UK Puzzle Association

Edit: it's become apparent there are individuals within LMI who seem to have it in for me. Whilst this remains the case I'm not going to comment on anything to do with LMI.

Round 1 results. I thought that was pretty tough, and that seems to be backed up by only 12 solvers getting a full 13/13. I hope the GP's aren't going the same way as the USPC and the so-called "Snyder Effect" with the difficulty ratcheting up year on year. Top 3 UK preliminary results are: 39. Heat...

I find the quickest way to solve harder examples is just to take a guess and hope you get to a contradiction sooner rather than later. There are a few techniques you can use before you need to resort to that though. Notating where numbers go across two adjacent cells can propagate very quickly acros...

If you just want to take part in one event and not stay over then the price is £44. If you want to take part in both events but not stay over then the price is £88. If you want to take part in one event and stay over one night then the price is £118 If you want to take part in both events and stay ...

Hi Liane, could you add some further details please? E.g. is the schedule roughly the same as in previous years - e.g. Sudoku competition is entirely on the Saturday, and the Puzzle competition is split between the last bit of Saturday and then Sunday? Also, the price structure has always been a bit...

Hi Fred, thanks for your comments, and I hope the finished report will better answer some of your questions. Firstly - I think it is absolutely necessary to use classic sudoku as the base of the definitions. I perhaps take your point that the principles I have in mind probably work by themselves wit...

Hi Sam, thanks very much for the feedback! Agree on 1, the wording needs a bit of tightening up (and maybe also to try and use slightly less “technical” language 2 and 3 I’m hoping the final section will help clear up. You have to draw the line somewhere, and I’m certainly not going for full mathema...

Hi everyone, See this link for the current state of the report.  Sections 1-4 are complete, but 5 is incomplete (and will hopefully make the report more practical and understandable when complete). Given the timing, I think now would be the time to open this up to a more general consultation.  There...

Nice! - getting the intended solution to that sequence I think makes you a very worthy winner Rodders. I have to say I think both me and Neil looked at it for a lot longer than 10/15 minutes so to get that intended answer was a really good bit of solving!

I’m not sure it’s completely fair to put words into Prasanna’s mouth - I’d imagine he has his own take on it and has somehow managed to rationalise his decision. All I know is that regardless of anything else, if you’re supplying puzzles for competition, don’t reuse anything!

As an aside, Neil now has two separate entries in the MSO's medal winners database

Some quick thoughts about the events. Sudoku: I think Neil had mentioned to me previously that the Mind Sports Olympiad tends to oscillate between being quite easy, to being very difficult. This year was a very difficult year! The format involved solving 8 Classics, 6 Diagonal, 6 Irregulars and 8 Ki...

Results are up: https://msoworld.com/2019-medal-table/ Sudoku: Gold - Tom Collyer Silver - Neil Zussman Bronze - David Collison KenKen & other puzzles: Gold - Roderick Grafton Silver - Tom Collyer Bronze - Neil Zussman I'll write up some thoughts a bit later, but the results of the puzzle competitio...

Preliminary results for the final round: 14 James McGowan 625 31 Freddie Hand 513 47 Tom Collyer 419 Leaving the preliminary overall standings at: 17 James McGowan 3411 53 Neil Zussman 2479 56 Tom Collyer 2425 Ken Endo came in as an unsurprising winner, 4837.3 points, 400 points clear of Thomas Snyd...

Quick reminder - if you haven't had a go at the delayed final round you can do so until this evening

I should add I'm halfway through writing the report - I might add the point about etymology to it, but it will certainly not be the defining feature of it, for a number of reasons (including the one above). To shed a little more light on how things are shaping up, I think everything in this forum so...

A hexagonal grid can be equivalent to a square grid with diagonal constraints - I suppose it depends on how you think about these things

Thanks! I feel a bit peeved having submitted 155 points worth and only ending up with 110 - lost 15 on the doppelblock by only submitting one of the two codes, had a very silly mistake on the penta slitherlink, and then an answer key typo in the regional fences. Still, not too bad all things conside...

They're much easier to spot when there are natural partitions in the grid - odd/even being a particularly helpful one as that gives 4/5.

Well, put another way, you've finished ahead of two (multiple) world champions, numerous WSC play-off contenders, and also made two UK records - so don't be too disheartened ;) At the very top there will always been insane times, but to maintain that consistently is something that only a handful of ...

Nicely done Sam - by my reckoning 13th on a round and 29th for the series are both UK records. For the round in particular you’ve finished ahead of some seriously good solvers! This round felt finishable, but the mix didn’t quite agree with me and I got bogged down on a couple of the variants (inclu...

I've submitted 155 points worth of answers, and have been slowly trying to make my way through the stuff I didn't try. Very hard test this year!

The USPC is happening this weekend (20th July). Unlike most competitions this happens at a fixed time, which is 6pm UK time.

For more details see here:

http://wpc.puzzles.com/uspc2019/default.asp?mode=login

Instructions out tomorrow

What a horrible looking variant. I can only hope the instruction booklet is a bluff and that the competition puzzle only has 2x2 regions. Even in that case I feel like you are stretching the idea of what makes a good sudoku variant pretty far. The fact this needs a 2nd attempt within the IB to expla...

I haven't got an e-mail like that... what a pity