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Logic Masters India announces Classic Tapa Contest - 2013

Dates : 26^th August — 29^th September

Solving Mode : Online

Link : http://logicmastersindia.com/2013/CTC/

About Classic Tapa Contest - 2013

Classic Tapa Contest (CTC) is a contest for solving Classic Tapa Puzzles, along with its older sibling "Tapa Variations Contest".
Everyday a new Tapa will be available to solve. Unlike TVC, all puzzles in CTCs are to be solved online.
At the end of 5 weeks, a winner will be declared. The winner of CTC will have a title called Classic Tapa Master.
Top three competitors will win a Tapa puzzle book(*) which is prepared by Serkan.

(*) or any Akil Oyunlari book of choice

CTC Scoring system

The scoring system and formula are exactly same as last year.

60 minutes allowed to solve the Tapa puzzle after you start
2 minutes penalty for each wrong submission
15% time penalty for each late day (maximum 2 late days are allowed – so a puzzle can be solved upto 72 hours after it is uploaded)
Each puzzle has its own points, which is computed from solving times of top 10% players on that day.
Each player gets points for solving a puzzle based on own solving time and others’ solving times. Exponential distribution is used.
Total points for a player is sum of puzzle points over 35days.

Details in the pdf file Download | View

Like last year, we have provided 10 trial puzzles (16-Aug to 25 Aug).

There is no change in the solving interface, except that the number of steps you can undo back is limited.

so this time again do indian top 3 will be getting prizes ?

Administrator - 2013-08-23 10:20 AM

Top three competitors will win a Tapa puzzle book(*) which is prepared by Serkan.

(*) or any Akil Oyunlari book of choice

swaroop2011 - 2013-08-23 9:29 PM

so this time again do indian top 3 will be getting prizes ?

Administrator - 2013-08-23 10:20 AM

Top three competitors will win a Tapa puzzle book(*) which is prepared by Serkan.

(*) or any Akil Oyunlari book of choice

Administrator - 2013-08-23 11:03 AM

Like last year, we have provided 10 trial puzzles (16-Aug to 25 Aug).

There is no change in the solving interface, except that the number of steps you can undo back is limited.

Cool, first on my birthday puzzle.

Fred76 - 2013-08-23 9:43 PM

And swiss top3 ?

Haha !

Interestingly, the Swiss top 3 were same as the Swiss bottom 3 in last year's CTC.

When I use the review feature, sometimes a few cells are not blackened at the end of the review, which are supposed to be blackened. This isn't a big deal, but it's a small bug.

I have only small feedback, but submit button should be better placed, for example next to a puzzle. For faster submitting puzzle...

ksun48 - 2013-08-24 3:00 AM

When I use the review feature, sometimes a few cells are not blackened at the end of the review, which are supposed to be blackened. This isn't a big deal, but it's a small bug.

Yes, that is a bug, existing since last year. Didn't think it is important enough to fix.

muhorka - 2013-08-25 1:39 AM

I have only small feedback, but submit button should be better placed, for example next to a puzzle. For faster submitting puzzle...

Agree with you. We needed the solving space to be as big as possible. So put all the buttons / colors / stars into left of the grid. The only thing I can say is "the submit button is equally far for everyone"

About the Comments feature

Please note that, as you might already have noticed, comments for a day's Tapa can be viewed only by players who have already solved the puzzle. So feel free to add any kind of comments about the puzzle, without worrying about revealing about the puzzle to other competitors.

I am not able to submit

sanket.saxena - 2013-08-26 4:53 PM

I am not able to submit

Please specify any error OR any screenshot.

Unable to view results

please help me to know how to play tapa in brief

i keep getting this error "Solution is wrong. All 'Black cells' must be marked."

Edited by cutechikky2000 2013-08-26 10:58 PM

When will the Scoring Page displayed. Will it consider top 10% players in the first day alone or the three days, when a puzzle is available.

cutechikky2000 - 2013-08-26 10:58 PM

please help me to know how to play tapa in brief

i keep getting this error "Solution is wrong. All 'Black cells' must be marked."

I suggest posting the image of a sample Tapa (25th and before) here on the forum so that someone can correct your solution and explain why.

In brief, the best I can do for now is direct you to these patterns - http://rohanrao.blogspot.in/2011/03/solving-tapa-elementary-beginni... to understand how the clue cells work. Other than that just make sure that all shaded cells are connected, and there's no 2x2 region entirely shaded.

Minor note on the interface, when you press the Clear button, it says "Clear is undoable. Press 'Control' while clicking 'Clear' if you really want to clear the grid". Shouldn't that actually be "Clear is NOT undoable"?

FoxFireX - 2013-08-27 9:02 AM

Minor note on the interface, when you press the Clear button, it says "Clear is undoable. Press 'Control' while clicking 'Clear' if you really want to clear the grid". Shouldn't that actually be "Clear is NOT undoable"?

