SM 2024 R2 - Odd Even & Hybrids (8th - 14th Mar) Score Discuss
PR 2024 R3 - Evergreens & MII (29th Mar - 4th Apr) has started Discuss
Instant Reactions48 posts • Page 1 of 2 • 1 2
@ 2012-08-26 1:35 AM (#8330 - in reply to #8324) (#8330) Top

affpuzz



Posts: 5

Country : United States

affpuzz posted @ 2012-08-26 1:35 AM

Argh... Well, a good first half and fell apart afterwards; I wasted too much time on the Pentahouses, and that just started the mistakes (packing for Croatia took way too long as well). Oh well, 180 if clean; almost assuredly breaking my 4 year streak of Clean-10th, mistake-23rd, clean-10th, mistake-23rd. Hopefully I was clean, but I'd be surprised if 180 was 10th....
@ 2012-08-26 1:48 AM (#8331 - in reply to #8328) (#8331) Top

nickbaxter



Posts: 10

Country : United States

nickbaxter posted @ 2012-08-26 1:48 AM

@spelvin. Sorry about the printing. The letter is Musketeer were 50%, which should have been ample. The paths in Kakuro were 20%, but still should have been fine and quite dark enough for me.

Edited by nickbaxter 2012-08-26 1:49 AM
@ 2012-08-26 1:51 AM (#8332 - in reply to #8331) (#8332) Top

MellowMelon



100
Country : United States

MellowMelon posted @ 2012-08-26 1:51 AM

I seem to recall in old USPC instruction booklets that there was a small gradient so that you could check the printer's grayscale. Guess that stopped happening at some point?
@ 2012-08-26 1:55 AM (#8333 - in reply to #8332) (#8333) Top

nickbaxter



Posts: 10

Country : United States

nickbaxter posted @ 2012-08-26 1:55 AM

It got moved to the Practice Test a couple years ago. But probably should go back to the instructions.
@ 2012-08-26 2:00 AM (#8334 - in reply to #8324) (#8334) Top

cnarrikkattu



Posts: 25
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Country : United States

cnarrikkattu posted @ 2012-08-26 2:00 AM

I start with the musketeer sudoku and the regular sudoku. I should have done them faster, but it's a fantastic pace for a USPC.
Magic Order was surprisingly straightforward after doing the practice puzzles people posted (thanks!). Half an hour in and I have 70 points (okay, in things I'm relatively good at).

And then it all goes downhill from there.
Normal corral is solved, but not very quickly for the 10 points. I go to the multiplicative corral, get almost to the end, then hit a contradiction that I can't remember how to back out of. Ugh.

I find 8 differences quickly, but missed the tail size and the fox glasses until the very last few minutes.
Got stuck in Battleships, got stuck in Masyu. Solved the first Shadow Boxing, but never remember to enter it.
I almost packed for Croatia, but always had a problem near the end. Wasted a lot of time there.

In the last few minutes, I give up packing and redo multiplcative corral, this time correctly.

So I had 70 points in the first half-hour thanks to the sudoku, but only get 40 the next 2 hours. At least all the puzzles next weekend are Sudokus. And the question for next week is by how many points do I not qualify for the team (0.208 in 2010, 5 in 2011) ;)


Edited by cnarrikkattu 2012-08-26 2:01 AM
@ 2012-08-26 2:02 AM (#8335 - in reply to #8333) (#8335) Top

spelvin



Posts: 18

Country : United States

spelvin posted @ 2012-08-26 2:02 AM

As I noted in my recap, I take full responsibility for the printing issues; considering how OCD I am about checking various things (I brought FOUR pencils and backup lead), it was very out of character for me not to look into it. Certainly not an asterisk situation.
@ 2012-08-26 2:09 AM (#8336 - in reply to #8324) (#8336) Top

standupcanada



Posts: 11

Country : Canada

standupcanada posted @ 2012-08-26 2:09 AM

Whoops - looks like I'm still not done packing. Chop 20 to put me in the 140-150 range --- again.
@ 2012-08-26 2:28 AM (#8338 - in reply to #8324) (#8338) Top

