That's Why They Call Him . . .
For me, a lot of this weekend was logic puzzles.
The United States Puzzle Championship was last weekend, and a lot of my friends participated. I usually don't, for a lot of reasons. The biggest, of course, is that I am generally working during the time of the test. The other reason is that some of my friends (like motris and thedan) are the top solvers, so I am very aware of how far away from that level of competition I am.
But motris makes these competitions seem so enticing. I headed over to Logic Masters India, which regularly runs logic-puzzle competitions, to print out some of their past sets. Then I decided to take part in this month's Sprint Test.
I came in at 114th out of 211 submitted solutions. Which is about par for me. I've also been playing more or less daily at Croco-Puzzle, a German site that offers two timed puzzles per day, tied into a robust rating system (described by motris in this post). Your rating system runs from 0 to 3000, with 1500 representing the median solving time. After building up my ranking slowly over the course of the year, I'm starting to level off. I struggled for about a month to get a ranking above 250th, and I worked all summer to get from a rating of 1300 to 1400. My goal is to inch myself over that median.
This is, thus far, the post I planned to write. The title of this post was going to be "That's Why They Call Me the Middle of the Pack," because that's pretty solidly where I am on these puzzle competitions. It's still a pretty good showing, considering that the folks who take the time to participate in these competitions self-select to the pretty hardcore anyway.
But then, this happened:
Yup, that's me at number 1! With motris down at 17th place as "mars," and USPC and Sprint Test winner MellowMelon at 12! And that's a thirteen-second lead on #2!
It's just for today. And there's still thirteen hours for people things to change. But still, for now, I'm the leader of the pack.
This journal has moved to Dreamwidth. Entry originally posted at http://tablesaw.dreamwidth.org/486167.html.
Comment(s)
The United States Puzzle Championship was last weekend, and a lot of my friends participated. I usually don't, for a lot of reasons. The biggest, of course, is that I am generally working during the time of the test. The other reason is that some of my friends (like motris and thedan) are the top solvers, so I am very aware of how far away from that level of competition I am.
But motris makes these competitions seem so enticing. I headed over to Logic Masters India, which regularly runs logic-puzzle competitions, to print out some of their past sets. Then I decided to take part in this month's Sprint Test.
I came in at 114th out of 211 submitted solutions. Which is about par for me. I've also been playing more or less daily at Croco-Puzzle, a German site that offers two timed puzzles per day, tied into a robust rating system (described by motris in this post). Your rating system runs from 0 to 3000, with 1500 representing the median solving time. After building up my ranking slowly over the course of the year, I'm starting to level off. I struggled for about a month to get a ranking above 250th, and I worked all summer to get from a rating of 1300 to 1400. My goal is to inch myself over that median.
This is, thus far, the post I planned to write. The title of this post was going to be "That's Why They Call Me the Middle of the Pack," because that's pretty solidly where I am on these puzzle competitions. It's still a pretty good showing, considering that the folks who take the time to participate in these competitions self-select to the pretty hardcore anyway.
But then, this happened:
Yup, that's me at number 1! With motris down at 17th place as "mars," and USPC and Sprint Test winner MellowMelon at 12! And that's a thirteen-second lead on #2!
It's just for today. And there's still thirteen hours for people things to change. But still, for now, I'm the leader of the pack.
This journal has moved to Dreamwidth. Entry originally posted at http://tablesaw.dreamwidth.org/486167.html.
Comment(s)