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Dear sudoku and puzzle friends, we would like to invite you to the World Sudoku+Puzzle Convention 2021 – an online event organized to fill in the gap after the postponed WSC & WPC.

The event starts on the 12th of November and ends on the 21st of November and will consist of a competitive part similar to the WSC & WPC and various side events like panel discussions, lectures, trivia quizzes, and fun puzzle contests.

The competitive part will be held at the Logic Masters India website. The registration is free and the process consists of two steps. 1) Make sure you are registered at the LMI website. 2) Fill in the online registration form that will be released in a few weeks.

For more details, see below or visit the WPF website: https://www.worldpuzzle.org/championships/world-sudokupuzzle-convent...

Frequently Asked Questions

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What is the World Sudoku+Puzzle Convention 2021?

WS+PC is an online event organized to fill in the gap after the postponed World Sudoku and Puzzle Championship.

When will the WS+PC take place?

The event starts on the 12th of November and ends on the 21st of November 2021.

Where will be the WS+PC held?

The competitive part will be held here at the LMI website. Some of the side events will be held at different platforms as Zoom or Kahoot.

How to register for the WS+PC?

The registration is free and the process consists of two steps. 1) Make sure you are registered at the LMI website. 2) Fill in the online registration form that will be released in a few days.

What is the structure of the WS+PC?

The event will consist of competitive part and various side events like panel discussions, lectures, trivia quizzes and fun puzzle contests.

Competitive part is similar to the World Sudoku Championship format with of 8-10 independent rounds for sudoku and puzzles. This part will be open for the whole ten days and you may start the rounds whenever you want and in any order. The solver with the highest score from these individual rounds will be determined the winner.

The tentative schedule will be released soon. The Instruction booklet will be published one week prior to the competition.

Will the winners be declared the world champions?

No. The competitive part of the WS+PC is an unofficial contest with no ambition to replace the annual World Sudoku and Puzzle Championships.

Are there any prizes for the winners?

Yes. The most successful competitors, game winners and some others will be awarded small prizes and gift items.

Will online solving tools be available during the competition?

Not in the competitive part of the WS+PC. The puzzles will be released in PDF format, and it is expected that participants will print out the documents, solve the sudokus/puzzles on paper, and then submit their answers at the competition website. However, online solving will be enabled for most of the side events. We will indicate in advance which contests are available online.

Are there any participation fees?

The WS+PC is free of charge, but the organizers and authors will be glad for your donations.

Who are the organizers of the WS+PC?

The event is organized by the WPF in association with the LMI and a few volunteers, namely Tantan Dai, Anthea McMillan, Prasanna Seshadri, Tawan Sunathvanichkul, Yanzhe Qiu, and many others.

How to contact the organizers?

If you have any more questions feel free to ask us here in the forum or via email demiger@worldpuzzle.org.

I plan be travelling for part of November 12 to 21. I might not have access to a computer and printer all the time. Should competitors plan to be available to compete every day from November 12 to 21, or will there be a multi-day window, as Sudoku GP has? Looking forward to this!!

im_dan_rydell - 2021-11-03 9:05 PM

I plan be travelling for part of November 12 to 21. I might not have access to a computer and printer all the time. Should competitors plan to be available to compete every day from November 12 to 21, or will there be a multi-day window, as Sudoku GP has? Looking forward to this!!

The competitive portion will be open for the entire duration (This is clarified in the FAQ in the answer to "What is the Structure?"), the side events and interview panels have more specific windows.

Will an instruction booklet be available?

It's a big disappointment to not know anything 5 days before the start. If you have some fixed time windows, which are probably during night or working time for a lot of people, you should give some time to plan accordingly, if you expect any level of participation. It's also disastrous for promotion. "We know there will be this awesome event next weekend, but we don't know what it is." Guess who will take that bait who is not already well connected within the puzzle scene. That's a shame for all the hard work that probably went in.

Hi Christoph, I understand your frustration, and we have been working really hard to finalize event details. Everyone in the organization team did it voluntarily, and we all have commitments outside of this event. I appreciate your understanding in advance!

No puzzle-related rounds would require you to participate at a specific time. All the main competitions will be available for the whole period. Each monothematic contest will be available for 24 hours of each workday. There will be time trials every 6 hours, and people are not expected to participate in all of them unless they really want to. We made it every 6 hours so that it would be relatively fair for everyone.

