Hausigel Contest Series

[Hausigel]

Thanks for the announcement, James. I was occupied for a couple of weeks, so I had little time to make announcements on my own.
Yes, the contest will take place next weekend; all the puzzle types will be slight variations of standard puzzles. I have posted a couple of thought on each puzzle type in my blog (only in German - no time to translate them, sorry - but if you have any questions or ideas, feel free to share them).
Hausigel

[Hausigel]

The contest has started. Good luck to all participants.

[kiwijam]

Very nice puzzles, thank you Roland.

I had printer problems so wrote out some of them onto grid paper (and now I see I made a mistake during that process). Oh well...

[Hausigel]

The contest is over, thanks to all participants.
Turns out the contest was harder than anticipated. Btw, you're in good company, James - even uvo slipped this time...
Score ajustment requests can be made until Wednesday noon (hcs@hausigel.de).

[emma]

Thank you. Enjoyable as ever. (I did download the previous two rounds but didn't have time to enter. One occupied me happily on a plane flight.)

[Hausigel]

Hi folks,
the contest HCS 7 will take place Jul 12-15.
The topic of this contest is: Instructionless. I know that contests of this nature are generally controversial. There is a thread in the German forum for more information about the interpretation of the contest rules. Questions are welcome, of course.
Hausigel

[sf2l]

Roland
is there a mistake in the example?
the letters B and C on the top right corner should be part of the same tile, otherwise the solution given is not obtained according tot he rule which specifies that every tile must contain either two letters or two black cells

stefano

[Hausigel]

You are right, that was an unintended error. James pointed out the same thing in the German forum - thanks for noticing!
I have uploaded a corrected version of the instruction file. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Hausigel

[Hausigel]

Just a short reminder that the contest HCS 7 (Instructionless) will start in a few hours. Please note that manual score adjustments will only take place if you can convince me that you have found an alternative solution, not in case of typos of any kind. Good luck to all participants.

[Hausigel]

Hello,
I have made a very stupid error (thanks to uvo for noticing). There is a new version of the contest file, uploaded on Friday at 12.35; the order of the puzzles, some scores and two puzzles (9 and 10 in the corrected version) have changed.
I apologize for the inconvenience. I hope those who downloaded the old version can read this in time. If there are any problems related to this issue, I will of course adjust the scores in your favor.
Hausigel

[PuzzleScot]

Nice little contest to play with in the sunshine Thank-you Roland.
Now looking forward to finding out the real instructions for the puzzles!

[Hausigel]

The contest is over, thanks to all participants.
Score adjustment requests can still be made until Sunday (hcs@hausigel.de); see the German forum for more details.
Hausigel

[PuzzleScot]

I think I got all the rules within the time, except for "Igel" (puzzles 3/4)? Anyone?

Will all the missing instructions be posted at some point?

[Hausigel]

Hi Alan,
you will find a file with the contest puzzles and the instructions in the German forum (I usually don't upload files in other forums).
I'm not sure this is the only plausible set of instructions; there were quite a few alternative solutions, and I am waiting if anyone will come up with something else...
Hausigel

[PuzzleScot]

Great. Thanks.
I had thought fro Trix that ever I-shape must touch a white cell.
There appeared to be many ways to ultimately divide the grid, but fortunately the answer key didn't require that level of detail!

[Hausigel]

The contest HCS 8 will take place Aug 23-26.

[Hausigel]

The contest HCS 8 (Aug 23-26) has been set up, and the instruction file is available. Please note that the instruction file does not contain any examples. You will find example puzzles here.
Regarding manual score adjustments: Traditionally, in my Skyscraper puzzle contests there will be no penalties for manual adjustment in case of typos. Still, I hope to have as little work as possible in this regard. I will inquire myself if I spot a mistake that looks like a typo to me; apart from that, you are welcome to send me an email with score adjustment requests no later than Wednesday after the contest.
Hausigel

[kiwijam]

This weekend is the Skyscrapers contest, which Roland has run annually for the last 4 years.
The previous four contests can be found at http://www.hochhausigel.de/e-archiv.html, all of them are good practise, especially as the contest will finish with some unknown variants.
Also, if you want to time yourself you could go to http://www.logic-masters.de/Wettbewerbe/ where the four tests have a timer and answer submission pages and result tables.

[david mcneill]

The instructions for the Hedgehogs puzzle variation aren't quite clear to me. They say that a hedgehog is only visible if it appears at the end of a row or column and that it doesn't block other buildings. That's fine. However, they also say that a hedgehog then counts as two buildings!! If this is taken literally, then a row H1243 would have 5 visible buildings. I think it is more likely that the hedgehog is included (once) in the count so that a row H4312 would have a visible count of 2. Can anyone check if the German instructions are clearer?

Thank you,

David.

[kiwijam]

The instructions for the Hedgehogs puzzle variation aren't quite clear to me. They say that a hedgehog is only visible if it appears at the end of a row or column and that it doesn't block other buildings. That's fine. However, they also say that a hedgehog then counts as two buildings!! If this is taken literally, then a row H1243 would have 5 visible buildings. I think it is more likely that the hedgehog is included (once) in the count so that a row H4312 would have a visible count of 2. Can anyone check if the German instructions are clearer?

If H4312 had a count of 2, then the whole puzzle is effectively just a normal 1-5 puzzle (relabel H4312 to 15423), with the hedgehog cell behaving like a normal 1 cell.

Your first assumption is correct. A clue of 5 does give H1243 as a possible answer. In fact a 5-clue must always start with an H, and then have a 1 or 2 in the second cell...
I think of it as a tiny hedgehog house and a tiny hedgehog garage (=2 buildings) in the same cell...

Here are two Hedgehog puzzles I've created (click the image to see both at once):

Hedgehog Skyscrapers v2.png (3.79 KiB) Viewed 64051 times

I'll put the solutions in a spoiler:

PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:

Hedgehog Skyscrapers.png (4.54 KiB) Viewed 64062 times

[Hausigel]

Hi,
James is right, the instructions are to be interpreted such that the H alone counts as two, and H1243 therefore counts as 5.
I am aware that this makes little sense if one thinks about buildings and visibility matters. I was experimenting with clues when I came up with this variation - just forget about the interpretation of numbers as buildings.
Roland

[david mcneill]

Thanks Roland. Lovely examples James. Hope I can find free time to do this.

David.

[Hausigel]

Hello,
the contest has started, have fun.
I will not sit on my PC around the clock, but I will regularly send messages to the participants if I suspect entry mistakes, so it might be a good idea to check your email after your 120 minutes.
Hausigel

[Hausigel]

Hello,
the contest is over, preliminary results should be visible now. If you have any score adjustment requests, please send them to me until Wednesday noon.
Hausigel

[Hausigel]

The scoring table of the contest HCS 8 has been finalized; congratulations to Ulrich Voigt, Hideaki Jo, Michael Ley and Kota Morinishi. You will also find the updated total scoring on the HCS overview page. Please let me know if you find any mistakes.
Hausigel