UK Open Sudoku and Puzzle Tournament 16th - 17th March, 2013

[Nilz]

Thanks everyone for a really enjoyable weekend! Great to see lots of familiar faces, and always pleasing to see some new faces too. Shame it's a year until the next one.
For those who weren't there, the Sudoku results were: 1st Tom Collyer, 2nd Neil Zussman, 3rd David McNeill, in an incredibly tight contest.
Puzzle results were 1st Neil Zussman, 2nd Tom Collyer, 3rd David McNeill.
Top International Contestant was Gyorgy.
1st Team round was won by Emma, Eva & Gyorgy (I think- apologies if I've misremembered that, it was ages ago- amongst other things, we've spent about 3 days waiting for food in Zizzi's since that competition finished).
2nd Team round was won by Anthea, Heather & Mike.
'Most complicated bit of photography' award went to Alan for his advice 'If you want to zoom in or out, just walk forwards or backwards.'
I think that's everything covered. Apart from the one nagging question: What were James' test-solving times like?

[david mcneill]

Neil, I think you might have missed one member of the winning team for the second round!

Great weekend. Thanks particularly to Liane, Gareth, James and the puzzle setters. Enjoyed everyone's company and especially meeting people for the first time. Looking forward to the UK online championships now.

Happy St Patrick's Day to you all.

[puzzlemad]

And thanks from me to everyone turning up and seemingly having a great time and also James, Andrey and Adam D for test solving and all the fabulous puzzle authors that provided such a huge selection of puzzles for this event. When I get chance I'm going to run a couple of "fun" on line events with the puzzles that I had to leave out of this event, so watch the forum for details - not sure how quickly I'll be able to organise those.
Results file attached - now shows the breakdown of how many people successfully solved each puzzle - that was one of the best bits of prep. that I did for this - meant that I could save loads of time on the scoring and not have to think about the addition.

Scoresheet.xls

(132.89 KiB) Downloaded 751 times

[puzzlemad]

Apart from the one nagging question: What were James' test-solving times like?

Just done a quick calculation on the rounds. (I knew that the majority of the rounds had far more puzzles in them than were going to be able to be solved but wanted to put a good selection in!)

UK Theme 64m, Tapa Variation 61m, Mixed Bag 76m (not counting his own puzzles), Sprint 27m, Rishi's Sudoku 47m, Relay 46m, Blogs 51m, Gareth's 153m

[detuned]

Thanks to everyone, I am still completely exhausted. Everything ran nearly flawlessly, and the puzzles were of excellent standard. If sometimes a little gruelling difficult! Also great to see everyone. And eventually be served food at the restaurant!

Neil and I tied in both the sudoku rounds and so the top two places were decided by a play-off of 3 classics. Neil's comment beforehand was something like "the last thing I want to be doing right now is solving another sudoku," which is pretty much what I'd have said if I was capable of coherent speech. In theory the classics gave me an advantage, but in practise it was very tight and tense. The minute spent checking each puzzle seemed to last an age, particularly after the first puzzle where Neil pulled out a small advantage. I managed to pull things back over the second and third puzzles to just about edge it. Things are certainly more nerve-racking when you are aware of people around you watching you solve!

I also think i'll be getting myself a hotel room next year to save on brisk morning bike rides!

[PuzzleScot]

I've put a few photos on the UKPA Facebook page. Seems like everyone enjoyed themselves
I'll try to get them on the main site when I have some time...

[PuzzleScot]

Quick work through the snake from the relay round. Hope you can follow my notation/logic.

I think Bram is going to post this round on his blog soon.
Are the other rounds going to be available for 'competing' online? - if so, no more spoilers

They could be made available for a week or more, with the duration being whatever we had live.
I'm sure plenty of people would take part, and it lets the puzzles be shared...

[MichaelC]

Good to see everyone, and especial thanks to Liane for organising and the puzzle setters for a great set of puzzles.

[PuzzlerNickG]

I had a great weekend. Lots of really good puzzles and friendly faces, both old and new. I was actually more nervous being Tom's marker in the Sudoku play-off than I was for the competition itself.

If anyone was in two minds about attending, I really recommend you come along next year.

Congratulations to the winners and many thanks to all the organisers and contributors, with a special mention for Liane for all her tireless efforts.

[GarethMoore]

I added a few more pictures to the Facebook page too. I couldn't add them to the album but they show up if you view the page itself.

[puzzlemad]

Puzzle Booklets are now available.
Enjoy

Sudoku Rishi and PM.pdf

(223.15 KiB) Downloaded 691 times

UKPA Mixed Bag Round -PB 2013.pdf

(606.81 KiB) Downloaded 937 times

UKPA Puzzle Blogs PB 2013.pdf

(45.38 KiB) Downloaded 871 times

UKPA Relay Puzzles PB 2013.pdf

(125.88 KiB) Downloaded 703 times

UKPA Sprint Round - PB 2013.pdf

(179.56 KiB) Downloaded 740 times

UKPA sudoku 2013 contest round 2.pdf

(76.82 KiB) Downloaded 758 times

UKPA Tapa and Variations PB 2013.pdf

(237.09 KiB) Downloaded 1154 times

UKPA Teams - PB 2013.pdf

(233.03 KiB) Downloaded 675 times

UK_Pentomino_Puddles.pdf

(23.37 KiB) Downloaded 810 times

Thanks once again to all the authors for supplying these puzzles at short notice. I will be better organised next year!

UKPA Themes - PB 2013.pdf

(360.43 KiB) Downloaded 649 times

[Fred76]

Puzzle Booklets are now available.
Enjoy

Thanks for sharing these booklets !

[EctoPlasma]

I tried to see the file "UKPA Mixed Bag Round -PB 2013.pdf" but downloaded PDf file seemed to be broken. It gave an error message: "Failed to load PDF document." Can someone look into this?

[puzzlemad]

I tried to see the file "UKPA Mixed Bag Round -PB 2013.pdf" but downloaded PDf file seemed to be broken. It gave an error message: "Failed to load PDF document." Can someone look into this?

Here it is again. Hopefully, this should be okay.

[EctoPlasma]

Here it is again. Hopefully, this should be okay.

Thank you, I could now open the file without problem.