Huh... bad typo.

Tapa Grid Sizes for Week 1

We have decided to post the Tapa grid sizes in advance. Every Sunday, we will post the grid sizes for next week puzzles.

For this week, the sizes for remaining days are
28-Aug : 10X10
29-Aug : 10X10
30-Aug : 9X9
31-Aug : 8X8
1-Sep : 12X12

Is the Results Page enabled. I see only the message stating that it will be displayed CTC starts on Aug 26.

rvarun - 2013-08-27 12:44 PM

Is the Results Page enabled. I see only the message stating that it will be displayed CTC starts on Aug 26.

It is not yet. Sorry.

rvarun - 2013-08-27 12:05 AM

When will the Scoring Page displayed. Will it consider top 10% players in the first day alone or the three days, when a puzzle is available.

Across 3 days.

Hi,

I noticed that the undo button only goes back a limited number of steps.

As an alternative, would it be possible to allow the deletion of cells of a specific color (there are 3 of them to choose from). Often I change colors to explore a route, but without the undo, I am stuck deleting them one cell at a time - while I can drag to fill them in, it doesn't seem to work on the delete, so it is quite laborious!

Thanks, Raphael

RALehrer - 2013-08-28 10:56 PM

Hi,

I noticed that the undo button only goes back a limited number of steps.

As an alternative, would it be possible to allow the deletion of cells of a specific color (there are 3 of them to choose from). Often I change colors to explore a route, but without the undo, I am stuck deleting them one cell at a time - while I can drag to fill them in, it doesn't seem to work on the delete, so it is quite laborious!

Thanks, Raphael

Yes, the undo button works for only 7 steps.

Sure, it is possible. Also I think that you are so right about this, we should add this to make it easier for solvers to delete some cells

Comments on 2013-08-26's Tapa

frst commented at 2013-08-26 00:39:01
It's an hard start

thesubro commented at 2013-08-26 01:52:53
Even harder when you mess up and dont realize it until 4 minutes into the battle. It akk gravy from here on out. (that is an American colloquialism ... which means it all has to be easier from this point on). TheSubro

thesubro commented at 2013-08-26 01:53:28
"It's all gravy"

greenhorn commented at 2013-08-26 01:54:32
Maybe I am doing something wrong, but everything I drawn appears in 2-3 seconds, not immediately. I have no problems at the other websites using online solving. Anyway, very nice puzzle at the beginning.

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-08-26 02:08:48
wow what a tough beginning and beginning with a mistake :(

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-08-26 09:10:31
I don't think it was tough. Big but not tough. For me this is the perfect blend to ensure that there's no need for guesswork and you're awarding enough logical thinking over just click speed. Stupid mistake from me though :|

rajeshk commented at 2013-08-26 09:33:22
Good puzzle to start with :)

kiwijam commented at 2013-08-26 15:40:42
good fun, thanks Serkan!

rvarun commented at 2013-08-26 23:48:51
Bigger and tougher one to start with. A nice puzzle. Personally I submitted without blackening one cell. But a much better one compared to last year where guesswork also have the possibility of correct solution.

Comments on 2013-08-27's Tapa

macherlakumar commented at 2013-08-27 13:29:44
Nice easy Tapa with straight solving path.

sbeck commented at 2013-08-27 23:55:44
Is there a way to see all players scores, instead of just the top?

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-08-28 00:05:16
The Score Page is now ready, here - http://logicmastersindia.com/2013/CTC/score.asp

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-08-28 00:16:42
:)

Comments on 2013-08-28's Tapa

carljohan commented at 2013-08-28 10:14:49
As an unexperienced Tapa solver, I tend to not react to the connectedness condition of the wall. Guess I can halve my times once I get used to that :)

debmohanty commented at 2013-08-28 10:20:17
@carljohan, you still have impressive timings.

macherlakumar commented at 2013-08-28 12:25:23
Not a hard puzzle but paid the penalty(time to fix) for incorrect shading at the bottom.

Comments on 2013-08-29's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-08-29 00:15:17
Every time I review this one I like it more. Funny how that works. But as an author, I can appreciate the little limitations caused by the clues around the grid (a bunch of 1s are obviously gonna limit the middle)

rob commented at 2013-08-29 00:24:21
Great puzzle. Took me far too long to realize that a 33 neighbouring a 1 has consequences not just for the 33 but also for the 1. Then it was smooth.

rajeshk commented at 2013-08-29 16:28:44
Very good design. Took me some to time to get around 1s.

carljohan commented at 2013-08-29 20:29:08
Nice puzzle :)

tamz29 commented at 2013-08-31 22:20:49
Reminds me of minesweepers :) Top score :)

yureklis commented at 2013-08-31 22:28:50
Yes, you are right about minesweeper. This was my intention, actually it nicely worked.

