Based on a suggestion from James, we are experimenting this - There is no restriction on the number of puzzles that you can vote.

Is the example for Latin Tapa wrong or am I not understanding the rules correctly? The clue in R3C4 does not seem to read WORD clockwise.

Lonely Tapa is on page 54, not 53.

Yes, that clue should be "WDRO", compare https://maybepuzzles.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/latintapa-example.p... .

I have a question about Radar Tapa: Could there be a clue in the corner, which would imply that the diagonally adjacent cell is used by that clue?

No, clues will be only be in the centre and/or the edges for this variant (but corner clues are an obvious way to extend the idea).

And appropriately all by itself. :)

Voting for TVC XIX is closed now. As announced, we will include the top 6 voted variations [ Lonely Tapa (page 54), Tapa Pentopool (page 4), Thermometer Tapa (page 15), Tapa Chain (page 44), Tapa Row (page 23) & Anglers Tapa (page 29) ] in the contest.

Many thanks to the 45 players who participated in this voting.

Voting for TVC XX will be open in about a week.

TVC XIX is postponed by a week. It will start on 13th Feb.

What about TVC XX? Also postponed by a week? (Feb 27-29)

Is TVC XIX overlapping with Converse?

Yes that is the plan as of now. The LMI schedule is pretty full right now so any potential delay to a particular contest may cause an overlap. We did consider that, to the general audience, having TVC this weekend would have caused an overlap with the Sudoku GP anyway, so we thought it will just be two contests on another weekend. We will also be making some extensions during overlap weekends, as announced for the SM Converse Round in its discussion thread.

Is the Instruction Booklet coming out soon?

Well, that was an interestingly long delay, but hey, puzzles.

Black Hole Tapa: Just as confirmation, black holes may touch/share a side, right? (Only applies if N >= 2, of course.)
Power of Tapa: I suppose a clue of 0 means it's just ignored? (Like the 2-0 clue at R2C1 having only a single segment of 2.)

Sure, there is not any restriction of touching, so you are right if N is bigger than 2, blackholes can touch each other from the side.

If the zero in clue R2C1 was the exponential power of 2, the clue would be 1, but in this case the clue as it seems, so it means 2-0, and it should be blackened just 2 adjacent cells.

Yeah, I meant the question is whether a 0 that is not in an exponential clue is just ignored ("0 adjacent cells"). Looks like yes.

New practice puzzle for Black Hole Tapa from Anderson Wang :
https://qzqxq.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/puzzle-23-black-hole-tapa/

A clarification of Lonely Tapa. The instruction says "each orthogonally connected are of empty cells can contain at most one clue cell." So if it says "at most" it means there might be some empty cell blocks that don't connect any clue cells, however in the example all empty cell blocks connect to exactly one clue. So, please check the new example, because there might appear some empty cell or blocks that doesn't have any connection with clue cells.

Lonely Tapa Example



Edited by yureklis 2016-12-06 1:51 AM

For Tapa 1-n, is it required that the numbers of cells in each row/column must be in the range 1-n (as the name seems to suggest)? Or can there be rows/columns with 0 shaded cells?

Hi,
I want to practice TAPA classic and variants, can you recommend some puzzle book which I can order online to practice.

Sounds like Serkan's Tapa and Variations book is just what you're looking for: http://www.gmpuzzles.com/store/classic-and-variations-series

Otherwise the TVC archives provide plenty of practice material: http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/

Announcements Password protected puzzle has 11 pages (including a cover page with points table) Time bonus will be computed after you click 'Claim Bonus' Penalty will be given irrespective of correctness of submission Contest Length : 75 minutes Total Points : 1000 Bonus : 3 points per minute saved (Computed upto seconds) Grace Period : 5 minutes Penalty : 5 points per minute used (Computed upto seconds)

Some practice puzzles collected by James: http://forum.ukpuzzles.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1619

Why are all answers marked as wrong? (Or just all 7 people who have submitted so far did not get any correct answers, but I doubt that!)

We had not (yet) entered the solution keys in the score page. Have done that now. Please check score page again.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

All nice puzzles, no complaints. Okay, maybe Chain Tapa should be named Cyclic Tapa (#105, p40), but otherwise no problem. All good puzzles; memorable ones are Arrow Tapa, the second Anglers Tapa, and Tapa Pentopool (which I typoed because I thought the last grid was 10x10, not 11x11).

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	A bit hard
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	A bit too many puzzles
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

My favorites were 1-n, Arrows and Anglers. Thanks!

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Thanks Fatih and Serkan, that was a lovely set of puzzles.

I struggled quite a bit with the Chain Tapa, and breezed through the Power of Tapa, but other than that things felt pretty even.

Now I look forward to the next one!

