Tapa Variations Contest VII

Date: 5-6 March 2011

Types: Tapa Variations

Length: 75+5 minutes

IB: Instruction Booklet

Penalty points: 15 per minute

If you have any question, please ask under the topic.

Nice to see that you have included motris' "Make Room for Tapa". Definitely one I am gonna try in priority.

In Tapa Lines, is it required that a line extending in a direction go as far as it can before hitting the edge, a black cell, or another line? Or would the example puzzle in which the top row 4 is replaced by a 3 and the (still unique I think) solution adjusted accordingly also be valid?

No there is no such rule that a line should hit the wall or the edge. If you replace the 4 with a 3, its line would be 3 cells long but the puzzle would not be unique because of the top right corner.

Small correction for Pentapa example: We forgot to remove the "P" pentomino from the set. This puzzle type can never include pentomino P, as it is clearly against the rules of Tapa (no 2x2 black cells).

Puzzle booklet uploaded. It has 9 pages (including the cover page with points)

Thomas published a couple of "Make Room for Tapa" under Friday Puzzle title. I've already solved them, they are really beautiful, especially second one! :

http://motris.livejournal.com/



Edited by yureklis 2011-03-04 6:58 PM

Good luck to everyone!

I'm not able to print the document. Opening is ok but printing also asks for a password. The starting one doesn't work. I'm on a Mac-system if that helps...

This was reproduced with all PDF-viewers I have available. The password only grants you viewing-rights but no printing rights.

That was strange, because one more player was already able to print.

In any case, I uploaded a new pdf file, and Calavera reported that it is printing fine.

**Copy and Paste from the UK forum:

Well, all programs I have available (Safari, Preview and Adobe Acrobat Professional) agreed that the password only provided reading rights. Having created PDFs for contest myself I know that there can be a different password for reading and printing ("admin password").
Why another player was able to print is a little bit harder to explain. But I do remember from the time that I was working on manipulating PDFs (in the legal programming sense) that I read something about the password-protection not being water tight. So maybe he is using a program that isn't following the regulations set by Adobe as strictly as my programs do!?

In any case it was a very enjoyable contest although it became a little bit later than I planned . I especially enjoyed Mastermind, Progressive and the big versions of Hungarian and Make Room. Too bad my last Mastermind solution was about 10 seconds late .


Greetings,

Calavera

Sorry about all the trouble. Glad that it worked fine later and you enjoyed the puzzles.

I submitted all 4 Mastermind Tapas but the last one (bottom right) the arrows point from the bottom; but I submitted the solution from the top.
This happened once in diogen, but I still got credit --- could credit be given in this case aswell? I will make sure that I will follow the arrows in the next test if this
proves invalid.

Thanks for the great test - I managed to give some ratings for puzzles that I attempted.
I appreciate your creative imagination in extending these tapa variations.
Thanks alot!!

Mistakes are bound to happen with this kind of things and I was very positively surprised that there was anyone being able to react at this nightly hour.

After deciding answer rows of these puzzle i am guessing this. But it is not problem, and you are not alone with this. Because, i am not sure that number of participants but there are at least 4 competitors who entered same like you and all of them got points, because they deserve. And you too.

Thank you very much for participation,

Best

Edited by yureklis 2011-03-05 5:03 PM

Well at least I know I had the one I got wrong right on my piece of paper. I need better handwriting hehe >.< Once again, lots of fun! I especially LOVED the Mastermind Tapa.

Very fun test with some incredibly good designs (all the very high value puzzles, actually). Thanks again for this Serkan.

Very nice puzzles and some are a beginner friendly (I am solving Tapa puzzles first time (in this series))
I submitted my answer as tamz29 did. I shows that the solution is wrong - I do not know if this is caused by the wrong order or if I indeed made a mistake. I checked the solution few times but cannot find a mistake. Can anyone help me? Thanks, radekivv

It is early morning for Serkan, so probably he didn't check yet.

It was same problem as tamz29's.
You should see the credit now for Mastermind Tapa - Bottom Right.

