2023 UK Results Thread

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Thought it would be a good idea to collate results from various competitions. Feel free to chip in with anything you think is missing. I may also use this as the basis for a monthly digest to the newsletter.

I’ll try and stick to a format of top 3 and then judgemental honourable mentions (e.g. getting into the top 100 for the GP rounds)

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First up, the recent 2022 USPC: http://wpc.puzzles.com/uspc2022/results.asp?mode=intl

Tom Collyer 182 points
Adam Bissett 162
Maurice Blount 120

A further 7 UK participants on the list, representing a reasonably strong proportion of the overall international contingent.

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Next up Round 1 of the 2023 Sudoku GP (preliminary results for now)

31 Tom Collyer 513 points
55 Calum Mailer 444
59 Jack Lawrence 436

No other UK solvers close to the top 100 this time round.

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Great results gentlemen. Given the size of the field, top 100 is increasingly impressive. I'm delighted with my 151th place so you must be flying! 31st is great, Tom! Hope you can keep it up.

I think it's worth keeping track of the rest of us, even if we're not in the top 100, especially with the ranking giving a good idea of relative ability, so that any big improvements can be spotted and congratulated (e.g. if someone is usually in the 80th percentile but finishes in the top half, that would be great!) If this a bit much to ask, I don't mind trying to see if I can do something.

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I guess top 100 has been a rule of thumb when posting results previously - there wasn't that much logic behind it other than it seemed like a reasonable benchmark for solvers to aim at, and it did seem like there were increasingly many UK solvers managing to hit it. Fair's fair, I have only just noticed the total size of the field for this one and it is pretty big! Definitely some surprises reading down - I don't think I've ever seen the likes of Hideaki Jo as far down as the 90s for example.

However, I'm afraid my tracking doesn't go much further than a cursory glance of the results table. For one thing the data format as presented on the web isn't the cleanest thing to try and scrape into something slightly more systematic - but anyone who is interested in doing it more thoroughly than me I would greatly encourage to do so!

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So I've compared with 2022, and where UK players don't appear on that list, I've had a quick check back to see if they've played before or not.

The strongest performance by a player who certainly looks new is Zoe Ashford who finished 6 puzzles and finished in #351, (ahead of Freddie, this appears to have been a tough round for many).

Calum's performance was especially strong compared to his average from 2022, and it's an excellent result of #55. Further down the field there was one other which stood out as an improvement from 2022, Simon Rose in #483 has made a good start to 2023!

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One other thought: I don’t know how frequently the WPF are going to be updating their new ratings (see also the other thread) but that might be an easy way to benchmark a notable performance for a certain individual? I guess there’s still a bit more data work there required than my cursory glance at the results page

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I’m going to be much less reliable posting LMI results, but again anyone else is welcome to add them anyhow round one of the annual puzzle Ramayan has happened. I don’t know how to benchmark outside of a top 3, and I don’t know how much bearing to put on the score - please improve on this if you have better ideas!

3 Freddie Hand
37 James McGowan (yes it says New Zealand but we also love James in the UK)
73 Dylan Gibbs

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Is it me, or is everyone getting much better at puzzles or maybe I'm just getting worse. In any case, there are some results from round 1 of the GP. Very interesting to see two Chinese solvers at the top of the tree - an 1100+ score seems insane, as does taking >25% off Ken Endo's time. And as well as the usual flood of Japanese solvers to try and beat, there is an increasingly strong showing from the US there too.

Also a good strong UK showing as well

4 Freddie Hand 923.7
21 Neil Zussman 599
55 James McGowan 485

Also in the top 100, and not too far behind James, were Adam Bissett and Matthew White. A little further back just outside the top 100 were Dylan Gibbs and Tom Collyer

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To do a similar search for strong UK performances that I did in the sudoku, there were a good number of performances in the top 300, and in addition to those that Tom has highlighted, Dylan Gibbs (#116) and Jack Lawrence (#152) both outscored their average from 2022 significantly, and Georgiy Kassabli (#97) continued his excellent start to the year. As far as I can see, this is his first season doing GP. Further down the field, the performance that stands out is Nick Edwards (#387), who more than doubled his 2022 average in this 2023 opener.

