WPC Day 2
ETA: So I had what should have been a good Day 1 but for my classic "dirty laundry" mistake of a wrong puzzle in a round I was counting on a huge time bonus. 57 points went away just like that. And I'm also frustrated, with so many new puzzle styles, that the written rules for some of them are unclear to me and I didn't even solve the intended puzzle. This is a consequence both of there being so many new styles, and many of these not actually having involved examples that test the rules. This is why many competitors now pre-construct puzzles, but I don't think competitors should have to and in this case I even couldn't as I read the rules in what to me is a more sensible way. Linked Squares is the concern. The rule says "Divide the grid along the grid lines into two parts, each having the size of 21 connected squares. Numbers outside the grid indicate the longest sequence of connected squares belonging to one part of the grid in the corresponding row/column." (bold: my emphasis). My problem comes from the use of the word "one" instead of "either". There are styles of puzzles where the outside clues indicate that the longest possible group of one type is just X. There are other styles of puzzles where the outside clues indicate that the longest possible group of either type is X. If you want both of the areas to not be longer than X, please say so. And don't take off points for my solving a puzzle also described by your rules and not adequately demonstrated in your example where, for each clue, you can always find one part whose longest length is the number, and the size of the other part does not matter.
So Day 2 starts with more hour long rounds with a lot of variety. In general I'm comfortable with all but one or two styles in each round, so as long as I don't solve too quickly and run out of puzzles I can comfortably score a lot of the points and have a shot to finish some of them certainly.
First up is Lines and Arrows, a round with primarily loop puzzles and a few other types. I'm sure Palmer is hoping to catch up some ground here but I figure to be doing well too (sort of like last year in Eger where I expected I'd lose the Sprint round to Palmer but gain ground on Ulrich anyway since I had a ton of puzzle familiarity. Pointing at the Treasure is the only sort of new type that I'll have to solve on my feet.
Then is "Assorted Puzzles", the least thematic name of all the rounds. The new Pipeline (sort of U-Bahn with no real links) could be a time suck, but I'll leave them towards the end. This also has the first of two sudoku variants, "Andy's Sudoku", which is an odd combo of a little killer, frame, skyscraper, and outside sum, and diagonal. Not sure who Andy is. And of course more domino puzzles since this tournament has them almost everywhere. Even with one counting puzzle, I figure to get about 16 of these 18 out in the time (trusting I counted the puzzle number right and there aren't 19).
Closing out the morning is a Skyscrapers themed round with one classic and six variants. I've solved several of these from THE skyscrapers source -- Roland Voigt -- and also the Croatian National Championship, but two are a bit new and led to me doing some planning but not construction.
Since the competition has so little free time, the morning update puzzle will be a real oddball from the afternoon rounds. It is, I guess, something of a Star Battle variation, but with only strong column constraints, half-strong no touch region constraints, and row clues but not regular constraints. The instructions may seem impenetrable to many of you at home. I felt the same way, but I took a week to study the instruction booklet so I could at least manage an adequate performance on this kind of odd puzzle. Here is my attempt to leave my mark on an example of this type.
Rules: (from WPC Booklet)
There are 10 (8 in the [e]xample) farms (areas with thick borders) in the grid. Locate 2 houses, 1 well and 1 farmer (some symbols are already given) on each farm so that there are also 2 houses, 1 well and 1 farmer in each column. A well must be adjacent to [(share an edge with)] at least one house on its farm. Two houses from different farms cannot touch, not even diagonally. The same goes for two wells and for two farmers. Two houses on the same farm can be adjacent. Numbers on the right indicate the number of houses in the corresponding row, while numbers on the left indicate the combined number of wells and farmers in the corresponding row.
So Day 2 starts with more hour long rounds with a lot of variety. In general I'm comfortable with all but one or two styles in each round, so as long as I don't solve too quickly and run out of puzzles I can comfortably score a lot of the points and have a shot to finish some of them certainly.
First up is Lines and Arrows, a round with primarily loop puzzles and a few other types. I'm sure Palmer is hoping to catch up some ground here but I figure to be doing well too (sort of like last year in Eger where I expected I'd lose the Sprint round to Palmer but gain ground on Ulrich anyway since I had a ton of puzzle familiarity. Pointing at the Treasure is the only sort of new type that I'll have to solve on my feet.
Then is "Assorted Puzzles", the least thematic name of all the rounds. The new Pipeline (sort of U-Bahn with no real links) could be a time suck, but I'll leave them towards the end. This also has the first of two sudoku variants, "Andy's Sudoku", which is an odd combo of a little killer, frame, skyscraper, and outside sum, and diagonal. Not sure who Andy is. And of course more domino puzzles since this tournament has them almost everywhere. Even with one counting puzzle, I figure to get about 16 of these 18 out in the time (trusting I counted the puzzle number right and there aren't 19).
Closing out the morning is a Skyscrapers themed round with one classic and six variants. I've solved several of these from THE skyscrapers source -- Roland Voigt -- and also the Croatian National Championship, but two are a bit new and led to me doing some planning but not construction.
Since the competition has so little free time, the morning update puzzle will be a real oddball from the afternoon rounds. It is, I guess, something of a Star Battle variation, but with only strong column constraints, half-strong no touch region constraints, and row clues but not regular constraints. The instructions may seem impenetrable to many of you at home. I felt the same way, but I took a week to study the instruction booklet so I could at least manage an adequate performance on this kind of odd puzzle. Here is my attempt to leave my mark on an example of this type.
Rules: (from WPC Booklet)
There are 10 (8 in the [e]xample) farms (areas with thick borders) in the grid. Locate 2 houses, 1 well and 1 farmer (some symbols are already given) on each farm so that there are also 2 houses, 1 well and 1 farmer in each column. A well must be adjacent to [(share an edge with)] at least one house on its farm. Two houses from different farms cannot touch, not even diagonally. The same goes for two wells and for two farmers. Two houses on the same farm can be adjacent. Numbers on the right indicate the number of houses in the corresponding row, while numbers on the left indicate the combined number of wells and farmers in the corresponding row.