UK Puzzle Association

Thanks for mentioning Tom. I think I'll participate in the Sudoku & Killer Sudoku, and probably the chess problem solving in the morning as well.

If you identify the pairs of edges that correspond to each other on the nets, the extra constraint is basically just that each pair of edges either has both edges crossed or neither edge crossed. (Strictly speaking you also need to ensure exactly 1 loop on each net) A consequence of this is for any ...

Thinking about where to place the I was the key for me. It's perhaps helpful to think about this in tandem with placing the six pentominoes with a 3x3 bounding box (F,T,X,Z,V,W). Intuitively, both horizontal placements of the I create 2xn area in the bottom rows (which can't contain a 3x3 pento) and...

I've never had that issue, I imagine it's device-dependent (I'm using safari on iOS 26.0.1). There might be a way to disable it in settings?

I'll have to start using a laptop for the mini sudoku and the crossclimb now

I'm pretty sure the practice test has consisted of the same few puzzles for some years now, so nothing to do with this year's championship at all.

To clarify, this round's taca does indeed follow the rule that the clue must be placed in the first unshaded cell, contrary to the last time taca appeared.

Agreed re. presentation of words. I ended up rewriting the list ordered by length on a separate piece of paper for the meandering wordsearch. Somewhat ironic that this rather unnoteworthy theme was deemed worthy of preserving whereas the highly impressive 'magic square' theme of the Hiroimonos last ...

10,11. Castle walls: the example answer keys contain O instead of X.
19. Coral: the example answer key has an extra X at the beginning.

Instructions are available here: https://bit.ly/3fBXexL

Alternatively, see the following thread: http://forum.logic-masters.de/showthread.php?tid=1950

Perhaps a small point of interest: the rankings at the top are very similar to those of PR round 2 (loops). Namely, the contestants in positions 1,2,3,4,6,8,10,12 in this contest are roughly around the same position in both contests. I don't think I've seen such similarity between two contests before!

It's worth mentioning that high-pointers are frequently overvalued, eg the variant yinyang in R2 and the no-Swiss slitherlink in R4. So it may well be worth going for the double choco and the maxi loop first.

If you want practice in the genre, head over to puzz.link. There are a few there under the name 'goishi'.

Just to note that the Logic Masters (aka the German puzzle championship) is happening online on the 5th of June, which is a Saturday, coinciding with the next sudoku GP weekend. It'll be a whole-day event with ten 45-minute rounds, of which each person skips one (I believe). Might be a good date to ...

That is a valid method of solving, but it may not be the most fun. An important pattern to be aware of here is the 'horseshoe' as I call it; if we have a U formed by three segments of length 2, there cannot be a circle in the gap. Note that R6C3 being white forces this pattern above. There is anothe...

I purposely spent several extra seconds on each puzzle checking diligently, so I'm relieved that it paid off. Hopefully my error streak for this year has come to an end now...

That would break the 4-way clue.

I think I can be confident in that it was unanimously found to be a very tough set. It's understandable for the organizers to up the difficulty from the previous series (given the general improvement in speed) but it was quite overdone.

I’ve constructed a Nurikabe battleships, if anyone wants to try. Probably quite tough (80 points?): https://git.io/JYeyw

Yeah, David definitely has a chance to claim 4th/5th place. 3rd is still theoretically possible but he’d have to solve at an absolutely blazing pace!

Preliminary results for round 3:

19. Sam Cappleman-Lynes 602.2
23. Tom Collyer 564
40. Freddie Hand 504

An unfortunate error from Sam, though one which costed only a single place. This felt like a relatively easier round, with a high number of scores in the low 500's.

Both are unique if you clarify a certain number of mines. Triangular with 6, socially distanced with 4.

Are you going to penalise errors, and if so, by what amount? Due to the nature of the interface it is very possible to register an error just due to an edge/digit/other object having been missed and not an actual solving mistake; it might be possible to consider an ‘honesty error’ system here.

I re-attempted the SPOLICY’s and indeed they presented little trouble to me (I don’t think I benefited from recollection). It might have been that I’d managed to convince myself of a particular incorrect placement in both puzzles.

I think you may have got lucky with the SPOLICY’s. My intuition ended up failing me so I had to go for a full casebash, which wasn’t particularly enjoyable. EKBM took 4 minutes on each of them though so I don’t feel quite as bad about it.