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Preliminary results of Round 2 of the Sudoku GP:

46 Jack Lawrence 501
96 Tom Collyer 409
97 Matthew White 408

A new name to me, Matt Siegfried, was narrowly behind Tom and Matthew just outside the top 100. A really good result for Jack there too, top 50 and breaking 500 points - well done!

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As far as I can see, Matt Siegfried is a new name, and that's a great performance. The next best new name I could see was Paul Pope, in #466, though another new player from last round, Tamsin Mayberry, made huge strides and broke into the top 400.

From more established players, Jack's performance is impressive but there are a few others to point out. Howard Wilkinson made a 68% improvement on his 2022 average to make #152, and Simon Rose followed up his good Round 1 performance with a great Round 2 performance, making #267.

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I'll do some of the deeper analysis in the next day or so, but just to say well done to Freddie and Sam for some blistering times in Puzzle GP Round 2! Clearly very much on form heading into the UK Puzzle Championships!

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Ahead of Adam’s more detailed round-up here’s the brief highlights of the puzzle GP round 2 results:

3 Freddie Hand 885.2
10 Sam Cappleman-Lynes 746.7
30 James McGowan 566

No one else in the top 50; a little further back was Neil Zussman, with Adam Bissett, Tom Collyer and Emma McCaughan also squeezing into the top 100.

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Alongside Sam's superb 10th place, which is his best position in a GP round, a number of puzzlers got their highest round score. Emma McCaughan's 413 points, Maurice Blount's 388, Art Ed's 381 points, Liane Robinson's 243 points and Julia Hayward's 205 were all personal bests since my records began (2018). Each of Liane, Emma and Julia recorded significant jumps in their recent averages too, so congratulations!

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Sudoku Grand Prix Round 3 preliminary results are up.

We had two in the top 100, but Howard Wilkinson in #138 is probably the top performance as he improved significantly on his recent average, as did Sam Boden in #198 and Luke Pebody in #218, who also achieved his highest position in a round.

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Sudoku GP round 3 results - apologies for a bit of a delay!

68 Tom Collyer 451
95 Jack Lawrence 399
102 Jeremy Kong 391

Honourable mentions to Adam Bissett who was very narrowly behind Jeremy, and to Mark Goodliffe who was a bit further back outside the top 100

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Puzzle GP Round 3 just happened, and there were some high scores from many. Especially notable was Emma McCaughan with her highest score since I started keeping records in 2018, and well above her recent average. Jack Lawrence and Eva Myers also both achieved their highest scores, roughly 100 points ahead of their recent averages. The other notable performance was from Howard Wilkinson who nearly doubled his recent average score in achieving his record high too.

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My usual format summary for Puzzle GP round 3:

21. Neil Zussman 592
30. James McGowan 567
69. Matthew White 453

Just behind Matthew was Emma McCaughan, and a little further back floating around position 100 were Jeremy Kong, Adam Bissett and Tom Collyer

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Preliminary results for Sudoku GP round 4. A few of the usual suspects were involved in setting the puzzles for this round - perhaps as a result the top 3 has spilled out over the (arbitrary) top 100 benchmark

74. Mark Goodliffe 446
85. Calum Mailer 418
124. Matt Siegfried 367

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Agreed that the usual top UK solvers were involved in the setting. I enjoyed the puzzles a lot - well done to all authors!

A lot of the UK solvers performed better than their average on this set. There was a strong debut from Tim Tom in #232 and Zoe Ashford broke the 300 point barrier for the first time to follow up her impressive UK Open performance as she also broke into the top 200. The other performance of note was Julia Hayward in #349 who outperformed her average significantly.

