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02 April 2007 @ 08:45 am
WSC 2 press clippings -  
EUX.tv article -
Highlights: "Fast-talking, self-confident preppie";
Suggested corrections: the walking and crawling quote is a little wrong, but not as bad here as elsewhere (see below); the history of the puzzle is a little off, Euler did make puzzles out of Latin squares but never included a box constraint so he's not exactly the author.

AFP article on Yahoo -
Suggested corrections: as I learned last year, every time I say "US Puzzle Championship" and also talk about World Puzzle Championships, the press creates a new event, the US World Puzzle Championship. I corrected it in the gather.com article written about me last year, but to correct this one: I am not (yet) a WPC champion, I am a USPC champion. The timeline quote went more like "I started doing mathematical and logic puzzles when I was four or five at the time between crawling and walking and when one starts going to school." The last half was a little incoherent, maybe I spoke too fast, and I did give an unfortunate place to cut it. So apparently I was a very slow crawler and/or a very late walker.

London Times Article
Highlights: it fairly marks off the one minute of time I did checking the final puzzle. The first of the two playoff puzzles (not the one pictured) actually determined the championship as I finished it clean in ~8:10 and Yuhei Kusui did not. I took my time on this puzzle, knowing I just needed to finish it or be at most 26 cells from a solution.
Suggested corrections: I perform chemistry by putting substrates on DNA, not "sub straights." He did ask for a lot of scientific details, but I guess I could have at least checked a fairly basic spelling. Relating to how I'm solving fast, in our conversation Michael Harvey described what he saw better than the quote ended up. I would have written "His eyes seemed to already be searching for the next number to write even before his pen had finished writing the digit."



(Non-Press) Blog Reports:
Report from Thepiemansimon (UK team)
Highlights: just about the whole thing - this is a lovely report. The description of the even puzzle in the playoffs is quite amazingly accurate (at least in how my gear was a little down in the other rounds where I was safe provided I did not error). My mistake on the second question would have been caught a lot faster had I started with the fast check technique with all the hand motion and not summed all the long diagonals in the little killer instead.



I'll continue to update this as I find more articles/videos (I am really hoping for the videos of the WSC playoffs so I can give an "anatomy of a solution" kind of walkthrough of me solving the hardest puzzles).
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( 10 comments — Post a new comment )
The Dan[info]thedan on April 2nd, 2007 01:21 pm (UTC)
"US world puzzle championship" is inaccurate, of course, but it sort of makes sense in a way; given that I tend to refer to abstract logic puzzles as "WPC-style puzzles," one could almost interpret "world puzzles" as a genre, and the USPC as the US "world puzzle" championship.
The Dan[info]thedan on April 2nd, 2007 01:27 pm (UTC)
Also, another problem with the Times article: they don't give the "round number" constraint for the jigsaw sudoku.
[info]jdyer on April 2nd, 2007 01:49 pm (UTC)
I tried to post that to the comments (someone already complained about the puzzle being non-unique) but the system tells me "thank you for posting your comment" and then doesn't post the comment. Yerk.
motris[info]motris on April 2nd, 2007 02:20 pm (UTC)
I resolved it without the round number constraint - you don't need to be given it. You do need to recognize that the jigsaw pieces cut into the nonet shapes and that is the problem with the suggested non-uniqueness as it puts two 3's in one box and two 9's in one box. The World champion posted his own correction, and it also did not make the site.
lunchboy[info]lunchboy on April 2nd, 2007 05:15 pm (UTC)
The corrections are there now. Not too dramatic a variant; I finished in 8:45 -- nowhere near world champion time, but pretty good, I think!
The Dan[info]thedan on April 2nd, 2007 06:15 pm (UTC)
It took me 6:40... I didn't actally notice that the jigsaw pieces were considered regions until the very end. I think the construction would have been more interesting (and potentially pitfall-inducing) if the result wasn't a valid solution if the grid were divided traditionally, though I'll have to think about whether the symmetry makes that possible. (If I'd realized the actual rules, I think I might have been faster since some of the symmetries allow for major shortcuts.)
motris[info]motris on April 2nd, 2007 06:22 pm (UTC)
For this variant, what would have possibly worked best would actually have been to give players 9 "pieces" which could be put together to form the final puzzle (hence actually using the jigsaw aspect). That the puzzle required neither the round number constraint, nor assembly, made it more of an irregular with very very easy law of leftover rules.
motris[info]motris on April 2nd, 2007 06:23 pm (UTC)
I will promise to post, if it is never up, the diagonal that actually decided the finals - not this puzzle. I was very slow on this final puzzle (not even seeing the chain of 4's for like a minute and a half) as I was trying hard ways to solve parts of it and taking my time so as to not error, as I knew I would finish.
Cazique[info]cazique on April 2nd, 2007 02:03 pm (UTC)
this is awesome - congratulations!
iam_nicy[info]iam_nicy on April 3rd, 2007 08:58 am (UTC)
hy! WOW that you won sudoku!
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