UK Puzzle Championship 2015

[puzzlemad]

The UKPA Puzzle Championship will be held over the weekend of the 27th - 29th June, 2015
The contest page is now open at http://www.ukpuzzles.org/contests.php?contestid=37 where the instruction booklet can be obtained.
Please use this thread for asking any queries relating to the instruction booklet.

[tamz29]

Nicely done!
Looks like we'll be seeing several of Nikola's practice material for 24HPC
Looking forward to the puzzles.
Also the Tapa example is incorrectly credited to me, it is Serkan's.

[puzzlemad]

the Tapa example is incorrectly credited to me, it is Serkan's.

Thanks Tawan for spotting that - amended now.

[puzzlemad]

Hi All,
There's a potential newcomer looking to have a go this weekend, but has a faulty printer. Can anyone advise on the use of "paint" to solve the puzzles please? - It's something I've never used.
Thanks.

[kiwijam]

Hi All,
There's a potential newcomer looking to have a go this weekend, but has a faulty printer. Can anyone advise on the use of "paint" to solve the puzzles please? - It's something I've never used.
Thanks.

MS Paint is fine for shading puzzles, like Blackout Maths, Tents, Tapa, Nanro, Norinori, Pentasight, Battleships, Hungarian Pentomino, Linked Minesweeper/Nanro, Battleships Observers.
And adequate for drawing loops, like Masyu, Yajilin, Chains...
It gets awkward when trying to write letters and numbers.
But I'd say this contest is more Paint-friendly than most, and a newcomer is only likely to attempt a few puzzles anyway.

The main idea is to open the PDF, then screen-capture the puzzle you want. If you have MSOneNote, you can use Windows-S. Then in paint, choose two colours (dark blue and light brown?) and the paintpot tool, and start left-clicking and right-clicking.

[david mcneill]

Liane,

Thanks for posting the instruction booklet. Looks like an interesting set.

I find the grey tabs in Puzzle 13 a bit unsatisfactory. I assume the intention is that the letters in these tabs have the same spacing as in the central grid. It would be nice if these tabs could be subdivided into cells, especially if any of the tabs are going to be any longer than those used in the example.

In Puzzle 15, the arrows are difficult to read. It would be much better to present them as in Puzzle 16 for example.

All of the examples seemed to solve smoothly.

Thanks again,

David.

[puzzlemad]

Liane,

Thanks for posting the instruction booklet. Looks like an interesting set.

I find the grey tabs in Puzzle 13 a bit unsatisfactory. I assume the intention is that the letters in these tabs have the same spacing as in the central grid. It would be nice if these tabs could be subdivided into cells, especially if any of the tabs are going to be any longer than those used in the example.

In Puzzle 15, the arrows are difficult to read. It would be much better to present them as in Puzzle 16 for example.

All of the examples seemed to solve smoothly.

Thanks again,

David.

Hi David, for #13 the competition puzzle does have the dividers in the grey cells to make it clear how many spaces that they occupy.
I can see what you mean about the arrows in #15 - with the puzzle grid being larger these are clearer, but I will try to improve this further.

[emma]

For puzzle 24, can you clarify whether B1 would come before or after A2 in the answer key?
(In puzzle 28, the order is clear from the example, but the instructions are worded the opposite way round to puzzle 24, so I'm not sure whether this implies the opposite order for #24.)
It may be that getting them in the wrong order won't matter, or can be picked up manually, anyway.

[puzzlemad]

For puzzle 24, can you clarify whether B1 would come before or after A2 in the answer key?
(In puzzle 28, the order is clear from the example, but the instructions are worded the opposite way round to puzzle 24, so I'm not sure whether this implies the opposite order for #24.)
It may be that getting them in the wrong order won't matter, or can be picked up manually, anyway.

That's my poor editing. Both puzzles #24 and #28 should have the same answer key - as puzzle #28 so yes B1 would be before A2. I will amend instruction booklet and make sure that the competition booklet is correct. If they were to be entered the other way round then that would be picked up manually, so yes better to be clarified for the automated process.

[puzzlemad]

Just for information - I have uploaded an amended competition booklet - the answer key for puzzle #17 had a wrong word in it, which has been corrected.

[kiwijam]

The answer key for #17 looks the same as before to me, what change was made?

[puzzlemad]

The answer key for #17 looks the same as before to me, what change was made?

It said "...using L for shaded containing..." instead of "...using L for cells containig ...""

It has been changed in the puzzle booklet but not the instruction booklet.

[puzzlemad]

For information: I will be looking at all comments, answer key anomalies as a group, so please don't think that any comments are being ignored if you don't get an immediate response.

[puzzlemad]

Heavy Dots Example: The credit for the example for the Heavy Dots Example should be to the team who created the "24 HPC Indian Set 2015".

[PuzzleScot]

Results now available

[furudo.erika]

Congrats to those who qualified. Nice selection of puzzles, both triple block and abc yajilin were great variants I enjoyed solving. Thanks to all the constructors, testers and organisers.

[dickoon]

Congratulations to the qualifiers; many thanks to everyone responsible for a test that was great fun.

I'm really excited about the UK WPC team this year!

[kiwijam]

My thanks also to Liane and the puzzle authors for a great contest!
Many interesting variations, most of which can be found in this year's 24HPC.

My plan was to do this on Sunday morning, but I became violently ill all through Saturday night, and bed-ridden on Sunday and Monday. With time running out, I took some painkillers and lowered my expectations...
Luckily my brain went into autopilot, I made a bunch of small mistakes but fixed most of them. My only regret is wasting 20 minutes on Meandering Words for 0 points (although so did Kota and Hideaki?), then running out of time for some easier ones. But everyone probably has a story like that.

And congratulations to Endo Ken, you are in great form for Sofia!

[EKBM]

Thanks James, and congrats on your another UK title!

[pinkagape]

Can we get email reminders for these competitions please?

[GarethMoore]

You should have had an email reminder - all signed up users had a reminder.