I've been working on UK Rankings for Grand Prix events, I have the following as the current top 20, based on the most recent 8 scores, assuming at least 4 rounds played and a performance in the last 3 years. I have the following - it feels reasonably representative (of GP events, obviously Mark and David would appear higher in a more comprehensive list):

1. Sam Cappleman-Lynes
2. Freddie Hand
3. Tom Collyer
4. Heather Golding
5. Jeremy Kong
6. Jack Lawrence
7. Mark Goodliffe
8. Neil Zussman
9. Matt Siegfried
10. Calum Mailer
11. Ned Walker
12. Michael Jarvis
13. Matthew White
14. Adam Bissett
15. Howard Wilkinson
16. Zoe Ashford
17. Anthony Ford
18. Art Ed
19. Florence Cappleman-Lynes
20. Eva Myers

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Adam - re your rankings, would be interesting to see how that compares to the rankings the WPF have been working on. Maybe it's worth a separate thread to try and have a more representative UK ranking overall - my feeling is the most credible such rankings need to reflect offline rankings - so perhaps some blend of UK open and WSC/WPC results, supplemented to a lesser extent by some of the online results, would give a reasonable ranking. Clearly there needs to be some sort of recency bias to everything as well.

Anyhow - we have puzzle GP round 4 results. These are preliminary, so possibly some of these rankings will change when partial bonus points are stripped away. (I'm baffled why these are awarded by default, but there we go...)

2. Freddie Hand 940.7
12. Neil Zussman 737.2 (likely to increase in rank)
38. James McGowan 613

No-one else in the top 100. Outside the top 100, Adam Bissett, Matthew White, Maurice B and AJ Moore were all fairly closely bunched.

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Hi Tom - I'll take a look to see how it corresponds to the WPF rankings, but I don't fancy trying to work out the relative weightings of different contests at the moment! Realistically, that seemed like a big ask, which is how I came to the UK Puzzle League schedule for Division A - a mix of contests that we all agree to attempt to get a fair competition!

This Swiss round either suited UK solvers or was a bit more generous in terms of points than usual as many outperformed their recent averages. However, Ben Woodley continued his excellent debut season with his first foray into the top 200, while AJ and Maurice's strong performances were also their highest scores to date. Outside of this, the standout performance was Jack Smith's best placing in #233, nearly doubling his recent average score.

I have a similar UK Puzzle Ranking, this one includes our antipodean friends.

1 Freddie Hand
2 Sam Cappleman-Lynes
3 Neil Zussman
4 James McGowan
5 Matthew White
6 Helen Arnold
7 Tom Collyer
8 Steve Barge
9 Adam Bissett
10 Jeremy Kong
11 Dylan Gibbs
12 Emma McCaughan
13 Maurice Blount
14 Michael Collins
15 Art Ed
16 AJ Moore
17 Anthony Ford
18 Eva Myers
19 Jack Lawrence
20 Anthea McMillan

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Sudoku GP Results Round 5:

A bit of a mixed bag for the UK here. A lot of the UK's traditionally strong solvers did not have a great day. Calum Mailer was the exception with an improvement on his usual average, and Mike Colloby should be pleased with his 253 points in #240. Beyond that, Maurice Blount has followed his strong Puzzles season with his best sudoku place so far and Nick Edwards continues his improvement this year with a strong 159 points.

The nice thing about my ranking table from before is that this can also be seen there - Calum is up to #8 in the UK, Mike Colloby is up to #17 and Maurice Blount is up to #29

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The preliminary Round 5 Puzzle results are out. The standout result is David McNeill's return to form with #33 though James Horne's #204 was a huge PB, and Ben Woodley's debut season continues to go from strength to strength as he recorded his best place so far in #179. Higher up the leaderboard, it was another foray into the top 100 for Anthony Ford with his 372 point PB.

These results push James up to UK rank #37, Ben up to #22 and Anthony up to #15