I learned that lesson on my very first attempt in 2000, and have been forcibly retaught it every year since!GarethMoore wrote:...the message here to myself is to spend at least 30 seconds on each puzzle at the start and see what's what!

I learned that lesson on my very first attempt in 2000, and have been forcibly retaught it every year since!GarethMoore wrote:...the message here to myself is to spend at least 30 seconds on each puzzle at the start and see what's what!
My lesson that it's taken me five years to learn - check you've typed your answers in correctly - this was my first year with no mistyping!nickdeller wrote:I learned that lesson on my very first attempt in 2000, and have been forcibly retaught it every year since!GarethMoore wrote:...the message here to myself is to spend at least 30 seconds on each puzzle at the start and see what's what!
Haha, I completely agree! That was a -5 of points and 5-10 minutes of time I could have done one of the others in.drsteve wrote:Well, with the benefit of hindsight, I wish
a) I hadn't had a stab at Count Me In
Again, me too! I know it sounds silly but two (well three if you count Sudoku) puzzles with almost identical names confused me into forgetting one of them. Or that's my excuse anyway. But it's doable in 10 or so minutes, perhaps 15 with extracting the answer key which I think takes about 15 minutes of the entire test time with checking.b) I'd noticed that I hadn't tried Sukoro and then done it
Well forgetting it entirely is less embarrassing than remembering it at the bottom-left (when placing the 1 etc) and forgetting it in the middle (when placing the 69 to 73, where it would have been most helpful!) which is what I did.c) I'd remembered the odd-even number rule for Route (although I still couldn't do it quickly)
I should try this puzzle again. I didn't find it difficult but I did find it confusing and I kept thinking there was a very high chance I'd made a mistake somwhere! Luckily the very low number of clues convinced me I must be right in my general approach so I kept going.d) I'd been luckier with my guessing when I go stuck halfway through Hex Masyu
I couldn't believe it when I solved this in 5 minutes on Sunday. Grrrrr! Another silly thing - I saw the 20 points and convinced myself it must be much harder than it really was, so I went about it with brute force (badly) rather than my usual method (which can be slow but at least is less error prone!).e) I hadn't missed completely that the 2 in the top middle box was obvious in the Sudoku
Well if I hadn't tried the counting one, and had got Sudoku, Criss-cross sums and Sukoro (which I could have done in the time I spent on the ones I abandoned) I could have had... a maximum of 200 points too! Snap! But that would have required a little bit of luck with my puzzle selection, and if we're allowing luck then you could fluke the solution to Digitile for another 10 points.I think 200 would have been achievable on a good day, but no more than that.
Hex Equation I spent too long on, but it's not really that hard I don't think - once you start staring at it you realise where the two sides of the equation must go and then there's only I think three or four possible solutions for one side, and maybe the same of the other. But for whatever reason those 16-odd reasonable paths are hard to evaluate so it took me at least 10 or 15 minutes to do. Still, like last year I successfully did a puzzle motris didn't.Pretty sure that with all the time in the world I'd have been stuck on X-Agony, Pentapath, Digitile, Mirror Mirror and Hex Equation.
If you do let us know how you break in, once you've done the left and lower edges. I figured 55555 was needed during the competition but couldn't see how to work out where it went and where it didn't. Maybe it's just a case of counting rows, columns and boxes and cross-referencing, but I couldn't be bothered to try that! Is there a better way?The jury's out on Sukazu until I have another go at it with the benefit of knowing that 1444455555 is a possibility for some rows.
It was my favourite one I've done, including the older ones I didn't do "live". Usually there are a few puzzles I find nightmarish just to think about and can't imagine ever doing for fun, but this year I would be happy to do any of them just for fun (perhaps excluding X-Agony, although I haven't tried it!). And the lack of standard types (mostly) surely is an advantage to those who are new, relative to the norm? Maybe.It's a shame in some ways that the first time we try and publicise the championship, it's the hardest one in years...
GarethMoore wrote:If you do let us know how you break in, once you've done the left and lower edges. I figured 55555 was needed during the competition but couldn't see how to work out where it went and where it didn't. Maybe it's just a case of counting rows, columns and boxes and cross-referencing, but I couldn't be bothered to try that! Is there a better way?drsteve wrote: The jury's out on Sukazu until I have another go at it with the benefit of knowing that 1444455555 is a possibility for some rows.
But it might be nice to put a couple of friendlier, more familiar puzzles to attract the layman. The iterations of wordsearch and criss cross this time were a lot of fun, but replaced puzzles that were easier to get into. I think there were too many puzzles this time that the common or garden puzzler couldn't start.It was my favourite one I've done, including the older ones I didn't do "live". Usually there are a few puzzles I find nightmarish just to think about and can't imagine ever doing for fun, but this year I would be happy to do any of them just for fun (perhaps excluding X-Agony, although I haven't tried it!). And the lack of standard types (mostly) surely is an advantage to those who are new, relative to the norm? Maybe.It's a shame in some ways that the first time we try and publicise the championship, it's the hardest one in years...
