USSC Report
Quick entry with ~10 minutes of internet connectivity.
So the trip out to Philadelphia was most threated by Made of Honor being the in-flight movie - definitely limited my choices to solving 50+ sudoku on the plane - although there were many stretches of actual turbulence. I found a few new soundtrack songs from the music choices that totally enhanced my sudoku solving ("Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (although the Kanye West "Stronger" version is probably most solid).
Did the standard Philly tourism tasks on Friday (independence hall, liberty bell, run up art museum stairs, walk around art museum inside) with my parents, who finally got to meet most of my close puzzling friends. Then headed to the Friday evening meet and greet where I was introduced in a memorable way as Dr. Thomas Snyder (no one ever really calls me this so it made me a bit happy to be recognized as a doctor). Many people talking to me - many with handouts or strategies to discuss, etc. Wei-Hwa had put together a Mutant Sudoku handout: 8 of his puzzles, 2 of mine, in a small number of our new styles and I expect a larger Sterling + Mutant Sudoku appearance for us next year, especially given how things worked out.
Nikoli wrote the puzzles this year, and they were often stellar, but early in the qualifying rounds I was not "speaking" with the constructor as well as I normally do. In fact my early competition performance with the nikoli puzzles was in contrast to the night before, when just flipping through the super spicy book 3 at the Friday event I ran into puzzle 75, and didn't just demonstrate getting started in 1 second, but grasped the entirety of this amazing theme in 1 second to a crowd of 10 or so curious sudoku solvers/fans. I'm sure I intimidated all those watching. Fortunately, I never accepted food or drink from another party ;)
The event still had three qualifying rounds but with three puzzles each at hard level, so I expected somewhat slower times. In round 1, I busted the last puzzle, tried to fix without full erasure, totally didn't manage that, did full erasure, then had a grid that was really tough to read. Wasted 8 minutes in the round on that puzzle. Still finished first in 14:45. While I'd observe Jason Z. finish after me, he had an error and Roger Barkan got the booby prize of being the "stage guy" if not for me needing to qualify once this year.
Second round was a disaster. I'd recently seen and loved a theme in a puzzle in one of Tetsuya Nishio's hard sudoku books where I contribute sudoku now where a single number is limited to 2 rows in 2 boxes (forcing a single row in the other box) and 2 columns in 2 boxes (forcing a single column in the same other box) giving a placement in the intersecting cell. Well, this round had a puzzle 2 with exactly this theme. For 12 minutes I failed to see that way in, and was doing other much less productive things. For the first time at a USSC I took extra time than I wanted, finished 4th in the round (I saw the number 6 at the time, but this year they reported all finishers in order, and two before me had errors). Tammy McLeod, last year's 2nd place, won the round.
Third round was the first time it truly clicked, and the round I will look back on as my prowess shining. 3 hard nikoli puzzles. Done in 8:20, with check in 8:45. Next finalist finished way later (14+?). I wouldn't qualify there again, and Tammy at 2nd was also already in, so it fell to the next clean solver. That person was a pleasant surprise - Wei-Hwa, my roommate, friend, and co-author.
Much time separates the end of the qualifiers and the onstage finals as there is lunch, some "bonus rounds" for age - I won, Jason won, Wei-Hwa won - the groups were sort of 3 years this time instead of 20-29, but I got sweet revenge on Roger's better Liberty Bell puzzle time in my age division. Then the beginners and intermediates played their final before the main event.
So I was in the center, WH on the left, Tammy on the right. This year, they lost the ability to project our puzzles to the audience as apparently some sideways screens would have revealed stuff to us. Anyway, the onstage format is still horrible for solvers and horrible for the audience if they can't see anything through us. The puzzle had 2 sticking points, and the first took me forever as it made me break my normal notes to write in triples, pairs along a row, etc., but I eventually found a critical placement. However, Wei-Hwa was several steps ahead at the time and while the audience might have enjoyed/expected some kind of a "comeback", I could not close all the ground in time. At about 8 minutes, Wei-Hwa nipped me by 26 seconds. I was totally fine if Wei-Hwa had beaten me at WSC1 (the last time I shared the stage with him), and I am tremendously happy (aside from the 8k poorer of course) that Wei-Hwa managed to finally win a playoff on-stage, hopefully breaking his streak that extends through too many WPCs. So, a new US champion was crowned but a totally familiar name, a mostly improved event (although there are still many things I'd like to see changed, especially the prize structure where squatting is encouraged in a bad way), and a good warm-up for the big competition, my attempt at gaining the title I do not have in hand, World Puzzle Champion.
