Division C 2020-2021

[pinkagape]

Division C is open to any UK puzzler who is not in Divisions A and B, even if they wish to join in the middle of a season. You cannot be relegated from Division C into Division D, and the champion of Division C will be promoted to Division B in the 2021-22 season.

Like Division D, the winner of each competition will receive 10 credits, second place will receive 9 and so on.

The schedule is as follows (external competition dates will be finalised as they are released by LMI and WPF). This was edited to switch in the Puzzle Grand Prix dates for January.

12th/13th December - Advanced Fillomino and Tapa
29th January to 1st February - WPF Puzzle Grand Prix
26th February to 1st March - UKPA Skyscrapers competition
5th to 10th March - LMI Puzzle Ramayan
17th/18th April - Advanced Four Winds and Minesweeper
15th/16th May - UKPA Masyu competition

Edited to reflect swapping of Masyu competition timing.

Advanced competitions will involve the same standard types as Division D, as well as variants which will be announced in advance of the competition.

Should you wish to join Division C, please email adam@ukpuzzles.org

[Asandhu1]

If I’m in Division D, can I still do the puzzles in Division C and submit my times? Also, I’m running out of example puzzles in my copy of Puzzle Ninja (I’m sure that most will have heard of it), so I would hugely appreciate it if someone could give me a recommendation for a puzzle book or website.

[pinkagape]

Absolutely you can submit for Division C puzzles even if you’re not in Division C.

My standard website for practice puzzles is GM puzzles.

[Asandhu1]

Thank you for recommending GM. I’ve really enjoyed the ones the puzzles that I’ve done so far.

[pinkagape]

On the weekend of 12th/13rd December, Round 1 of Division C will be held. We will use the honesty timing structure of Division D, so you can complete these puzzles at your leisure and submit the ones that you complete in the time they take. There are more puzzles of a wider range, so they might take a bit longer than the Beginners sets.

Here are the variants that will be used alongside the classic types, and some examples.

Please ask if you need any clarification, or further examples.

[pinkagape]

Hi

Here is Round 1 of Division C of the 2020-2021 UK Puzzle League.

Please download and print the puzzles. You can complete them in any order at any point between now and Tuesday 15th December.

For each puzzle, remember to time yourself honestly as to how long it takes.

When you are finished all of the puzzles, or as many as you are able to, please email adam@ukpuzzles.org your times for each puzzle and the answer key for each puzzle (to ensure that you have understood how each solution is supposed to look).

If you are not in Division C, your times will be entered onto an all-comers scoreboard, which will not score points in the UK Puzzle League. If you are in Division C, the solver with the most points will receive 10 credits, the second will receive 9 credits and so on. If two or more solvers score the same number of points, then the fastest total time (spent on completed puzzles) will score the higher number of credits. If you are new to the UK Puzzle League, you can join in Division C late.

If you have any questions, please ask via email (adam@ukpuzzles.org)

Please do not discuss the puzzles in the forum until the competition is declared closed.

Have fun!

[Feadoor]

I'm only just getting round to looking at the examples for these: the diagonal fillomino example has two solutions, I believe (you can swap R2C3 and R3C2 in the given solution).

[pinkagape]

Thanks Sam. You’re right, that’s an oversight on my part. I’d accept either answer if that happened in the real competition puzzles.

[detuned]

Glad I came back to this thread - the document itself says 11th - 14th November so I thought i was too late. Time enough to read up on these variations again!

[jupilogy]

At the end, it asks us to send the clues and the answers. What does it mean by clues?

[pinkagape]

Glad I came back to this thread - the document itself says 11th - 14th November so I thought i was too late. Time enough to read up on these variations again!

Whoops! Yes, you can still submit on Tuesday (or you can submit Wednesday daytime because I don’t organise everything until Wednesday evening), so still lots of time.

[pinkagape]

At the end, it asks us to send the clues and the answers. What does it mean by clues?

Just that you should submit the given clue cells and your worked out answers when you submit the row of your solution.

[pinkagape]

Hello everyone. Round 1 is now closed.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the puzzles, and it was especially good to see so many people solve all of them, though there were a couple of errors in the solutions submitted. Thanks to David McNeill and Emma McCaughan for test solving, and Freddie Hand for the beautiful puzzle 15.

Here are the rankings:

Sam Cappleman-Lynes 41m7
Jeff Dick 60m0
Liane Robinson 64m6
Thomas Powell 77m8
Eva Myers 78m55
Maurice Blount 82m27
Adam Sandhu (296pts) 123m40
Tom Collyer (280pts) 43m49

Those coloured red are in Division C, so congratulations to Jeff for edging out Liane. Liane was about 5 minutes quicker on the Tapa than Jeff, so it was a very impressive Fillomino set from Jeff that led to his victory.

Other notable performances was Maurice's second place time on the Diagonal Fillomino and fastest of all on the Black and White Tapa. Liane also got a fastest of all, on Tapa 14, with all other fastest times by Tom or Sam.

Here is the league table at the moment:



The next round will be a slight difference to the advertised one, as LMI have not yet announced their Puzzle Ramayan schedule, so we'll use the Puzzle Grand Prix Round 1, scheduled for 29th January to 1st February.

[jupilogy]

Wow?!

Thanks for the commentary! I really enjoyed the variety of puzzles. Was puzzle 7 super difficult or was that just me? I felt I lost a lot of time on it but maybe not as much as I thought.

[puzzlemad]

Was puzzle 7 super difficult or was that just me?

I wasted time on this by not thinking about it properly. As the diagonals couldn't have repeated numbers in them it was worth considering the actual size of the grid as that gave how many different numbers would be in the diagonals. With that bit of knowledge the puzzle is much more straightforward. I've just solved it again now and it fell easily.

[pinkagape]

Hi everyone

Round 2 is now complete, though still open to appeals.

Isolating the Division C players from the whole list, we have

1st - Maurice Blount - 226 points
2nd - Liane Robinson - 194 points, 1.27.38
3rd - Eva Myers - 194 points, 1.29.22
4th - Thomas Powell - 188 points
5th - Keith Lothian - 183 points
6th - Jeffery Dick - 58 points



In the event of tied scores, the highest score in the most recent round decides. This was edited on Wednesday to reflect a new player joining the league. Welcome Keith!

The next round is at the end of the month (26th February to 1st March), with David McNeill's skyscrapers variants. An IB will be published in around a week and I'll send an email to competitors.