Here are the tentative schedules for all the non-competitive events. All the time will be listed in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), and you can use https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ to convert to your timezone. The panel time varies due to the availability of the panelists. We will record all the events except the (Stuffed) Animal Chatroom for people who want to watch later at their convenience.

Saturday, November 13th:
1. Opening Ceremony 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
2. WS+PC Q&A 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM

Monday, November 15th:
1. Top Sudoku Solvers Panel 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Tuesday, November 16th:
1. Japanese Solvers Panel 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

Wednesday, November 17th:
1. Top Puzzle Solvers Panel 4:00 AM - 5:00 AM

Thursday, November 18th:
1. Setters/Puzzle Constructors Panel TBD

Friday, November 19th:
1. Experienced WSPC Participants Panel 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Saturday, November 20th:
1. WSPC Trivia 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Sunday, November 21st:
1. Closing Ceremony 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
2. (Stuffed) Animal Chatroom 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

This is what I can provide on my end for now. I am hoping that the schedule for the main events and the registration form could be available tomorrow. Please let me know if you have any further questions! Once again, I appreciate your understanding and patience!

Tantan

Edited by Wendy 2021-11-08 2:36 AM

Thanks for this schedule ! I'll try to adapt my work schedule to attend as much as possible :)

Thank you for the information

The national delegates have been informed by the WPF that the registration form is athttps://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScHgNb079CR-GIU8zsHS1itfmjaE_LfGDVFcjBo8Do77jW-iQ/viewform and that the IB will be published tomorrow (at LMI).

Edited by auroux 2021-11-08 8:07 PM

Registration form

You can access the Registration form here - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScHgNb079CR-GIU8zsHS1itfmja...

Non-Google Registration Form

Dear friends, we have an alternate registration form that we prepared for Chinese solvers to access, but that can be used by anyone who doesn't have access to or doesn't prefer google too. Here's the link to the same - https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FJRNV7R

WS+PC landing page

Dear Friends, The landing page for the event is now live at https://logicmastersindia.com/WSPC2021/. This page has the schedule and the preliminary versions of the Instruction booklets available for the Sudoku competitive part, the puzzle competitive part and the bonus rounds. Please go through it all carefully. We will update the page with more details as they come, as well as this forum topic.

This will be a lot of hours of fun. Thanks to everyone involved in this project.

Will November 21st be definitely the last day for solving? If there are requests for an extension of the deadline, is it intended to meet that? I think it's fair that we know that right now so that we can make the best possible schedule for ourselves.

Nikola - 2021-11-11 5:45 PM

This will be a lot of hours of fun. Thanks to everyone involved in this project.

Will November 21st be definitely the last day for solving? If there are requests for an extension of the deadline, is it intended to meet that? I think it's fair that we know that right now so that we can make the best possible schedule for ourselves.

We will offer a clear response to this soon, we are discussing it.

I agree that this will definitely be hours and hours of fun.

Initially I thought that the 10 days time frame would be enough to leisurely enjoy everything. But it looks like, to enjoy this fully and attempt every round, more time would be needed to most competitors, like me, who are beginners to this level of puzzling and also have busy schedule otherwise too. So it might be good if the organizers, extend the time limit by another week, upto 28th, to include 3 week-ends, so that more number of competitors would attempt the competition in full. Knowing about the extension now before the competition begins rather than on the last day of the competition works best for scheduling purposes.

Our motives here are to simultaneously provide a good challenge for the world's best competitors and also allow other solvers to have a fun 10 days of solving and interacting. To that end, we may look at a slight extension (e.g. a day) so that 2 weekends are completely used, and that is what we are discussing. A week isn't on the cards unfortunately - please consider that the convention is going to take a huge load on the website and also on the people supervising things. Also remember that the puzzles will be available for you to try out after the event too.

Intro and Schedule updated

An updated version of the introduction and schedule is available on the landing page. Here is the quick link for convenience: https://www.worldpuzzle.org/files/106/header%20v3.pdf

We have shared an alternate registration form (a few posts above) so that participants who don't use google for whatever reason can access it. Please fill this OR the google form before participating.

We have a small new feature at the top right of the home page to keep track of the rounds beginning/ending, etc.

