Team UK at the WPC

[detuned]

Just posting a quick update from the bar. We've had a full days worth of competition, but the results have been somewhat delayed and so we only know the scores after round 1, a relatively short round of dominos puzzles. So not a lot to report really. Even if there was, there isn't really much time between rounds to provide more frequent updates, and even if there was more time, the hotel wifi here is pretty sporadic. I gave up on the live blogging idea long ago!

Hopefully there will be more to report tomorrow...

[DavidC]

Thanks Tom. LMI have linked to the round 1 results at http://wscwpc2012.org/docs/WPC_rank_1.pdf so congratulatiuons to Emma on an early top 30 position.

[detuned]

Results up to round 4 of the individual competition, and round 6 (marina) are up. Unofficial ranks are bracketed.

Neil 26th (28)
James 36th (42)
Tom 55th (68)
Emma N/A (87)
AJ N/A (102)
Liane 87th (127)
Alan (128)

More news soon hopefully!

- Tom Collyer, your humble correspondent in Croatia

[dickoon]

Results as of Round 7:

James 32nd (35)
Neil 40th (45)
Tom 53rd (66)
Emma N/A (88)
AJ N/A (104)
Alan N/A (118)
Liane 83rd (129)
Anthea (145)

A-team 14th (18)
B-team (31)

*waves flag*

[dickoon]

Results as of Round 8, which looks like it was a good one for us:

James 31st (35)
Neil 37th (42)
Tom 51st (62)
Emma N/A (86)
AJ N/A (108)
Alan N/A (119)
Liane 82nd (129)
Anthea (145)

No move for the teams.

[kiwijam]

Thanks for posting the updates Chris, team UK is too busy relaxing at the bar for such tasks.
The final individual round was round 12, and then a team round of (unfathomable) 'instructionless' puzzles to finish it off.
They'll be marking through the night I expect, as they need the results and rankings for tomorrow's playoffs.
We don't know exactly what the final results will be, but I can hint that team UK had a good finish...

[dickoon]

I'm working the night shift tonight, but one of the perks is that I can keep refreshing the results page, looking for news. Five minutes ago, new results were posted which now cover rounds 1-10, and feature more good news:

James 29th (33)
Neil 33rd (38)
Tom 50th (59)
Emma N/A (80)
AJ N/A (107)
Alan N/A (119)
Liane 85th (133)
Anthea (141)

No move for the teams, but definitely getting closer to the teams just ahead of them!

More news as it's posted. I suspect it may be a very very long night for the marking team!

[dickoon]

Croatia have clearly been up all night marking, like I've been up all night at work, and we now have the results from rounds 1-12 - just about in time for breakfast! As James hinted, these make even better reading for UK eyes, as follows:

James 19th (20)
Neil 25th (26)
Tom 55th (70)
Emma N/A (77)
AJ N/A (104)
Alan N/A (118)
Liane 84th (132)
Anthea (143)

I think those are going to be the final individual placements, as no play-offs for us this year. Congratulations! Some very strong finishes going on.

All of which leads to some exciting team news. These aren't final, as round 13 is a big team round, but the A-team have climbed to 11th (14) and the B-team to joint 30th!

[apollo1001]

Holy Moly - clearly pulled out all the stops in the final round. Well done all - your country is proud!

[dickoon]

Final individual results after the play-off are now available. Ulrich wins his eighth world championship! Thomas Snyder goes into the play-offs as #2 and comes out as #2; Palmer Mebane climbs from #4 before the play-offs to #3 afterwards. Congratulations!

No sign of the final team results yet, but hopefully soon. I'd love to hear much more about things when people get the chance... and the connectivity.

[dickoon]

Final team results available too; the last round changed very little.

Safe travels, everyone, and I hope to read more about it all soon!

[emma]

... congratulatiuons to Emma on an early top 30 position.

I'm not sure it was really top 30 - 29th equal actually included eveeryone down to 38. And it only lasted for the one round, which happened to be based on something I have on my iPod and use a lot in odd moments.

[PuzzleScot]

Well done all!

Thanks to everyone who made the trip to Kraljevica, especially Anthea, whose last-minute attendance ensured the UK had a full official B-team.

I should point out here that had Emma been in the A instead of the B team, our record-equalling 11th placed A-team would have finished an even more impressive 9th! (Clearly ahead of a strong US-B!)

[emma]

Given that I don't think I've ever beaten David or Steve in anything, just think where we could have been if we'd had either or both of them!

[puzzlemad]

Well done all!

Thanks to everyone who made the trip to Kraljevica, especially Anthea, whose last-minute attendance ensured the UK had a full official B-team.

