Originally, my thoughts on this championship - whatever happened - was that I would just say "WSC4 Occurred. Flying Home" and not blog anymore. I still sort of feel that is somewhat fitting for this crazy championship, but I'll do my best to relay the first 2/3 of the first day (we have extra rounds running to midnight tonight so 15 hours of puzzling - with playoffs for team and individuals tomorrow still.



So far, I'm doing very well except on the "Guinness" round which I'll comment on later. I would say though that the hotel is the best part of this competition so far - excellent meals (desserts with powdered sugar with a missing fork imprint - what you'd normally pay 50+ for at a fancy restaurant I guess). Wireless is free - for our group at least - and there is a "tennis court" and "putting green" on my floor - under lock and key on the roofs of the lower levels of the structure, but interesting nonetheless

Today started with a 2hr individual round with a lot of linked puzzles. It seemed the ones in the front would give a single digit for the ones in the back but it turned out sometimes the puzzle in front was non-unique and needed the classic 9x9 to be solved and othertimes not. So I'd alternate and flip through the booklet time and again, stuck on both halves, until I sorted out what to do. I eventually finish 28 of the 29 puzzles, but had 6 cells unknown (a deadly 56 pattern in the 8x8 irregular) that would be resolved in I could have solved the classic sudoku in the back. As it was I hadn't (and guessed poorly) so I lost 7 + 5 points for only not solving the 7 point sudoku. Still 168 out of 180 was solid.

Part B was a bunch of "unusual format" number puzzles, including a Mayan Sudoku which was just a classic sudoku but you had to provide your numbers in the form of mayan digits. Solving a puzzle and translating it back into bars and dots was not the highlight of the championship but I did it ok. The Roman Numeral Sudoku is a more fitting variation and went ok, but I broke the LED 1-9 sudoku in the back and could not tweak in time. 5 people claimed to have finished the round, but in reality no one got full marks so my 21 out of 31 was also best.

Part C was 4 different grids shaped like a Snowman. A snowflake sudoku (a circular/hexagon) puzzle was up top, followed by a body with a Pencilmark Sudoku - easily my least favorite of all the variations I've ever met that aren't 25x25 or larger - and then two smaller parts of the body in an 8x8 irregular and an 8x8 with 1-4 with digit repetition (but not digit touching). GOt through this well, checked, and turned in first for full marks and 5 bonus as top finisher.

Part D was the Guinness round. I'll post the puzzle here subsequent to this with this challenge: solve this logically in under 30 minutes. Scanraid has a lovely path that makes me reminisce about the sanity of Classic 4 in India. Anyway, everyone in the room was guessing and whoever was luckiest got through it. The winning time of 3:06 suggests reckless guessing and good luck, as I hadn't even found a good guess point until 2 minutes in, and then had 75 digits of an incorrect solution when it finally contradicted. So a 0 there, but this puzzle is perfectly emblamatic of the fundamental problems I have with classic sudoku that have not gone through a hand-design process like the variations. I think there should become a type of round for these hard puzzles, but it must be solved like a mathematical proof. If you cannot demonstrate how you get a particular number, you get no marks. It actually brought up a new book idea I might develop (really, its WH's idea, but cool).

So then was lunch, and then a bunch of team rounds. Only the team rounds were fairly individual in design. First, a crazy round with grids split in 3's. We worked together to get into the 3xclassic - before WH and Jason went off to the other simpler tasks. I finished the classics, but 2 of the 3 grids have 4+ solutions. We checked so many times, but that is unfortunate. There may have been additional laxity in the intended grid-joining constraint, but in my opinion the round was busted. Still we finished, but nowhere close to the teams for bonus.

Then was the "musketry" round - a round with 1 puzzle that 1 team member would get for 10' and then have to pass to a new team member for the next 10' and then the last for the last 10'. So 20' was spent filling time (and you weren't allowed scratch paper or books on the desk basically). Jean-Christophe of France pulled out a pillow. Classic. I believe I was the one that broke the puzzle for us in this round, basically trying to force something that looked right by uniqueness but certainly wasn't.

Then was a "relay" round, with more waiting as just one individual could solve a puzzle for you at a time, with 3 ridiculous puzzles, then 3 easy puzzles. We'd set up so I'd be at the second desk for musketry and this (you couldn't change) so Wei-Hwa got to do the first manipulative one which involved folding a grid with lots of numbers on the outside to get a valid 8x8. Tough, but probably not as hard as the next two. I got a jigsaw with 18 3x3 squares partially filled, and a grid with 2 givens, and you have to choose the right 9 pieces, with 9 as noise, from the set to solve it. I had to be very thorough with what I checked, but 3-4 backtracks and reworks through and I was (seemingly) first to finish this puzzle of any team. Then Jason did a wordsearch which, he tells me, only had (by instruction) 5 of the 9 regions not having repeated characters (the message WSCZILINA already had 2 I's) but the "answer" had many W's and many Z's in a box or some other craziness. I'll believe when we get all the points, but with the challenging ones we'd seen so far, I can understand it. Then the last 3 were much easier and Jason in 2', me in 2', and Wei-Hwa in about 6' finished those puzzles to actually declare finished and likely get a lot of points. Cool if it holds up. Still, a tough round.

At this time, the first of the mini-playoffs started and I was one of 20+8 people with 21 points, and a 29th at 11 points who won a tiebreaker against some 56 other people got to do a single Arrow Sudoku (called something else here) but with only a center region and no boxes 1-4 and 6-9. It was tough, and the room was very loud as teams were talking in the back - this bothered me a lot. The puzzle had an extra gimmick with a point if you spotted it but that wasn't worth getting you ahead to the next playoff. So, when someone said finished, a wave of other people (including me) suddenly said finished too. There were more simultaneous submissions than proctors. This shows you it doesn't pay to be cute. Fortunately, there were only 7-8 in the first wave I think so the 9 to cut-off was likely cleanly selected. Still, the playoffs are no time to get too cute and the organizers made a fail there.

So, sitting ok both individually and team-wise I think. The playoffs tomorrow are crazy so my goal is really just to win the overall qualification. Then, depending on tomorrow, I"ll probably still just blog and say "WSC4 occurred. Flying Home".