So the trip out to Philadelphia was most threated by Made of Honor being the in-flight movie - definitely limited my choices to solving 50+ sudoku on the plane - although there were many stretches of actual turbulence. I found a few new soundtrack songs from the music choices that totally enhanced my sudoku solving ("Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (although the Kanye West "Stronger" version is probably most solid).
Did the standard Philly tourism tasks on Friday (independence hall, liberty bell, run up art museum stairs, walk around art museum inside) with my parents, who finally got to meet most of my close puzzling friends. Then headed to the Friday evening meet and greet where I was introduced in a memorable way as Dr. Thomas Snyder (no one ever really calls me this so it made me a bit happy to be recognized as a doctor). Many people talking to me - many with handouts or strategies to discuss, etc. Wei-Hwa had put together a Mutant Sudoku handout: 8 of his puzzles, 2 of mine, in a small number of our new styles and I expect a larger Sterling + Mutant Sudoku appearance for us next year, especially given how things worked out.
Nikoli wrote the puzzles this year, and they were often stellar, but early in the qualifying rounds I was not "speaking" with the constructor as well as I normally do. In fact my early competition performance with the nikoli puzzles was in contrast to the night before, when just flipping through the super spicy book 3 at the Friday event I ran into puzzle 75, and didn't just demonstrate getting started in 1 second, but grasped the entirety of this amazing theme in 1 second to a crowd of 10 or so curious sudoku solvers/fans. I'm sure I intimidated all those watching. Fortunately, I never accepted food or drink from another party ;)
The event still had three qualifying rounds but with three puzzles each at hard level, so I expected somewhat slower times. In round 1, I busted the last puzzle, tried to fix without full erasure, totally didn't manage that, did full erasure, then had a grid that was really tough to read. Wasted 8 minutes in the round on that puzzle. Still finished first in 14:45. While I'd observe Jason Z. finish after me, he had an error and Roger Barkan got the booby prize of being the "stage guy" if not for me needing to qualify once this year.
Second round was a disaster. I'd recently seen and loved a theme in a puzzle in one of Tetsuya Nishio's hard sudoku books where I contribute sudoku now where a single number is limited to 2 rows in 2 boxes (forcing a single row in the other box) and 2 columns in 2 boxes (forcing a single column in the same other box) giving a placement in the intersecting cell. Well, this round had a puzzle 2 with exactly this theme. For 12 minutes I failed to see that way in, and was doing other much less productive things. For the first time at a USSC I took extra time than I wanted, finished 4th in the round (I saw the number 6 at the time, but this year they reported all finishers in order, and two before me had errors). Tammy McLeod, last year's 2nd place, won the round.
Third round was the first time it truly clicked, and the round I will look back on as my prowess shining. 3 hard nikoli puzzles. Done in 8:20, with check in 8:45. Next finalist finished way later (14+?). I wouldn't qualify there again, and Tammy at 2nd was also already in, so it fell to the next clean solver. That person was a pleasant surprise - Wei-Hwa, my roommate, friend, and co-author.
Much time separates the end of the qualifiers and the onstage finals as there is lunch, some "bonus rounds" for age - I won, Jason won, Wei-Hwa won - the groups were sort of 3 years this time instead of 20-29, but I got sweet revenge on Roger's better Liberty Bell puzzle time in my age division. Then the beginners and intermediates played their final before the main event.
So I was in the center, WH on the left, Tammy on the right. This year, they lost the ability to project our puzzles to the audience as apparently some sideways screens would have revealed stuff to us. Anyway, the onstage format is still horrible for solvers and horrible for the audience if they can't see anything through us. The puzzle had 2 sticking points, and the first took me forever as it made me break my normal notes to write in triples, pairs along a row, etc., but I eventually found a critical placement. However, Wei-Hwa was several steps ahead at the time and while the audience might have enjoyed/expected some kind of a "comeback", I could not close all the ground in time. At about 8 minutes, Wei-Hwa nipped me by 26 seconds. I was totally fine if Wei-Hwa had beaten me at WSC1 (the last time I shared the stage with him), and I am tremendously happy (aside from the 8k poorer of course) that Wei-Hwa managed to finally win a playoff on-stage, hopefully breaking his streak that extends through too many WPCs. So, a new US champion was crowned but a totally familiar name, a mostly improved event (although there are still many things I'd like to see changed, especially the prize structure where squatting is encouraged in a bad way), and a good warm-up for the big competition, my attempt at gaining the title I do not have in hand, World Puzzle Champion.