Tapa Variations Contest XVI

Date: 28^th September - 1^st October 2013

Length: 75+5 minutes

IB and Submission Link : http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/XVI/

For Perspective Tapa, if only three cells meet at a corner then not all 3 can be painted?

Voting closed now.

Link to original post : TVC XVI Practise

Hello from Vancouver. Currently travelling before the WPC in Beijing. Need to be relaxed when I arrive there. Although maybe adding a small jetlag isn't totally the smartest thing. I was better located in Australia for that.

I wasn't sure if I could post any puzzles this week for the upcoming TVC XVI at Logic Master India.. I wrote a few puzzles on the plane, so I figure I'd share those. I hope they are of some use to people. Hopefully I will be able to compete in the last few days of the CTC and the last TVC. We will see. Everyone have fun at least.

There are four Tapas in this post.
The first puzzle is a Symmetric Tapa. This rule is very influential in the solve, so you really don't need many clues if you place your rectangles smartly. This one has four clues, but really shouldn't be that difficult a solve. I made it 11x11 as that way the rectangles would less likely share an edge if I placed all dots on grid points.
The second puzzle is a Toroidal Tapa. I like this variant. It's a bit trickier to design as you need to set a lot more blocks to make sure you can guide the wall where you want it to. I think this is a genre that can always use some practise, especially with looking around the edges of the grid. This puzzle is 12x12 as I liked this pattern of givens.
The third puzzle is a Transparent Tapa. This is the only genre that hasn't previously appeared on a TVC, so I figured I should at least make one of these. Although people can find a few of them on Prasanna Seshadri's blog. Oddly enough this rule change only means there is one clue that is invalid in normal Tapa. This one is also 12x12. I made an opening and then I noticed it would work more effectively in the corner of the grid. But to make a nice pattern of givens it would be better for the grid to be 12x12.
The fourth puzzle is a Alternative Tapa. This is the hardest of the four puzzles. This is not caused by the variant, as it's not overly influential in the solve. But the normal Tapa bit is pretty challenging and should give you all a bit of a challenge. Although maybe with the CTC you've had enough of those already. This one is 11x11 as it worked nicely with the TVC XVI pattern of letters.

Enjoy and have fun this weekend.

Puzzle can be found below.
Read more »


Posted in TVC, Tapa, Puzzle, LMI

Puzzle Points 1. Kakuro-Style Tapa 27+29+33+49 2. Tapa Place 16+57+53 3. Symmetric Tapa 24+36 4. Tapa Filler 46+23+25 5. Toroidal Tapa 47+49 6. Transparent Tapa 28+40 7. Tapa Mine 14+15+40 8. Mastermind Tapa 37+37+56+56 9. Tapa Tapa 47+33 10. Alternative Tapa 34+49

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 : 10 points per minute saved (Computed upto seconds) Grace Period : 5 minutes Penalty : 15 points per minute used (Computed upto seconds)

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(Edited as the forum is not restricted. The problem will be looked into shortly)

Oh, very sorry, somehow I thought they were always restricted.

please check the PM

You don't need to be. It is my responsibility to make the thread restricted, but I didn't do it since I didn't know how to do it. There are 2 ongoing tests with two different set of players having access to the threads. Luckily Prasanna gave a simple solution that we can make both the threads restricted and players finishing both the tests should have access.

So the thread is restricted now, with the above condition.

Link to score page : http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/XVI/score.asp

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 their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	All puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Nice sprint format to end TVC. I thought I wouldn't finish there. I don't feel comfortable as much with Filler and I was completely (and needlessly) stuck on the bottom Tapa Tapa. All of the puzzles were excellent. I did use a little intuition on the bottom Toroidal. Considering this was a TVC with a lot of variants I'm not comfortable with, I'm happy to have finished, albeit in penalty time.

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 their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	All puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Looking back at the penalty, I'll probably be losing quite a lot of points for submitting that last puzzle because of the penalty time. I hope there's some provision for the submissions that cause the score to drop to not get counted

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 their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	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?	A bit too many puzzles
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	I have a different complaint

No clue which grid is which on the kakuro styled page.

All was going ohk until after test i saw i have done silly mistake in two of puzzles. :(
Anyways nice puzzles. Will solve the remaining ones. :)
Thanks to authors for such wonderful test :)

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 their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	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

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 their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	All 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?	A bit too many puzzles
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	All puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Darn, I messed up answer entry on all three Tapa Fillers (entered the sequence of numbers instead of blocks) I hope I will get credit for these puzzles (otherwise that's 94 points down the drain).

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 easy
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 their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	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 easy 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 their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	All 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?	A bit easy
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 their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Curious about the scoring on this one. The score page for me is just showing every puzzle as being worth one point. Is that what we're going with, or will the point values in the score page be updated at some point? Or am I having a technical issue?