The main competition part is now available!

Please use this or one of the main threads for general queries but use the round specific threads for post contest discussion. All "Discussion Thread" links from the submission pages go to their specific rounds.

All the best to everyone!

Note: Minor error in the key of a Puzzle in Round 10 is fixed. Since only 2 people attempted it so far, we will amend those results and let it stay. Apologies to those two participants.

just wondering how can i participate for the world sudoku for the first time.

I am seeing something confusing to me. In Temple of Sudoku (Part 4) Instruction booklet, puzzle 6, it shows numbers on the outside of the large cube and says that number is the number of digits of that parity within that line as the first number going inward, as I understand it. But in row 6 of that example puzzle, each side has an odd number as a starting number, and the "parity" number is 1, but there is a 1:3 string in that row. Also in column 3, same question -shouldn't that be a 2 for each of those rows or columns? Thanks for taking the time to answer! I'm new to this, and trying to understand the rules.

Hi! I'm not 100% sure I fully understood what you said. The outside digit being X means that the first X number of that direction has the same parity, and the (X+1)th number has a different parity. So, for example, in row 6, when you look from the left, the first digit is 7 (odd), and the second digit is 6 (even), which is of different parity from the first digit. So the outside number should be 1 from that direction, and similarly if you look from the right.

Let me know if this clears it up for you!

Hi tony60, it‘s pretty easy :)

Just check the instructions before taking part, especially the chapter "How to participate". https://www.worldpuzzle.org/files/106/header%20v3.pdf

For those of us who will not have time to do all the puzzle competitions during the allotted time period, but would like to be able to do the puzzles afterwards at our "leisure," will the puzzles still be accessible online after the Puzzle Convention ends? I would like not to have to open each puzzle competition just to print the puzzles, and then score zero in most of them. That would be embarrassing!

Hi! All the puzzles will be available here after the competition ends. As said in the opening ceremony, please go with your flow, enjoy the puzzles, and don't overwhelm yourself!

Hall of Fame

There is a results summary up now in the form of a Hall Of Fame page, and this is linked to in the top right. As noted on the page, if your country appears as *Unknown* please update it in your profile.

Final Schedule Overview - Main Competition Extended

We have addressed a request for extension and the Main Competition rounds will be extended and now end on Monday, 3 PM GMT. The Bonus Rounds still end as per the previous plan on Sunday, Noon GMT. The changes will reflect on the progress page soon. The final header and schedule are posted in the Schedule Overview section of the Landing page, but here is a quick link - https://www.worldpuzzle.org/files/106/new%20header%20extend.pdf

Dear administrator, I'm from China mainland. I've finished 2 rounds of sudoku on Monday night, but LMI website couldn't be conneted from last night till this morning,and now it seems normal again. Do you know what had happened?

New Features

- Completed Time Trials can now be done unofficially.
- The progress page now has two new columns, one will contain Puzzle Booklets of completed rounds, and the other contains the passwords to open them with.
- The Hall of Fame page now has a link (under the WSC header and the WPC header respectively) to complete results for each of Sudoku and Puzzles. If you have completed all rounds of Sudoku, you will be able to see the scores as well, otherwise just the ranks, and same for Puzzles.
- The results pages of completed Time Trials are now public and can be viewed without any restriction. You can quickly navigate to them via the Progress page by clicking on the respective round link and then clicking the results at the top left of the submission page.
- The cooldown period for all live results pages is dropped down to 1 hour. However, please still be mindful of frequent refreshes impacting the load on the website.

Happy puzzling!

xiaoluobo - 2021-11-17 11:51 AM

Dear administrator, I'm from China mainland. I've finished 2 rounds of sudoku on Monday night, but LMI website couldn't be conneted from last night till this morning,and now it seems normal again. Do you know what had happened?

Considering there was frequent activity during this time on the LMI site, we do not know what happened unfortunately. We hope it doesn't happen again and you're able to enjoy the remainder of the event.

I have completed all the Puzzle rounds, but cannot see the scores (there are "-" everywhere). Do you have an idea, why?

CJK - 2021-11-17 11:49 PM

I have completed all the Puzzle rounds, but cannot see the scores (there are "-" everywhere). Do you have an idea, why?