Hi, very nice contest (as whole series) - thank you for giving me such a nice time every other weekend. However, I had two problems: as previous players, I provided solution of lower left grid in Mastermind Tapa from top to bottom (was unsure about the arrows going up - and decided wrong). And second the decision which one of the Tapa Mine is easy and which one is hard - my understanding was seemingly different to the overall opinion... Maybe someone can have a look at my solutions???
Thanks, Nola

Definitely lots of great ones here. Make Room for Tapa is always fun to solve, and the hard Pentapa was excellent. Thanks for the test.

*sigh* that was a failure on my part. Nice puzzles, just broke them all. Probably need more sleep ahead of the test next time.

You were great in the test! As i remember correctly, in the begining you were very fast, in only 17 minutes you solved 6 or 7 puzzles including Masterminds. Let me say this, i was impressed, and i thought he can solve all puzzles in 75 minutes.

Normally i dont like talk big about my puzzles, but really if i am father these puzzles, my most beautiful child is that 2nd Pentapa:)

Thank you very much for participation.

Best

That's very odd you'd say I was fast in the beginning, because my printer was taking forever to warm up, and after half a minute or so of lost time I eventually PrintScreened the easy Tapa Mine puzzle into MSPaint and solved it there, which is probably slower than on paper. Luckily by then stuff had printed. But then again, half of those 6-7 puzzles would have been the Mastermind, and I did feel like I was flying through that one despite never getting around to doing the one on TVC VI. I think I'm good at types that require grid jumping.

Cumulative Score table with 'Best of 2' is published after TVC VII.
With the constants increasing, and VII ending with a extremely close contest, from 'Tapa Master 2011' point of view, the next contest should be very exciting.

Third contest of 2011 Tapa Series is over, many thanks to all participants and LMI.

The top three competitors all managed to solve all puzzles correctly:

1- Ulrich Voigt (Germany) - 18/18 - 74:25
2- Andrey Bogdanov (Russia) - 18/18 - 74:43
3- Florian Kirch (Germany) - 18/18 - 76:50

Congratulations to Ulrich Voigt! Results can be viewed: http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/VII/score.asp

Cumulative results of the three competitions held so far can be viewed in the results table, clicking the "cumulative score" tab at the top of the list. The table has a really exciting appearance right now. The Tapa Master 2011 will be determined with the last contest, nothing is certain yet. Special congratulations to Florian Kirch, who is the only competitor to complete all puzzles in three tests.

Some notes:

- The puzzle with the highest rating was Pentapa Hard (9,25) and the puzzle with the lowest rating was Tapa Lines (5,33).
- The puzzle solved by most competitors was Mastermind Tapa (top left grid ) with 62 correct answers, and the puzzle solved by least competitors was Pentapa Hard with 13 correct answers.
- Most competitors started the test really good, but later they couldn't keep up with this performance. I hope they show this great performance all over the contest in the last one.

*I am planning to prepare one Matchmaker and another one with linked grids for the last contest.

Hope everyone enjoyed it!

All the best,

Serkan Yurekli

Thanks a lot for beautiful puzzles. I was really enjoyed.
I especially liked "Mastermind" and "Hungarian". They have very good combination of local and global constraints and quite logical solutions.
Some puzzles were solved intuitively - for example in "Tapa Mine" I simple tried to avoid dead ends - only at finish I've counted the mines.
Big "Pentapa" seemed for me easier than the little one - only a excellent "counting trick" at start and then it was very simple. I think I've spent not more than three-four minutes for it.
All puzzles were solvable and the time was quite appropriate. I was only too slow (as well as my printer) at beginnig.

You are welcome Andrey! Mastermind idea belongs to Deb, he suggested me 4 grids construction and no clues in last grid. Before starting to make Mastermind, i thought it was hard to construct in this way; but later everyhing was smoothly built.

I always try to place some logic solving way to every puzzle. But sometimes it is better considering intuitively solving than logic solving for competitors. For example in the 1st Tapa Mine, starting point is bottom 2-2 clue. Because one of them must be dead end. When the solver figure out that remaining is only drawing simple loop.

I want to award the solvers who realize "counting trick", so i gave so much points. This puzzle has clearly five steps: count - one way connection - find the location of X - bottom right count - Z/F placement

You were great in the third one, i hope you can repeat in the last one.

Best