Nilz



Posts: 29
20
Country : United Kingdom

Nilz posted @ 2012-08-26 2:28 AM

Some thoughts from an outsider:
As expected, this was a nice test, with some very enjoyable puzzles. Snail's Nest was probably my favourite, with A Crossword second, and then Gapped Kakuro, Frozen Pentominoes and Musketeer Sudoku close behind.
In terms of organisation, from my point of view I'm not sure that allowing weekend-long participation has been a complete success, but it's certainly not been a disaster either. Firstly, because of the well-known issues with post-competition discussion, although this forum has helped diminish the problem somewhat (thanks Deb & LMI!). Secondly, the competition page itself probably needs a bit of an update- not having a reliable timer for each individual solver is quite an annoying flaw in my opinion (when I first refreshed the password page, there was no personal countdown clock, so I had no idea until after the test that that was available. And the fact that it refreshes if the page is refreshed is not ideal either). And it would be nice to be told when time is up, too. :-)
But as I said, I didn't have any major issues, so thanks to the puzzle composers for some enjoyable challenges. 265 if I've made no mistakes, which looks like it falls into the category of 'fairly good, but nowhere near Tom & Palmer (as expected!)'.
@ 2012-08-26 2:29 AM (#8339 - in reply to #8334) (#8339) Top

motris



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motris posted @ 2012-08-26 2:29 AM

cnarrikkattu - 2012-08-25 1:00 PM
So I had 70 points in the first half-hour thanks to the sudoku, but only get 40 the next 2 hours. At least all the puzzles next weekend are Sudokus. And the question for next week is by how many points do I not qualify for the team (0.208 in 2010, 5 in 2011) ;)


I wish you luck on the USSC, having had such close calls in the past (and other "just missed" moments in your competition history that were not your fault). If anything, repeating your past performance will get you on with the extra spot this year.
@ 2012-08-26 2:31 AM (#8340 - in reply to #8324) (#8340) Top

LordKinbote



Posts: 5

Country : United States

LordKinbote posted @ 2012-08-26 2:31 AM

Pretty much same as every other year. Started off really strong but then was left with a bunch of half-finished monstrosities. If it's clean, I'm thinking 146 for me. I enjoyed Grant's corral variation.
@ 2012-08-26 2:51 AM (#8343 - in reply to #8324) (#8343) Top

onigame



Posts: 18

Country : United States

onigame posted @ 2012-08-26 2:51 AM

I'm at 306, assuming no mistakes.

Missing: both Math Flips, Frozen Pentominoes, Gapped Kakuro, four Spot-the-Differences.

Math Flips I might have had a chance if I had focused practice on them, although this year I wasn't able to get the puzzle instructions until about 2 hours before the test and when you only have 2 hours practice you have to choose your battles. They were probably 20-pointers by my time.

Frozen Pentominoes was probably where I actually lost points. Assuming that my current solution is correct, my blind spot was not noticing that there was room for the L pentomino in the lower-right. On the other hand I'm not confident of my current solution -- it's not unique (the N can rotate 180 degrees), although all the constraints seem to work under double-checking. So maybe I'm missing something fundamental about the puzzle. In either case, the 5-10 extra minutes I spent on this probably would be better spent finding the 4 spot-the-differences I didn't get to.

Gapped Kakuro I must be totally missing some technique. I'm happy I didn't attempt it because it was a 52-minute solve for me afterwards. The logic is clean but short of intuitive guessing I don't see how I could have gotten my time to the 30-point range.
@ 2012-08-26 3:00 AM (#8345 - in reply to #8324) (#8345) Top

MellowMelon



100
Country : United States

MellowMelon posted @ 2012-08-26 3:00 AM

My Frozen Pentomino solution has the N able to move down one if it's rotated like that. I actually missed this before I checked my work and had to correct it, but it ended up not affecting answer extraction strangely.

For Gapped Kakuro, if your logic was clean you're probably not missing anything. The first couple Serkan instances I did (which were in previous Akil Oyunlari I think) also took me gobs of time also, like your 52-minute solve. I think this is because Serkan's Gapped Kakuros have some of the narrowest solving paths of anything I have ever seen. I had to get a few of them under my belt before I got really used to sniffing out where the trail led to next.

Maybe someone can put up a walkthrough in the other topic motris posted for you to compare to.

EDIT: and like thedan, I had one bit of uniqueness too, probably the same one. Couldn't be a 5 in row 3 column last because the 9-row could be 13-5 or -4-5 then.

