wording which I was worried would lead people to believe that something about the rules applied only to the example puzzle and not to the competition puzzle. A new version has been produced using the phrase "for instance" instead - just waiting o...