UK Puzzle Association

I really like the look of this test. Given the timings, I might try and skip the classics rounds and instead get up super early to have a go at the remaining two rounds instead...

Round 1: classics,
Round 2: simple, common variants
Round 3: slightly fruitier variants

The instructions are now live:

http://puzzlerace.org/test/upcoming/94

Yep it’s always a good idea to have done quicker points left to do at the end. Although there is sometimes a slight tendency for the puzzles with the least points available to be the ones that the testers found the easiest, rather than the easiest for me. The reverse is sometimes true for very large...

Incomplete clueing would be nasty! I'd not thought of that (although admittedly I think there have been a couple of examples of normal products where they've left out a small number of clues). Although there's a small consolation: the other side to that is at least it makes it a bit quicker to know ...

Isn't products more a case of needing to be methodical and meticulous? I can see the solving path being fairly narrow (but hopefully not quite as random as per the sudoku GP above!) - and maybe a bit more fiddly when combined with the anti-knight constraint. I expect it's going to be quite a large s...

There's no catching Sam on this set from me - I reckon that I've unofficially clocked in a smidge over 9 minutes for the set.

Hi Adam - I forgot to enter - is it worth bothering to send answers in late anyway?

I didn’t have a go at extended extra regions during time, and was pleased that I didn’t. It reminded me of why I lost interest in the GP last year. There seems to be a growing trend of puzzles that I find hard because they are fiddly and there is no sense of flow to my solve - actually I'm finding t...

Some other solving tips: Diagonal consecutive: when using the negative constraint, bear in mind that if you have a 5 in a cell, then yes that rules out 4,6 in cells touching at a corner, but it can still be a 5. I often do that by mistake as the equivalent heuristic for consecutive sudoku would rule...

See this message I was sent for details. The ASC is usually an on-site competition happening at around January time - for example last year was organised by Rishi Puri in India - but this time round it's being hosted online so everyone can partake. Dear all, Due to the worldwide pandemic, the 5th As...

Yes sadly full rank is one of the tedious types where you need to know "the trick". They all solve in roughly the same way: Ranks 1-4: digit closest to the edge is a 1 Ranks 5-8: digit closest to the edge is a 2 ... All the way down to Ranks 33-36, where the digit closest to the edge is a 9. Then yo...

Lets experiment with a combined thread this year :) https://gp.worldpuzzle.org The schedules have been published for 2021. In general there is one competition every fortnight, alternating Sudoku and Puzzles. [Note the slight break in that schedule for June however!] The first of the 2021 competition...

So the first point sounds like a Latin square (just rows and columns) rather than sudoku (which would also gave regions. Since writing down 12345678 down the top left bottom right diagonal works fine, start with a blank grid, add in that diagonal, and then fill out the rest of the grid using sudoku ...

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!

My bad, I’m being a bit lax with the dihedral symmetries. There are normally a total of 8 (4x multiples of 90 degree rotations, 4 more reflections in the | - / \ axes) but I was probably getting a bit excited given that a 180 rotation in that grid is actually the same thing as a digit permutation (1...

Every solution to the anti-knight no touch constraint looks something like this: Screen Shot 2020-12-11 at 22.40.46.png All you need to do is permute the numbers attached to each colour, and possibly rotate by 90 degrees, until you find something that works. To suggest there was some "intended proce...

The trick with “miracle” aka anti-knight combined with no touch constraint is that there is one solution, up to dihedral symmetries of the grid (reflections/rotations) and permutations of the symbols (eg swapping all the 1s with all the 3s). To be honest, despite the hype, I think that “miracle” puz...

I’m not sure I understand the constraint properly (perhaps you could draw a picture to demonstrate what you mean?) - but I would add that unless the constraint gives some information about digits relative to one another (like consecutive) then 8 will always be the lower bound for clues. To see this,...

It’s fair to say there are definitely people who are not just using paint to do things like the GP, but making use of online solving interfaces. When challenged, these people tend to say: (A) there’s an initial time cost in manually drawing up the puzzles so it’s not clear it’s any kind of advantage...

I enjoyed these a lot Sam, thanks for posting - really top notch quality, and a satisfying level of difficulty for sure. I'm fairly certain I overthought a couple of them with suggestive patterns though

Thanks Adam for organising, and Freddie for the puzzles, an enjoyable set!

I’m not sure this will catch on. The main criticism i have is is to do with the indexing of cells. I much prefer R5C3 as opposed to 5c. Maybe that’s just what I’m used to. I also think you need to bear in mind that trying to formalise logical placements using a symbolic language is going to run into...

Hmmm...I have to say I’d not considered the mobile aspect. I tried puzzle duel on my phone and it did feel like a better experience compared to laptop/mouse. I suspect that’s because I’ve got no baseline experience to compare to on mobile. I would say that, without any exaggeration, the sudoku on pu...

Hi I’ve just tried to use Puzzle Duel on a tablet and a laptop and it seemed fine. Is that because it was a loop puzzle? Where is the issue? Try a shading puzzle - awkward but doable, there’s no dragging so you have to click every cell. Definitely favours those with good mouse work. Try an object p...

On the subject of LMI (and here I'm leaving aside my personal grievances) - from a competition point of view it is not clear what is going to happen next year when Flash becomes totally obsolete. They may not even have a functioning competition engine!