Edited by MellowMelon 2012-08-26 3:04 AM
@ 2012-08-26 3:01 AM (#8346 - in reply to #8343) (#8346) Top

spelvin



Posts: 18

Country : United States

spelvin posted @ 2012-08-26 3:01 AM

> Gapped Kakuro I must be totally missing some technique. I'm happy I didn't attempt it because it was a 52-minute solve for me afterwards. The logic is clean but short of intuitive guessing I don't see
> how I could have gotten my time to the 30-point range.

I solved every one of these I could find last night and it definitely helped. It's still possible that my time-to-points ratio was high, but I didn't feel like I ever got stuck when solving. (As opposed to, say, Snail's Nest, where I finished but had a lot of awkward pauses.) Although now that I think of it, I think I used a uniqueness argument at some point.

Congrats on preventing me from going on another "Waaaaah! I beat Wei-Hwa but he still gets to be on the team!" rant by a significant margin. :)

EDIT: Re Melon's edit: Yup, that's the one.

Edited by spelvin 2012-08-26 3:14 AM
@ 2012-08-26 3:19 AM (#8347 - in reply to #8324) (#8347) Top

Aerion




Posts: 4

Country : United States

Aerion posted @ 2012-08-26 3:19 AM

It seems like Packing for Croatia caused a lot of trouble for people. I managed to get through it OK, but with some starts and stops. Maybe not the most efficient solve ever, but I found it enjoyable. I did a whole bunch of Tren last night and this morning; that paid off nicely. Many thanks to those who linked practice puzzles for that on motris's blog.

Multiplicative Corral might have been my favorite so far, though with the disclaimer that I haven't done most of the back of the packet yet. I was trying to force myself not to expect the connection along the top, but was glad when it turned out to be right in the end. (I somehow wrote down "2,3" on the top instead of "2,1" ... glad I was cross-checking by counting interior squares, so I corrected it -- whew.)

Fences was nice, too -- I wish I'd attempted it during contest time.
@ 2012-08-26 3:28 AM (#8348 - in reply to #8324) (#8348) Top

onigame



Posts: 18

Country : United States

onigame posted @ 2012-08-26 3:28 AM

Ah yes, the N can slide down one if it's rotated. Looks like I have the right answer then. (no points though :( )
@ 2012-08-26 4:03 AM (#8349 - in reply to #8324) (#8349) Top

SKnight



Posts: 25
20
Country : United States

SKnight posted @ 2012-08-26 4:03 AM

Not a good day for me -- claiming 146, and really I think I ought to have been able to get 40-50 more points.

I thought both Corrals were pretty easy (though I particularly liked Grant's variant -- good to see him writing for the USPC).

A bit disappointed with the Masyu from an aesthetic point of view. I don't like the "patchwork quilt" style of design much (big chunky thematic clumps that don't really relate), and it's basically similar to the past year's examples. The loop logic was fairly nice, at least.

I usually feel like I'm capable of doing a good job on the big Kakuro variants, and solved it cleanly this year, though not as quickly as I might have liked.

Magic Order was a fun puzzle and not too bad to crack.

Mostly mad at myself for breaking the vanilla sudoku (which was hard, but which I felt like I had a healthy start on) and the tren (which I just screwed up on, but which isn't that hard, really). Also I should have tried the snail puzzle, but didn't get around to it. Somewhere in those puzzles are the extra 40 points I wanted, in other words.

Also wondering how many people will accidentally mark the wrong hippo tooth in the STD -- the left tooth is missing below, but that means the right tooth in the original is the one that's different.

@ 2012-08-26 4:13 AM (#8350 - in reply to #8324) (#8350) Top

craigkasper



Posts: 5

Country : Canada

craigkasper posted @ 2012-08-26 4:13 AM

I'm only getting here now, but my initial reaction was short enough to remember here verbatim:
"Man, have I gotten rusty!"
@ 2012-08-26 4:16 AM (#8351 - in reply to #8350) (#8351) Top

motris



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motris posted @ 2012-08-26 4:16 AM

craigkasper - 2012-08-25 3:13 PM

I'm only getting here now, but my initial reaction was short enough to remember here verbatim:
"Man, have I gotten rusty!"


