UK Puzzle Association

Back to the MSO competition... I have yet to hear any contact from the MSO people about collecting my prize. Did people have to wait long to get this sorted out? (Neil has already said that Tony Corfe was in touch with him a couple of days later when he won) If anyone has any contact details (the gm...

Hi Mark, thanks for sharing this. It's always good to hear new puzzle ideas. Here are (from a purely puzzle solving perspective) some brief thoughts: First off, I like the name! Making the rules as clear as possible is usually desirable in the puzzle solving world. I think I'd try and draw attention...

Perhaps a little off topic, but to accompany the MSO list, I have the Times list as: 2005: Nina Pell 2006: Rachel Roth-Huber 2007: Tom Collyer 2008: Nina Pell 2009: Tom Collyer 2010: George Danker 2011: George Danker 2012: Rishi Puri 2013: Stephen Gerrard 2014: Mark Goodliffe 2015: Tom Collyer 2016:...

Interesting stuff David - I see the Olympiad has been around for a while, but is 2011 the earliest there has been a sudoku/kenken event? Perhaps we should add this (and also the times event) to our hall of fame?

Myself, Neil and David C from this parish were at the Sudoku / KenKen event this morning amongst a field of about 15 people. The format was two papers: the first a set of 8 fairly easy classics, and the second a set of 8 kenkens, two each of 6x6, 7x7, 8x8 and 9x9. The smaller puzzles were quite easy...

Mainly because I haven't had time to do them - please bear in mind that I have to do all of this on my spare time. If there's interest I'll see if I can get something out this week

Rugby Union isn't perfect either... I'm pretty sure they have an end of season play-off after playing a full league season as well

Specifically the hunt seems to be 1pm to 9pm EST. Which I make as 6pm to 2am here in the UK

It is worth noting that the 21st October is during the WSC/WPC in India, so that might affect participation a bit from this parish.

Rugby League sounds ridiculous! I think one aspect of the play-offs is it gives some motivation to some solvers who aren't going to be quite challenging at the top. From this point of view I'd certainly like to see a few more innovations like the Tour de Senec to vary the competition up a bit. I don...

Results are up - I thought it was a very hard round, measured by how close I thought I was to finishing (not close at all). I also thought it was perhaps a little too "puzzle-y", although not by much. The UK ranks are a little below the norm for this year, which is a bit disappointing. Top 3 UK: 56....

It's GP weekend again - perhaps a bit late but you still have til tomorrow evening to compete.

Re last month, the time slipped away from me somewhat that weekend. What with the attacks near London Bridge (10 minutes away from where I live) the whole thing completely slipped my mind.

That's a truly remarkable set of testers who've managed to leave Hideaki and Ken completely in the shade!

Thanks Liane for organising, and congratulations to James and Adam.

Yes, I think I understand. Instead of fixed logistic curves defined by a fixed parameter of 2, this exponent was variable. Do you know to what extent this value varied away from 2 before your change? I'm also curious about the updating factor f - is that also a fixed parameter? As an aside, I have l...

Well I seem to have done very well out of this - I've been pushed up by 100 points or so. With a little less carelessness I think 3rd dan could be in sight!

Is it possible for you to explain a little more about the formula Berni? This kind of thing does interest me a lot.

That is an amazing document!

Alan - maybe this could be an extension of the database you are putting together? I'm not sure what the technical skills are like at the WPF - but definitely also one for our Esteemed Mr Director, if Prasanna is reading?

Chris - do you have any details about the 1996 WPC team? Tim Peeter's site which you link to is down, and whilst there's an older geocities version there doesn't seem to be any info on 1996. Are you (or anyone else?) aware of UK participation at the championships preceding this? My usual source of t...

Yeah, I remember that post, that was some good digging! By qualifying, do you mean the USPC? I can certainly add it, although as you say it's significance to the UK has dwindled in recent years. Tracking team members is a much harder task. It's also a potentially very long list to maintain in future...

This post is to record notable achievements of UK solvers, and solvers of UKPA competitions. World Sudoku Championship Highest Individual Placement: 4th, David McNeill, 2007 (Prague) Highest Team Placement: 6th, Tom Collyer, Heather Golding, Mark Goodliffe, David McNeill, 2017 (Bangalore) 6th, Tom C...

I've just published the results - but if you send us the photo we can amend the table and you can take your rightful place in the table!

Congratulations to Mark Goodliffe, who has claimed a maiden UK Sudoku Championship. Mark finished the set of 16 mind-bending sudoku puzzles with almost 15 minutes to spare in a very strong performance, and now qualifies for the UK team at the World Sudoku Championships later this year in Bangalore. ...

The contest is now finished, but unfortunately the bonuses have not yet been applied, so the final results table needs to be updated. Please bear with us!

Hi - sorry to hear about this mix up. I'll investigate this further, I might have made a mistake when setting the parameters in the competition engine.

Thanks David, I'll look out for both "A,B" and "B,A" codes in the submitted entries. However, as you say, I'd expect common sense to prevail on this one.

Competition has started!

So with everything else going on this weekend, I forgot to take part in round 6. I'll take part out of time and do a write-up when I get a chance.