1st UKPA Sudoku Championship

[mikecolloby]

Our first online championship will be held on this site on 6th and 7th November 2010. It will be open to all players from UK and worldwide. You will be able to do the competition at any time between 00:00 GMT 6th November and 23:59 GMT 7th November.

It will be presented in the form of a PDF, which you will need to download and print. The puzzles will be of a type and difficulty level comparable with World Sudoku Championship (WSC). The competition time will be 2 hours.

UK citizens who would like coaching to help attain the standards required for WSC should email secretary@ukpuzzles.org.

|| click here to return to the main site ||

[detuned]

Should this be in the announcements forum too?

I hear the puzzles in this one are going to be rather good

[ronaldx]

hurray, that's exciting! I totally missed this announcement but saw it on the front page of the site! Cool!

[detuned]

Hopefully a few people have seen this thanks to the cards in the goodybag at The Times championship on Saturday. I encourage everyone to sign up and show your interest by leaving a comment!

Also Alan - would it be possible to get this thread kept at the top of the forum for the next few weeks?

Tom

[afcwarren]

Hello all.

Can I presume that the instructions booklet will be available this weekend as scheduled?

Also, is there a way I can get hold of puzzles from the 2010 WSC or would they be available upon becoming a member of the UKPA?

Many thanks.

[detuned]

Yup - the instruction book is almost ready now - we're just waiting on a couple of things with the web interface to be set up so that all the information is correct.

For now the WSC/WPC are available to UKPA members - the point with that is the publishing rights to those are a potential source of revenue to fund people to go out to championships. As a taster though, the grand final is available:

http://wpc.puzzles.com/wsc2010/finals-booklet.pdf

[ronaldx]

Hey, I saw the Instruction Booklet is now available on the front page! Very cool! I particularly like the design.

I had a query about the rules for Surplus Sudoku when compared to the example - in the example there is a single-celled region containing a '3'. Do I take it there is a similar single cell in the 9x9 puzzle, which can be filled with any digit?
Thanks,
Ronald

[detuned]

Yeah that's right - the eight main regions only take up 80 squares, so there's necessarily one left over!

[Fred76]

Hey, I saw the Instruction Booklet is now available on the front page! Very cool! I particularly like the design.

I had a query about the rules for Surplus Sudoku when compared to the example - in the example there is a single-celled region containing a '3'. Do I take it there is a similar single cell in the 9x9 puzzle, which can be filled with any digit?
Thanks,
Ronald

(N-1)x(N+1)=N²-1

[Fred76]

It looks to be a fun set of grids

In the booklet, it seems to me that no touch sudoku has 2 solutions: 3 first rows of 2nd solution are:

453786129
789123456
126459783
(This solution is perhaps less beautiful because 123456789 are not consecutive in the rows but it's also a solution if I'm not mistaken)

For sudoku islands:

• I think it misses something in the rule: "size of islands are the white numbers given in the corresponding island"? And also, I see in your blog "Each island is clued in the grid." is that right this part is not in the booklet rule?
• Is there a reason white number is not placed in the same case in the solution?
• How shall we enter code for this grid?

Fred

[detuned]

Fred you are right. I did the no touch in a rush - I tok my favourite grid which I know works and simply left in a large number of clues which I then quickly rushed through and it seemed to work ok.

I will be back at home in a few hours time, so expect some amendments to the instructions then!

[detuned]

Fred - the answer key for islands is simply a string of 5 numbers that are in the relevant row/column. I wil make this clear in the redo of the instructions later. Thanks!

[Fred76]

Tom: Thanks for updates
I have another question about updated rule of sudoku islands

On the updated rule, it's not mentionned that connected region doesn't contain any 2*2 block of cells. Is that an omission or is that intentional?

