What does smallest rectangular Sea Area mean exactly? Is that the smallest rectangle the pentomino shape could be fitted in (with max dimensions 10 by 10)? Is this purely by size (9x4=6x6)?

The best, where Pentamino area limited by the rectangle of smaller area. For example, the area bounded by the rectangle 8x10 better that by the rectangle 9x9.
The length of the rectangle cannot be more than 10.

Deb, please change places K and N in the Tie-breaker. Must be K + 1.5N.

To clarify, it's the Pentomino area that's on the tiebreaker, not the Sea area, right?

In our case Pentamino area is the Sea area.

So it's the area that's not covered by pentomino, the area that doesn't contain the ships?

The area not covered by pentominoes is "land". The pentominoes are the "sea". The ships are placed into the sea somewhere. So then the pentominoes contain ship cells and empty sea cells.

You need to find the smallest rectangle (max 10x10) that will hold all your pentominoes.

Oh, right, ships are placed on sea. I instinctively translate regions left without pieces as sea.

I also misread the tiebreaker, thinking that the tiebreaker is to minimize the area of the largest rectangular region that is entirely inside the pentominoes.

question about 9 ACCORDANCES

Is the question solvable only with logic/algebraic calculations or does it require knowledge in a particular field? (music, sport, astronomy etc.)

Sorry for repeating the question, that was above, but nevertheless - my answers for puzzles 1 and 12 are considered in wrong format, though I checked it many times. Deb said that it would be fixed, but it's still not. Is there a way to be sure that the format of the answer is right? Maybe a pm from someone? I'm not asking to check the answer itself, only format.
One more question - about puzzle 8 - how do you write the content of a cell with a number, if it has more than one digit - for example 19 - should I write 19 or 9, for example, or somehow else?

Edited by Igor_Aipkin 2016-04-26 1:27 AM

I have used the notation in parenthesis - for example (19). i know the length of the input string is longer and the format alarm goes on but i believe this is a warning for the player rather than a physical limitation to the length. If i am wrong pls administrator let me know and i will change the format

Fixed red warnings for 1 (again)
Red warnings for 12 can not be fixed. Please ignore them and submit carefully.
About 8 : Riad expects to type 19. You can follow forcolin's advice above, if you want.

Accepted any answer.

Only one solver gave the last digits of the numbers, but I'll count this answer as correct.

In the puzzle VOYAGE five solvers have indicated a certain number once (instead of having to do it twice). I think to count such answers as correctly, because the solvers could be difficulties with the translation of the text.

Riad, I'd like to know your personal opinion about the way to solve optimizers - how do you think, is it ok to write programs to solve them, or they should be solved by a human alone? I know you can't check how everyone does it, but how are they intended to be solved? Can a solution, found by a program, be "true"?

Igor, I am not a programmer. In the years of study at University, I have relied on pure math, and now regret that I ignored the programming. 16 years since I quit math and do editorial work. As a solver I don't use programs. Are programmers other solvers? I don't know. I know that Kiwijam, won in the April Contest in past years, reported in detail on their strategies for optimization puzzles and without programming.

Zadanije 7. Nugno perechislat vse cisla v geltoy linii (primer 12) - 12,12,10,8,11 ili tolko po odnoy - 12,10,8,11

I generally don't think it would be fair to use programming in this contest, and in fact I am very pleased with Riad's ideas for optimizer puzzles, which in general are fairly accessible to logical reasoning + taking educated guesses, and wouldn't be trivial at all to do by computer. (Of course the computer software, if you manage to write it, would find the optimal solution. In this year's contest my impression is that optimal solutions to both optimizer puzzles are achievable purely by logical deduction, but we'll only know once my scores on those puzzles become known. In previous year contests the optimizers involved a lot more guesswork for me and I didn't get optimal solutions or see a way to reason entirely logically to find those (even after seeing the optimal solution).

for question 7; voyage:
for example some portion of loop is white cell-10-10-white cell...
answer format should be which: 10 or 10,10 ?
example given does not clarify this.

About programming for optimizer, I agree that it's not the spirit of this test to allow programming. I fail to see how "opti-pentobattle" could be programmed, but "in the citadel" can be modelized by a very classical optimisation problem (I'll probably code it for fun at one point). But despite the tentation, I was happy to notice that for "in the citadel", there was a purely logical way to know if a path is optimal or not (well, until answers are checked, I hope I'm right). I've yet to do opti-pentobattle, so I can't comment on this one.

For now, I'm quite happy to have solved Mirrored Sudoku and Voyage today, afer breaking both of them twice this week-end !

Question for "Borderless Sextet" : that's probably me overthinking, but can the battleships region contain black cells ? I ask only because other types mention it specifically ("possibly with black cells"...) and not battelships. If so, I understand that ships can't go on black cells, so black cells are necessarily water ?

Answer should be just 10. Each block of numbers between white cells gets one number written only.
But if there is a white cell between them, you write one number for every block: e.g. for "white cell-10-10-10-white cell-10-10-white cell..." you will write "10,10".




Yes, the Battleship region can contain black cells. Nothing can be written in any black cell.

Po odnoy. Vsyakiy raz pri vhode linii v zhyoltuyu figuru.

If 10-10-10-white cell-10, the answer should be: 10, 10. The line has twice been recognized as a yellow figure, so 10 twice.
I was originally offered other answer format, but he admitted long. The current format I think difficult to grasp, but this proposal of my Indian friends.