Hello from a mathematician and Stargate fan

[Heimdall]

My username is taken from the name of a Stargate character, who is based on a god from Norse mythology.

I come from Slovenia and have Slovene passport, but I have lived in England for several years. I represented Slovenia on the first WPC in New York in 1992 (it was actually called World Puzzle Team Championship) and met Will Shortz face-to-face, not realising then that it was him who organised it; I did know however that the GAMES magazine (which he then worked for) was involved in that competition. He first introduced me to the puzzle that have since been called Tsunami and Hanjie.

I have been to the International Mathematical Olympiad. I have a maths degree. I have also worked on competitions in maths, logic and recreational maths. For the latter two (that were more light-hearted), I liked to think of myself as very harsh but fair and consistent in scoring the contestants' solutions. For those of you who watch Strictly Come Dancing: I like to compare my harshness to Craig's.

I like puzzles that rely on mathematical/logical/analytical thinking, on wit rather than on general knowledge. That said, I have enjoyed tackling some general knowledge puzzles (e.g. crosswords) and participating at a general knowledge quiz.

I first saw Su-doku when my workmate showed me a puzzle. I do an occasional Su-doku, however I prefer other puzzles derived from Su-doku, like Killer or overlapping Su-dokus. I find 12x12 or bigger Su-dokus more exciting than the usual 9x9, which seems to be everywhere, flooding the papers and magazines.

[detuned]

Hi Heimdall - you aren't alone in the puzzling world with a background in the International Mathematical Olympiad, I believe Palmer Mebane is involved in the US side of things there. It was fascinating discussing a maths problem or two with him recently in Beijing.

I hope you stick around, and participate along with us in many of the numerous competitions that seem to be going around these days!

[kiwijam]

Welcome.
I also went to a couple of IMOs once upon a time...

[emma]

I just looked you up on the IMO Hall of Fame, James, and recognised another name just above yours: http://www.imo-official.org/year_indivi ... ?year=1995
There are a fair few of you IMO-ers around in the puzzling world!

[kiwijam]

I just looked you up on the IMO Hall of Fame, James, and recognised another name just above yours

Ooh good spotting. I had no idea. I spoke to him a few times in Beijing. I see we got identical total scores back then, and even identical partial scores (when reordered).
You got me curious. As well as Zoltan Nemeth, I can see Hideaki Jo, Wei Hwa Huang, Ingrid Voigt (=GiantPanda, sister of U & R), (and of course Tomaž Cedilnik above). Actually that's less than I expected, although my search method is not very thorough.

[uvo]

There are a few more German puzzlers who have been to the IMO - Martin Merker, Philipp Weiß, Georg Schröter (AFAIK).

[Realshaggy]

There are much more connections to discover.

For example Bertram Felgenhauer, also german participant in IMO'95, wrote many articles about the mathematics of Sudoku. Quote from Wikipedia:

Nonetheless, the number of valid Sudoku solution grids for the standard 9×9 grid was calculated by Bertram Felgenhauer and Frazer Jarvis in 2005 to be 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 [3] (sequence A107739 in OEIS). The number computed by Felgenhauer and Jarvis confirmed a result first identified by QSCGZ in September 2003.[3] This number is equal to 9! × 722 × 27 × 27,704,267,971, the last factor of which is prime. The result was derived through logic and brute force computation. Russell and Jarvis also showed that when symmetries were taken into account, there were 5,472,730,538 solutions [4] (sequence A109741 in OEIS). The number of valid Sudoku solution grids for the 16×16 derivation is not known.

And their first paper on this subject (with many more in the following years):

Bertram Felgenhauer, Frazer Jarvis: Enumerating possible Sudoku grids. 20. Juni 2005. Publiziert als: Mathematics of Sudoku I. Mathematical Spectrum 39, 2006, 15–22. (PDF; 91 kB)

[Heimdall]

I hope you stick around, and participate along with us in many of the numerous competitions that seem to be going around these days!

I sure will, provided I don't miss them...
I'll see if there's a way of being notified of each competition, other then checking this site regularly.

By the way, has anyone guessed my real name? From the information I provided you can work it out. Go on, puzzlers :-)

Heimdall

[PuzzleScot]

Tomaz,

I have RSS enabled on all forum main topics.
In your browser's address bar, there should be a RSS subscribe icon.
(If you can't find it, bookmark the uri: http://forum.ukpuzzles.org/feed.php?f=5)

[Heimdall]

I just found out I am not eligible for WPC representing the UK.

Eligibility:

Any person who has the right to possess a full UK passport, and has the right to travel to the WPC/WSC host nation (Croatia in 2012) is eligible for selection.

I am a resident, have lived here for over 10 years, but am not a UK citizen. I am an EU citizen (Slovenia).

The rules may have changed since, hopefully. This is a 2012 qualification, however, what about 2014? The page http://www.ukpuzzles.org/qualification.php seems to be a bit behind...

[PuzzleScot]

Tomaz,

The WPF rules regarding national representation follow the IOC guidelines.
You may only represent a country that you are eligible to hold a passport from.

This actually gives you an advantage, as there is no national representative for Slovenia on the WPF.
You may instead apply for individual WPF membership (50 EUR) that will entitle you to participate in all WPF events.


Oh, yes, the qualification page is out of date. Apologies for that. Will try to update it 'soon'.

[detuned]

I'm just wondering how the rules here work: for instance in football if you haven't represented your country of birth, but have met some kind of residency criteria (5 years or something?), then you can play football for England.

Perhaps this is something we can propose to the WPF if it isn't already covered?