Fred

[detuned]

A typo, naturally - I will fix this (again!) soon. You are most helpful Fred

It's just as well the puzzles have been done and tested for ages - I suppose it's better to be having all these issues with the instructions rather than the actual competition file. Mind you, our guys who were at the WPC commented on the unsatisfactory nature of the instructions for that and so we also want to make sure we have a decent set of instructions. Which we will do. eventually!

[PuzzleScot]

Fred, I see on your blog that you list the competition as "Date et heure: du 13.11.2010 au 14.11.2010"
Your French readers will be one week too late - it is 6.11.2010 - 7.11.2010 (as stated in your main text).

Thanks for the mention. We're expecting a big turnout.

[Fred76]

Fred, I see on your blog that you list the competition as "Date et heure: du 13.11.2010 au 14.11.2010"
Your French readers will be one week too late - it is 6.11.2010 - 7.11.2010 (as stated in your main text).

Thanks for the mention. We're expecting a big turnout.

Ouuuups sorry, I'd post about LMI test on my forum, and so I made dates confusion. It's correct now.

Thanks

(I'm happy to see that my blog is read... )

Fred

[Ours brun]

(I'm happy to see that my blog is read... )

I just hope not too many people have read it before you fixed the mistake.

Looking forward to this test which promises to please me - if I'm able to participate, as I'm not sure yet.

Concerning the classic sudokus, will the 4 puzzles be of similar difficulty or will the difficulty be increasing from 1st to 4th ?

[Fred76]

(I'm happy to see that my blog is read... )

I just hope not too many people have read it before you fixed the mistake.

Looking forward to this test which promises to please me - if I'm able to participate, as I'm not sure yet.

Concerning the classic sudokus, will the 4 puzzles be of similar difficulty or will the difficulty be increasing from 1st to 4th ?

Did you see that there is a diagonal sudoku in the list of grids?

[Ours brun]

I have absolutely no problem with diagonal sudokus, unless they require the use of trial and error. Which reminds me something...

Anyway, as there is also an irregular sudoku (despite the fact you told to have made progress on it), I think we'll play with an equivalent handicap.

[Fred76]

I have absolutely no problem with diagonal sudokus, unless they require the use of trial and error. Which reminds me something...

It's not my fault if you don't overcome ALS technics

But you're right, I'll have lot of handicap: there are 3 irregular sudoku, if you consider that surplus sudoku and toroidal sudoku have irregular boxes
And I'm not fast on killer sudoku...
And sudoku island scares me !

=>Tom, I've too many handicap, can I have 30 minutes more than other players, please

[detuned]

I won't comment on the difficulty of the classic puzzles beyond saying that none of them (in my opinion) are at the point of being so hard it's quicker to guess. This is probably true (in my opinion) of the other puzzles too! Of course, your own particular mileage might vary!

I will say that the diagonal is of course a lovely puzzle, as are the irregular, toroidal and surplus, as are the rest of them

[detuned]

Erratum Announcement

there is a quick errata with regards to the sudoku islands instructions. In particular everyone should note that there can be no 2x2 blocks of unshaded squares

The correct instructions should read:

Place the digits 1-5 in the grid such that each digit appears exactly once in each row, column and marked 3×3 box. The remaining cells should be shaded to form islands. Each island contains one numbered grey cell, already given, which represents the size of the island. The unshaded cells form an orthogonally connected region, i.e. you can travel from any unshaded cell to any other by moving vertically or horizontally using only other unshaded cells. There are no 2×2 blocks of unshaded cells.

[Calavera]

Am I the first trying to start the contest? Because when hitting the start button an error occurs:

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/ukpuzzl1/public_html/common_top.php:10) in /home/ukpuzzl1/public_html/forum/includes/functions.php on line 3543

SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]

Field 'points_scored' doesn't have a default value [1364]

An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.


This happened three times in a row so I guess it's not just a one time connection problem...

[GarethMoore]

It doesn't work for me either. An SQL error is given and then it generates a further PHP error.

[PuzzleScot]

Argh! Fixed. I was wondering why no-on had started.