Finnish Puzzle and Sudoku Championships (3th-5th August)

[ashar]

The Finnish Puzzle and Sudoku Championships will be held this weekend, 3th-5th of August. The contest site is at http://nusquiro.futupeople.com/ and the appropriate contests there are Puzzle SM 2012 and Sudoku SM 2012.

I at least won't translate all the instructions, but if there are specific questions about details, I can answer those as time permits. I'm not an organizer, just another contestant, so I can only explain things that are stated in the instruction booklets.

I did write the code that runs the contests, and I'd like to release it for everyone to use freely if there's any interest, so let me know, and also give feedback on the contest experience and what improvements you can think of.

[DavidC]

Hello. I can open the Sudoku SM 2012 PDF file using the password las7eNkdil. I do not understand the yellow answer (Vastaus) box in the PDF. In question 1 (normal Sudoku) I see a yellow Vastaus box with the numbers 785281476 - there are two number 8s which is a surprise. I cannot see those numbers as a Row or Column in the 9x9 answer picture. The picture of the Sudoku question has Row 2 as [ ][ ][2][1][7][4][3][ ][ ]. Do you see the same numbers as me for the Sudoku and the Vastaus ? Please tell me where the Vastaus is in the Sudoku. Is it a computer font problem with the PDF in English instead of Finnish ? Thank you.

[ashar]

In all the sudokus, the answer is formed by entering the numbers of the circled cells, from top to bottom. So they don't form any row or column and numbers can thus repeat. This is indeed not explained anywhere in the instructions...

[kiwijam]

Copying the text into Google translate gives a basic translation. They're almost all classic puzzles anyway (many Japanese types), the instructions can be found under these names: (some I can't remember the name of, so I give basic rules too)
1. Slalom
2. Kakuro
3. Black and White
4. Slitherlink
5. Creek
6. Easy as ABC
7. Every Second Corner
8. XO (fill each numbered cell with an X or O, the number gives how many of the opposite (O<->X) symbol are in neighbouring cells).
9. Skyscraper
10. Network (draw a connected grid, lines cannot cross each other)
11. Arukone
12. Akari
13. Hitori
14. Ice fishing (draw lines of given length from each hole, they cannot touch each other)
15. Grouping (draw some non-touching lines for digits to move along, so that each region then contains identical digits)
16./17. 7s / Js (Draw non-touching shapes into the grid. 45 degree rotations allowed, reflections not allowed. Clues give how many diagonal/orthogonal lines are seen in that direction)
18. Nurikabe
19. Masyu
20. Yajilin
21. Arrows

[tamz29]

For Sudoku
I'm assuming 11 is Antiknight and 12 is Non Consecutive?

[DavidC]

Thank you ashar.

[sknight]

Very glad the puzzles are mostly pretty standard, because Google Translate isn't so great at Finnish.
I like "Sphere, the number indicates the number of times the ball next to it is a baby" for the Network puzzle.

[ashar]

For Sudoku
I'm assuming 11 is Antiknight and 12 is Non Consecutive?

12 is Non Consecutive, but if I'm right about what Antiknight is, 11 isn't that. In 11 it's just that the same number cannot additionally be in diagonally neighboring cells. If you look, the example solution has 1's with a knight's move apart.

[kiwijam]

Thanks for the invitation Jaakko, it was a nice test.
And good luck in qualifying for the Finland team, your score looks quite good but it is still early...

[DavidC]

Unfortunately I have had a busy weekend and was only able to start the two-hour sudoku paper when there was one hour left, but I still enjoyed it ! Thank you for telling us about it.

[drsteve]

Thanks for the competition - got caught out on entering my solutions for the puzzle comp though. Perhaps there are more straightforward (and quicker) ways for some of the puzzles...

[MellowMelon]

Some adventure that was. I ended up realizing this contest existed just barely before the ending time, and impulsively decided to start it immediately without even reading the instructions. This resulted in such fun things as the printer running out of paper halfway through, me forgetting to make desk space and accidentally working in range of my fan which blew pages all over the place, trying to figure out answer extraction mechanisms and puzzle rules from the examples alone as the timer was running, wondering what the heck was up with 17.... Adding that to the fact that I also broke more puzzles than I'm comfortable with, I'm guessing a 75-80 minute finish would have been in reach on a better day with actual preparation.

The puzzles were pretty nice on the whole; 15 was probably my favorite. The only one I did not enjoy was the Arrows (21), which required a bifurcation for me to get started anywhere and a couple more later on.