If you checked immediately, it may be because that page takes around 30 minutes at a time to periodically refresh. Try again a little later. If you still can't see it, report that to us again. Thanks.

Administrator - 2021-11-17 6:56 PM

If you checked immediately, it may be because that page takes around 30 minutes at a time to periodically refresh. Try again a little later. If you still can't see it, report that to us again. Thanks.

I have completed the last round yesterday (about 28 hours ago, to be precise :D), so I think that this shouldn't be the issue.

Ah, we will look into it. Give us some time.

CJK - 2021-11-18 12:06 AM

I have completed the last round yesterday (about 28 hours ago, to be precise :D), so I think that this shouldn't be the issue.

We resolved a related issue now. Can you please check again and confirm?

Administrator - 2021-11-17 11:17 PM

I have completed the last round yesterday (about 28 hours ago, to be precise :D), so I think that this shouldn't be the issue.

We resolved a related issue now. Can you please check again and confirm?

Dear sudoku and puzzle friends,

we hope that you are enjoying the World Sudoku+Puzzle Convention 2021 and having fun with our sudoku, puzzles, or interviews.

As we wanted to give the essence of the championship to those who do not attend it every year, we decided to keep the whole event free. More than a thousand registered players proved to us that this was a good decision, and our puzzling community can benefit from that in the future.

However, you may have noticed how much work has been done in a few months to prepare for such an event. This is why we want to kindly ask you for a small donation so that we can reward the effort and time of the puzzle authors and organizers who volunteered in their free time and spent hundreds of hours creating, re-drawing, testing the puzzles, and preparing the side events.

You can use PayPal or the Buy Me a Coffee platform for the donation. We will be happy for any amount of money and that will be used for the winner‘s prizes, author‘s rewards, and extension of website capacity.

Thank you very much and enjoy the rest of the event!

The Hall of Fame page now has the current top 3 of the Bonus rounds too - https://logicmastersindia.com/WSPC2021/score.asp

We are doing some maintenance work on the Progress page. It'll be back up shortly

Also ignore the contest end times for now.

Changes done, everything's back again.

The closing ceremony begins in about 10 minutes. We will not have confirmed results for the main two competitions but we will announce the current top 3. Other than that, we will have a lottery draw for the registered participants, announcement and acknowledgment of Bonus round and Time Trial winners, acknowledgment of Sudoku and Puzzle GP winners of 2021, and more!

Join in via the zoom link on the landing page - https://logicmastersindia.com/WSPC2021/ (Social Table), we will also be sharing a youtube livestream link here!

There is a casual chatroom now for people who want to talk about the event or just catch up. It starts in 8 minutes. Link- https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86330336540?pwd=cThLL3JKU1FxSUlBZUk3a3JvQ0... Join in!

I hope this is the right place to record my thanks for organizing this event. It was fantastic. I haven't had a proper night's sleep for a week. The puzzle quality was outstanding and the website worked brilliantly. A special mention for the SHANGHAI DESIGNED Alternative Tapa. That was a beautiful discovery.

Thank you for the kind words David.. some of us organizers probably share your need for sleep :)

Quick post about event Wrap-up:

- As updated before, all rounds can now be done unofficially.
- If you do not want to do that competitively, all rounds can now be downloaded on the progress page, with solutions on the right. Those who want all time trials in one PDF can find that in the Time Trials topic.
- We have posted Solution Booklets for the bonus rounds. We will soon add notes below these to keep track of any puzzle issues of the specific rounds that may be relevant to people who go back and try the puzzles.
- We will try to post solution booklets for the main competition rounds by the end of the week. We may not post solutions for Time Trials, as we don't really have them ready. If one or more of the participants wishes to volunteer solution images or PDFs or penpa links (like IHNN did for the Time Trial PDF) we will happily compile that and upload it in some relevant section. We will at least try to put up author credits for specific puzzles regardless of this.
- The donations page is still active and we plan to keep it active for a week, just in case any of the earlier event participants haven't seen it yet as they haven't revisited the site.
- The only other matter we believe is left to resolve is the posting of the Trivia game content, which will happen soon.

Some updates to Progress page -
All WSC competition solutions (with author names) are posted.
Author names of time trials are added.

When will you upload also Solutions to WPC?

Puzzle Competition solutions are now available to download on the progress page. This means all solutions are available except the Time Trials.