Re: Do the puzzles from the championship get posted anywhere?
anonymous
November 3 2008, 17:25:55 UTC
Yeah, I find that I'm good for about an hour of heavy lifting before my brain starts feeling blown out. I'd planned to sit out round 1 (Expert Level), figuring that way I wasn't competing against Thomas in the second and third rounds. But I DID do it, finishing just under the wire, and the five minute breaks had me at blow-out level about ten minutes into Round 3. Finished 6th overall in Round 2, however.
I've often thought that one of the biggest advantage to finishing these puzzles very quickly is that you can actually practice MORE of them. My 1-hour durability seems to hold whether I'm solving 40 easies or 4 Sudocue nightmares, and so a consistently low time would allow a lot more practice in a given session. Very curious to hear how long Huang/Snyder/McLeod can go (I know Thomas, at least, can run full-throttle for three hours, as evidenced in some of these international competitions).
Overall conditioning helps, by the way. I find I can stretch my high-level times out to 90 or 100 minutes with 2000 mg of Acetaminophen (no anti-doping rules for Sudoku yet). It's interesting that the transition is so abrupt and binary - once I've 'blown a tire', I'm useless. 'Difficult' times balloon from ~4 minutes up to ~10 minutes, and even the 'easies' are a good bit slower. Usually takes me a couple hours to recover, and I'm not back to 100% until I've had a full sleep. Wish there were a way to reboot the brain...
I'd be curious to hear other people's experience with this...
I've often thought that one of the biggest advantage to finishing these puzzles very quickly is that you can actually practice MORE of them. My 1-hour durability seems to hold whether I'm solving 40 easies or 4 Sudocue nightmares, and so a consistently low time would allow a lot more practice in a given session. Very curious to hear how long Huang/Snyder/McLeod can go (I know Thomas, at least, can run full-throttle for three hours, as evidenced in some of these international competitions).
Overall conditioning helps, by the way. I find I can stretch my high-level times out to 90 or 100 minutes with 2000 mg of Acetaminophen (no anti-doping rules for Sudoku yet). It's interesting that the transition is so abrupt and binary - once I've 'blown a tire', I'm useless. 'Difficult' times balloon from ~4 minutes up to ~10 minutes, and even the 'easies' are a good bit slower. Usually takes me a couple hours to recover, and I'm not back to 100% until I've had a full sleep. Wish there were a way to reboot the brain...
I'd be curious to hear other people's experience with this...
Nathan
Reply
Leave a comment