Missed your puzzles this year Craig. I heard it was more a matter of selection, but definitely want you to bring the heat again soon. I still may get around to that ?-Agony someday.
@ 2012-08-26 4:28 AM (#8352 - in reply to #8324) (#8352) Top

prasanna16391



Posts: 1762
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prasanna16391 posted @ 2012-08-26 4:28 AM

I took about 100 minutes after the test started to realize that the test had started. Oops.
@ 2012-08-26 4:46 AM (#8353 - in reply to #8351) (#8353) Top

nickbaxter



Posts: 10

Country : United States

nickbaxter posted @ 2012-08-26 4:46 AM

Here is an unofficial USA Top15, before audit and protests.

Congratulations to Thomas for a perfect score.

1
Thomas Snyder
395+31
2
Palmer Mebane
328
3
Wei-Hwa Huang
321
*
Will Blatt
317
4
Jonathan Rivet
265
5
Dan Katz
238
6
Zack Butler
238
7
Todd Geldon
210
8
Anderson Wang
208
9
Jonathan Mendelson
202
10
Roger Barkan
194
11
Ian Osborn
190
12
Francis Heaney
185
13
Jason Juang
179
14
Zachary Polansky
170
15
Tyler Hinman
166

@ 2012-08-26 4:47 AM (#8354 - in reply to #8324) (#8354) Top

willwc



Posts: 12

Country : United States

willwc posted @ 2012-08-26 4:47 AM

First off, great test as always. Hats off to the constructors on an excellent bunch of puzzles.

I competed "unofficially" this year, since I'm not able to make a [potential] trip to Croatia in October due to work commitments. Many thanks for the change to allow the ~24-hour window to participate, as it allowed me freedom to keep my normal weekend schedule intact and participate this afternoon (starting a little before 4:30 EDT).

I'm claiming a 317*, if puzzles and entries are both clean. I did no real checking on either, since I was submitting answers down to the buzzer and didn't really feel pressured to check everything without a WPC spot on the line. Since I've never had a completely clean USPC we'll see how that score holds up, but I'm still quite happy regardless. This is the first time I've ever felt like I was in the ballpark of completing a USPC, so I'm pretty excited regardless.

(*Shadow Boxing #2 was incorrect. Frozen Pentominos was also incorrect. But hey, no submission errors this year!)

I'll post a little more detailed/collected thoughts later once I've decompressed a bit and have a chance to look back through my completed puzzles/submissions and review the puzzles I didn't get to (Math Flip 2 and the Fences Variation). But again, excellent job to everyone involved with putting this on.

Edited by willwc 2012-08-26 5:52 AM
@ 2012-08-26 5:04 AM (#8358 - in reply to #8324) (#8358) Top

ksun48



Posts: 29
20
Country : Canada

ksun48 posted @ 2012-08-26 5:04 AM

Answers: can we post answers here now?
@ 2012-08-26 5:35 AM (#8365 - in reply to #8353) (#8365) Top

LordKinbote



Posts: 5

Country : United States

LordKinbote posted @ 2012-08-26 5:35 AM

You wouldn't happen to know if 146 would make Top 25, would you? :)
@ 2012-08-26 5:41 AM (#8367 - in reply to #8365) (#8367) Top

nickbaxter



Posts: 10

Country : United States

nickbaxter posted @ 2012-08-26 5:41 AM

@Scott, you are near the high end of a huge pack, and it all depends on who avoided mistakes. You could be anywhere from 25-100.
@ 2012-08-26 6:43 AM (#8368 - in reply to #8324) (#8368) Top

Ziti



Posts: 42
2020
Country : United States

Ziti posted @ 2012-08-26 6:43 AM

I'm pleased to see that the Packing for Croatia puzzle was a stickler for a bunch of folks. It *absolutely* was for me; botched it, then botched it *again*, then botched it *again* during a post-mortem solve, then figured out the Secret of Dubrovnik. Now that's a band name!

Musketeer Sudoku went much more quickly for me than the classic sudoku in the middle. Gapped Kakuro was delightful if somewhat guess-y. I am crazy about Space Probes! Don't take that the wrong way.

Incidentally, of all the times for my stupid internet to decide to stop working, 1pm MDT today would not have been my first choice. I phoned in two solutions to Nick -- both of which appear to be legit after-the-fact, which I believe puts me right at a possible 200.

Great test, Nick! And congratulations to the top solvers, especially Thomas with his extremely impressive results.
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