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	I have a different complaint

I didn't really have a good run. There were a lot of errors on my side. I had to restart a number of puzzles.

The grey cells in the Chain Sudoku were too light for me. I couldn't really tell the difference between white and grey very well on my print. Also a minor nitpick, it wasn't technically the right variant as that was a Cyclic Tapa.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

All of the puzzles I tried were very fun, thanks Serkan! I especially enjoyed the second Black Hole tapa, and the Arrows tapa.

I didn't realize the gray cell brightness, mostly I'm using nearly same gray tones in a booklet, but next time I'll be much more careful about this. You are right about Chain Tapa, one of the competitors mentioned same issue, I know. Several years ago when Cihan offered these variants I said they are same, but from his side, it was not. I think the Cyclic Tapa variant already contains the Chain Tapa idea naturally, so Chain Tapa is not a different variant. After designing the competition puzzle for TVC XIX, I'm much more sure now. So I'm going to remove the Chain Tapa variant from the TVC Variant List.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Honestly, this was my very first online contest and it was pretty fun. Puzzles were creatively designed(at least I can say this about the puzzles I accomplished to solve). I really enjoyed this idea of competing online on a particular type of puzzle and I am looking forward for the next one. Nicely done! Thank you for your effort!

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	A bit hard
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

I'd remove Cyclic Tapa instead; cyclic implies it must make a cycle, while chain doesn't, so it's Cyclic Tapa that is contained in Chain Tapa, not the other way around.

I'd suggest to even change the name or something. For me, "chain" sounds like you solve a grid fully, then you move to the next grid and solve it fully, then the next, and so on; later grids don't influence earlier ones. But that's a minor nitpick; it's maybe just me.

Having shaded and unshaded squares in this puzzles was not the best decision. I would rather use some easily recognizable pictures, for example squares, triangles, circles, stars to mark the chain clues. Anyway, thanks for the contest, it was pretty fun.

Edited by greenhorn 2016-12-13 4:17 AM

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Way too many puzzles (too little time)
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

It make sense, I'll change the example and instruction of the puzzle as you suggested

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	A bit too many puzzles
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Link to solutions booklet

Thanks to all participants.

Top three are as follows:

1. Endo Ken (Japan) [18/18, 61:34 min]
2. Hideaki Jo (Japan) [18/18, 71:53 min]
3. Robert Vollmert (DEU) [18/18, 69:58 min]

After nearly 10-11 months break, finally we can keep going. Having a such long break, that was not planned, it should have been 2-3 months because of my broken hand, but I couldn't do that, so I'm sorry for this.

You know, in TVC series first one is always easier than the second one, I mean each leg of a series is getting harder. It means TVC XIX had to be harder than the TVC XVIII, so it does; because comparing last two results of TVC explain it. From my side, if we select a Tapa Master who must solve any kind of Tapa puzzles and difficulty range shouldn't be a case for him/her. However, there are some newcomers, and hard or complicated puzzles make trouble for them. My plan (I haven't shared with Kamer yet :) ) for the TVC XX is to increase number of puzzles in order to have an easy/medium and hard puzzles for each type. Thus we can introduce puzzles with a wide range of difficulty to all competitors.

About TVC XIX

4 solvers submitted all puzzles correctly, some of them accomplished this before the end, some of them made it happen in extra time; but all did.

In this Serie, Endo Ken got first place three legs in a row, this amazing performance was showed once before by Palmer Mebane, in 2012.

- The puzzle solved by least competitors was Power of Tapa. It was solved by 18 competitors.

- The puzzle solved by most competitors was Thermometer Tapa (Top). It was solved by 110 competitors.

- The puzzle with the highest rating was Tapa 1-n. (8.83) and the puzzle with the lowest rating was Anglers Tapa (Top) (6.70).

Full results table is here: http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/XIX/score.asp

Cumulative Results after three legs: http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/2016.asp

Tapa and Variations Ebook

The last thing I should mention this. As some of puzzle designers, I'm sure you know all of them, we've been contributing to Grandmaster Puzzles. Recently the list of ebooks of GMP was updated, and one of the newest ebooks is the Tapa and Variations ebook, prepared by me. About the ebook, copied from the page: "This collection of 65 puzzles includes 17 new classic Tapa (including 1 giant), 36 new puzzles spread across 9 variations, and 12 favorites from past puzzle competitions." So if you are a newcomer, or you like to solve Tapa, this ebook might be satisfying to you.

Here is the link: http://www.gmpuzzles.com/store/classic-and-variations-series

Please feel free to share any ideas.

Best,

serkan

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Probably the only complain is clues in chain tapa. Grey color was hardly visible to me.
All other complaind is only about my performance. How is it possible to make a submission mistake at most valuable puzzle?

Edited by AndreyBogdanov 2016-12-14 11:53 PM