UK Puzzle Association

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...

The instructions for my round are now live at https://gp.worldpuzzle.org/content/instruction-booklet Nikola has introduced a linguistic quirk into the instructions for Puzzle 13 which I mentioned to him a while ago but doesn't appear to have been fixed. I've asked for it to be updated, so there will...

Similar story to Tom for me - I ignored some puzzles during the round which it turned out afterwards would have been easy points in the bank (looking at Fillomino and Nanro). My two mistakes were both me entering the row above the keyed row, but luckily on low-pointers so I only lost ~40 points over...

The first round ended today. Top 3 from the UK all finished the test with plenty of time to spare: 29. Tom Collyer - 133.2 (56:47) 41. Sam Cappleman-Lynes - 125.5 (64:28) 42. Mark Goodliffe - 125.3 (64:43) Notable others include the now-disqualified Rajnesh Kumari who apparently solved all 18 puzzle...

The first contest has just started today and will be open until the 14th: http://logicmastersindia.com/SM/202001/. I for one am interested to try these brutal 6x6 classics that are worth 2 points instead of the usual 1

The 2020 edition of the Sudoku GP kicks off this weekend with a round from Croatia. The instructions are available at https://gp.worldpuzzle.org/content/instruction-booklet

Have fun everyone!

Tom, this is fantastic work - thank you. The pragmatic approach you propose makes a lot of sense to me, and I hope the WPF will take a similar view of it. On an initial reading, some points jumped out to me as perhaps needing an edit or some extra clarification. 1) "Cells must have a finite number o...

Seeing a finned swordfish in a competitive scenario is highly impressive. Some would say "pointless", or "a waste of time". I know that a lot of solvers don't think that such logic has a place in speedsolving. But I've made the argument before that there are specific types of (finned) fish that are...

Here you go James: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1697

I agree with you that the symmetric products sums is an awful variant, but its inclusion in this round was great for me. I must have looked in the right places very quickly because even though it was a 70+ pointer, I got it done in under 5 minutes. I also found a sneaky deduction on the Odd-Even whi...

Preliminary results for Round 8: 13. Sam Cappleman-Lynes 721.7 44. Tom Collyer 525 60. Jeremy Kong 435 Leaving the top 3 UK in the final standings as: 29. Sam Cappleman-Lynes 3193.7 50. Tom Collyer 2805 66. Jeremy Kong 2504 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------...

Thanks Freddie and James, In a sense, I suppose that means the dismaying answer (on the whole) is that I'm not missing any amazing tricks - the techniques are roughly the ones I'm already using, I'm just not very good at them. Except that 5x5 trick which is nice to have in the back pocket! James, th...

Feadoor wrote: ↑

Thu 11 Jul, 2019 6:34 am

I'd need to attain a new high score of 528 on Round 8 to break 3000 points.

So that means I can leave the awkward-looking symmetric product sum puzzle alone and "just" do everything else.

Shame there's also a medium nonconsecutive or I'd give this plan a go!

Full text of my email is as follows; Good afternoon, I am writing with regard to The Times Sudoku Championship, which you have attended in previous years. Following a review of this event, I regret to say that we have decided to discontinue the Sudoku Championship and, consequently, the event will n...

This section of the forum isn't too active, but hopefully I'll get some replies! So, some questions about Arrows puzzles: 1. How do you solve them? 2. How do you solve them quickly? 3. Any useful notation? I've attached an image of my solved copies of the two Arrows from this year's GP. The first I ...

I've just received an email saying that the Times Sudoku Championship has been discontinued, and as such will not run this year.

Shame.

A second-worst round of 449 means I'd need to attain a new high score of 528 on Round 8 to break 3000 points. It's possible - I've had 3 scores of over 500 points already.

Or alternatively spot that the 2s in box 4 eliminate it from the rest of C5 which gets you through the rest of the puzzle without ever needing to spot the trick in rows 3 and 4.

I guess I had about of a blind spot with this puzzle!