Tom's clarified his opinions now on his blog - it looks like I got something near the wrong end of the stick. In fact, it seems we agree with the amount of approachable puzzles in the USPC this year being too low. I'd encourage anyone who's interested to read his blog - http://motris.livejournal.com/ - his recent WSC sounds very interesting, despite not being a sudoku specialist. Hopefully these puzzles will be published somewhere sometime. I still think he must be a cyborg though...drsteve wrote: I certainly don't agree with Tom Snyder that there should be a bucketload of standard puzzles in the WPC and USPC - I think it levels the playing field more if you have to develop strategies on the hoof, but would be nice if there were, say, 50 points of puzzles that are of a low level of difficulty - there ususally have been in the past - basicish Criss Cross, Word Search, Spot the Diff and other more difficult puzzles that were at least attemptable by the inexperience puzzler, such as the harder Criss Cross varients. This year seemed to have more WPC level puzzles which I hope didn't put off the amateurs.
I found this a bit problematic starting during the test as it took me ages to find a snake that had 14 corners in it - once I had that though, and I'm pretty sure there's not much flexibility in it, the rest fell quite quickly, despite a nagging voice in my head telling me that 2222222 was bound to be wrong.detuned wrote:Although the four square puzzle was a bit of a grind. Perhaps I need to get a bit better with "snake" style puzzles as this seems to be the main work in.
I did this in 15-20 mins in the comp. There weren't too many ways of getting that length snake in with 14 turns! Some basic placements on the skyscrapers left a small range of values in the battleships. I needed to do pretty much all of all 4 puzzles to be sure of the answer key.Although the four square puzzle was a bit of a grind. Perhaps I need to get a bit better with "snake" style puzzles as this seems to be the main work in.
I do find this puzzle a little annoying due to the fact that the aim is to find the numbers that make the puzzle solvable, rather than to solve the puzzle itself. The more confident puzzler can get the numbers whilst still leaving two grids at least mostly undone. Of course the less confident puzzler, i.e. most people, still solve itPuzzleScot wrote:I did this in 15-20 mins in the comp. There weren't too many ways of getting that length snake in with 14 turns! Some basic placements on the skyscrapers left a small range of values in the battleships. I needed to do pretty much all of all 4 puzzles to be sure of the answer key.Although the four square puzzle was a bit of a grind. Perhaps I need to get a bit better with "snake" style puzzles as this seems to be the main work in.
No reason for not have a 4 in there is there? You must of course have exactly one 1.By the way, am I right in thinking that the rows for the battleships/skyscrapers part MUST be 122333 in some combination?
But it can't be 122225 because that stops the Battleship from having a solutionronaldx wrote:So (in theory) it could be 122333 or 122234?
The best place for that sort of thing is scanraid (I refuse to acknowledge the silly name change as it's clearly not a wiki). Although my opinion is that its a bit dry and technical - it's one thing having a strategy explained to you, and quite another to then execute in a non-safe environmentdrsteve wrote:Hurrah! Finally did that swearwordy Sudoku!
16 minutes, with the advantage of knowing where to at least start from last time.
So, as there are Sudoku experts out there - is there a good resource for advanced Sudoku strategy out there? I know part of my trouble is just missing things (like, occasionally, having 8 numbers filled in for a row) but are there any deep solving secrets known only to those who have passed some sacred ritual? Or should I just practise lots?
What was your score, Simon?SimonAnthony wrote:Have now been able to try Saturday's test myself. Found it tough but then so, it seems did everybody. Re Tom's X-Agony experience, bizarrely the example took me longer to solve than the actual puzzle!! I made a decent start using the 100 and 63s and then it just fell out - only needed a small tweak on the right hand side from my initial 'guess'My favourite puzzle of the test was the Suzaku, which seemed to bring together lots of other puzzle types into a new (for me, anyway) and interesting puzzle. I found the Sukoro very tough for some reasonand probably left easy points on the table by not even attempting Mirror Mirror, Pentapath or Rectangle Maze - won't know until I get a chance to try them on a 3 hour plane trip tonight. Biggest fail was completely bombing on the Hex Maysu where for some reason I stalled horribly after doing a bit of the top. Another one for the plane...
Simon
GarethMoore wrote:drsteve wrote:I spotted I'd missed the "2" region in the Corral by counting the centre region too, which would have lost me a lot of silly points if I hadn't spent time on that.