I thought it might be temporary to keep the final results of the TVC hidden till the test is over.

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?	Too many easy 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?	A bit too many puzzles
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Score page now shows the points (and submission times) correctly.

Interesting, looking at the cumulative results, you have to go as far down as 9th for someone who might have been higher (7th) without the best of 3 ruling.

Personally, really happy to have finished 6th. Thankfully my penalty goof in this last one doesn't affect my overall ranking at all, apart from maybe pushing me to "best of the rest" instead of "the worst of the best".

Cumulative results - I can't find them anywhere? Do you have special access?

http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/2013.asp

TVC 2013

The TVC 2013 is officially over. The last one was a little bit different than usual TVC puzzles distribution. One of the solvers who had chance to become the Tapa Master 2013 survived, so we had a new Tapa Master. Before this, I want to thank some people who make great effort for the TVC. Rohan Rao, Salih Alan, Wei-Hwa Huang and William Blatt tested TVC puzzles, and their effort made sure that I handled so many things right and fair. Especially TVC XV and TVC XVI were tough work for us, because I couldn’t make whole set of puzzles in a reasonable time before the contest date, and this caused lack of time for testers and Deb. However they helped perfectly even if I didn’t make my work on time.

I didn’t calculate, but I assume 4 solvers had a chance to be the Tapa Master. So former Master Palmer M. broke a puzzle on Sunday, and he put the title in danger but he was still the closest one to it. Yuta Nagata (nyuta) couldn’t solve all puzzles (there was one missing puzzle) and lost the chance. Neither Thomas competed nor Bram in Sunday and Monday. In the last day Bram took the test. I didn’t know what was going on, and Deb pinged me, “Bram did all puzzles correctly.” So it means that Bram was the Tapa Master 2013 in that time, but he still had an opponent who is Thomas S. If Thomas solved all puzzles, he would beat Bram and he would be the TM 2013. Probably Thomas took the test in last hours of TVC, so I saw the latest results in my morning and Thomas had a broken puzzle, that was a tiny mistake. The correct solution was 26, Thomas’s was 25. Frankly I would not want be in their shoes, because they were really close to get the title, and it must’ve been sad to lose the title with simple mistakes.
...

TVC XVI, top three

1. Hideaki Jo (Japan) [25/25 - 69.23 minutes]
2. Bram de Laat (Netherlands) [25/25 - 69.45 minutes]
3. Endo Ken (Japan) [24/25 - 54.49 minutes]

Hideaki has participated in all TVC’s, he got several top three results, but TVC XVI is first victory of him, also second Japanese solver to win a TVC round. As you remember first one was Endo Ken in TVC XIV.
...

Best puzzles of TVC 2013

1. Pata (TVC XIII) - 9.8
2. Outside Tapa (TVC XV) - 9.7
3. Alternative Tapa (TVC XVI) - 9.2
4. Pentapa (TVC XIV) - 9.1

Worst puzzles of TVC 2013

1. Tapa Tapa (TVC XVI) - 6.75
2. Total False Tapa (TVC XV) - 7.33
3. Tapa Borderline (TVC XIII) - 7.5
4. Tapa Clones (TVC XIV) - 7.5
...

And Deb.
If you have prepared an online competition for the LMI and also you have a Gmail account, probably you know about chatting with Deb in a small window:) We are doing this activity since 2010. Last 40 days we talked so many things about TVC, CTC and nonpuzzle issues… My point is, Deb did a great work again.

...

You know we were organizing TVC’s in Feb - March. We scheduled 2013 TVC in August - Sept because of WPF Sudoku Grand Prix. But we talked about getting back to the original schedule of TVC, so 2014 TVC will be organized in Feb-March.

I think the poll system worked. I’m not sure if this was useful for you, but I know it is a good thing that solvers has a chance to decide some of puzzle types in the competition.

...

Here is the TVC XVI results: http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/XVI/score.asp

Cumulative results of TVC 2013: http://www.logicmastersindia.com/TVC/2013.asp

...

Thanks to all participants, see you in next year.

...

Finally, the new TAPA MASTER is BRAM DE LAAT!

More tapas coming in 3-4 months!
I'm a fan of that!

Congratulations Bram, what a fight-back after your TVC XIII result!
Your comment at the time still makes me giggle, "ps. Palmer, dial it back a little." After that big victory, I admit it did look like TVC 2013 was a foregone conclusion...
And I'm quite happy to be (as Prasanna would put it) "2nd-best-of-the-rest". :)

newsbreak: http://puzzlepile.com/2013/10/03/tvc-xvi-series-results/

Thanks Bran for the nice write ups!