I should point out here that had Emma been in the A instead of the B team, our record-equalling 11th placed A-team would have finished an even more impressive 9th! (Clearly ahead of a strong US-B!)

I did try to swap with Emma!

Thanks from me too to all the team that made the trip. It was a great atmosphere between us all throughout the week. It seems like Anthea is hooked and is looking to join me at the 24hr, where I'm going to remember to CHECK every solution.

[drsteve]

Given that I don't think I've ever beaten David or Steve in anything, just think where we could have been if we'd had either or both of them!

Nice of you to say that, Emma, but it's worth pointing out that I think I've underperformed every time I've been at a WPC... No guarantees at an event like that.

Every member of the UK contingent, both official and unofficial did exceptionally well. Congratulations all round.

[kiwijam]

Well I'm home again and starting to adjust to the time zone. At least that's one thing I won't have to worry about next year.

My WPC started out horribly, but I was feeling pretty good at the end. I wondered if this was just in my head, so I looked at the placing of my score compared to the field for each of the 11 individual rounds:
57, 47, 37, 47, 24, 13, 50, 26, 24, 14, 9.
So I was definitely improving over time as I got used to my first offline tournament, and adjusted my strategy a little, and I slept better before day 2. It's also lucky my only top-ten finish was the final round which had the most points to gain. I was 36th after Day 1, and 13th when looking at the Day 2 rounds only, if only there'd been a third day I'd have been up the top!
Anyway numbers aside, it was great to meet the UK team members in person for the first time, and I chatted to some 'famous' names from other countries too. Nice to be surrounded by other puzzle-addicts. Here is a photo of our WPC A-team in round 13, and a photo of both teams at the final dinner.

Neil, James, Tom, Liane.

DSC05454c.jpg (80.97 KiB) Viewed 29869 times

Tom, Neil, Anthea, AJ, Alan, James, Emma, Liane.

DSC05620c.jpg (96.48 KiB) Viewed 29869 times

[Nilz]

Just want to echo what everyone else has said- it was great to see everyone who was there, I thought we had some great team camaraderie, and it was a really enjoyable week. Hope to see you all again soon! All that's left now are the memories. Well, memories and insect bites. Lots of insect bites...
I'm a tad disappointed with my performance in the WPC, although it seems weird to say that when you've just finished 24th in the world! I don't think the play-offs would have been in my reach even on a good day, although I'm still way more disappointed than I should be that I just couldn't get an extra 52 points.
Still, just over a year, and then we're bound to have 2 world champions, surely?
Roll on China!

[kiwijam]

I'm a tad disappointed with my performance in the WPC, although it seems weird to say that when you've just finished 24th in the world! I don't think the play-offs would have been in my reach even on a good day, although I'm still way more disappointed than I should be that I just couldn't get an extra 52 points.

52 points, but that wouldn't have moved you up the rankings much, only to 19th place. Ohhhhh...

[detuned]

Thomas was also mentioning about the insect bites - I loved the bit he wrote about him going to bed with socks on his hands - but I seem to have been very lucky to have apparently avoided them altogether!

Thanks for the photos as well James. I've posted mine up on facebook, and they should be publicly viewable (so you don't need to register or anything) via this link:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set= ... c85bdfc2e7

[PuzzleScot]

Likewise, you shouldn't even need an FB account to view mine: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set= ... 49ba940b63

[emma]

We've just been looking at Ulrich's Ying Yang theorem. For those who weren't there, it says that if the numbers of blacks/whites are equal, then there are the same number of each on the boundary.

Consider the black region, and the number of line segments on its perimeter. By Pick's theorem, that's 2n+2, where n is the number of black cells. Same for the white region. The line segments are either shared with the other colour, or on the boundary of the grid. And that's about it.

(I can't claim any credit for the proof, but I do like it. And Neil can stop looking for a counterexample now.)

[Calavera]

As far as I remember it was pwahs (Philipp) from our team who brought this up and helped us quite a lot with this puzzle...

[kiwijam]

Thanks for sharing Emma, I like it!
When solving, if you colour a boundary cell then you can immediately colour the opposite boundary cell too.

I'm able able to use Pick's theorem to prove the converse is true too:
"If a Ying Yang puzzle has two borders of equal length then the black/white areas must be equal in size."
This makes the variant much faster to finish, because you don't have to count any internal squares.

[PuzzleScot]

By extension, if you removed the perimeter, would there would be the same number of B/W on the new perimeter? etc.
(There would be no proof for symmetry here though)

@James - this is only a special case, normally the equal count rules does not apply to Yin Yang.