Tapa player has been upgraded with 2 changes
1) Left click to unshade a cell now works consistently. (Ref : See Gareth's comment on 30-Aug)
2) There is no limit on number of Undos.

Tapa Grid Sizes for Week 2

For this week, the sizes of Tapa grid are
2-Sep : 10X10
3-Sep : 8X8
4-Sep : 15X15
5-Sep : 10X10
6-Sep : 10X10
7-Sep : 10X10
8-Sep : 10X10

Administrator - 2013-09-01 9:47 PM

Tapa player has been upgraded with 2 changes
1) Left click to unshade a cell now works consistently. (Ref : See Gareth's comment on 30-Aug)
2) There is no limit on number of Undos.

Thank you!

Edited by RALehrer 2013-09-02 1:09 AM

Comments on 2013-08-30's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-08-30 00:22:08
Ouch. brain freeze. Beautiful puzzle, but maybe a little bit hard for an online interface solve. I found some of it by quickly trying one way, something that'd be easier to "mark" on paper. Went back and solved it to confirm I got the logic of the harder parts.

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-08-30 04:02:30
awesome one :)

gareth commented at 2013-08-30 04:44:59
I wish that it was possible to unshade cells reliably. It just does not work properly in Chrome. Most of the time the click is ignored. You also can't drag to unselect. This bug was present last year too. It flickers, so it presumably is double-responding to the click event.

MellowMelon commented at 2013-08-30 07:07:23
gareth: try to get in the habit of right clicking to erase.

kiwijam commented at 2013-08-30 09:58:40
I had the same problem as Gareth, right-clicking doesn't help. Basically, if you don't spot the perfect path on this puzzle then you need to have a guess to move towards the solution. So I change colour and continue. But when the guess is wrong, I can only press Undo 8 times (new change since last year), but there's still cells containing my second colour that I don't want any more. How do I get rid of it? There's no eraser. No command to clear a cell. Just lots of clicking, not so fun.

carljohan commented at 2013-08-30 15:42:47
Agree with most of the above. Hard to erase, especially in Chrome. How about a way to erase all cells of one color? Isn't that the purpose of the colors in the first place?

ksun48 commented at 2013-08-31 01:03:50
I feel like that encourages bifurcation too much though.

There's something clearly wrong with reviewing solves today for me. I think that dragged cells get shaded and subsequently unshaded in the applet.

Edited by Para 2013-09-02 8:12 AM

Comments on 2013-09-01's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-01 00:09:58
Absolutely beautiful. 10+.

yureklis commented at 2013-09-01 00:22:05
After your comment I couldn't remember which Tapa is. So I solved again, frankly I like too. There are some nice things.

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-09-01 00:31:55
awesome puzzle. :) and the brilliant one :)

carljohan commented at 2013-09-01 10:55:31
Mainly based on one "trick" in the upper right, but the patterns that arise are quite nice.

I tried reviewing the recent tapa, but it didn't have a valid solution at the end, it had squares missing

Comments on 2013-09-02's Tapa

macherlakumar commented at 2013-09-03 17:14:32
Cute puzzle.

So, major shake-ups in top 10 after yesterday's Tapa. Really happy to see PS at 5th. Good job PS.

debmohanty - 2013-09-05 12:10 AM

So, major shake-ups in top 10 after yesterday's Tapa. Really happy to see PS at 5th. Good job PS.

Thanks! Still kicking myself for getting a mistake on the first day. Funny that I was one of the most inconsistent last year and have started out really consistently this time (except that first day of course)

Can anyone please give me link to some more classical tapa puzzle pages as I can't find it on google too......also of last year CTC.

Comments on 2013-09-03's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-03 00:21:26
Nice intricate patterns even with the small size.

yureklis commented at 2013-09-03 00:50:48
Last night I changed this one. Previous one was very easy, I wasn't satisfied with it. I wanted to make a little bit disturbing Tapa in small size. I made this one, altough I spent much time than making a similar size Tapa, I couldn't do it what exactly I wanted. Because there is a crack of the structure in the left of the grid, 1/2s.

macherlakumar commented at 2013-09-03 15:08:39
Puzzle is good, after the competition I solved again (usually I do that for every puzzle) and I saw that left bottom1/2 and right top 1/3 are places where uniquness can be used to solve. The puzzle can be solved logically without using uniquness and I have solved this using some guess work.

muhorka commented at 2013-09-03 15:17:46
Nice puzzle, but in this one was better use uniquness that normal logic. But it still solvable without this fact.

carljohan commented at 2013-09-03 18:30:16
Couldn't solve this without guessing...

ankiit_007 - 2013-09-05 10:09 PM

Can anyone please give me link to some more classical tapa puzzle pages as I can't find it on google too......also of last year CTC.

Here's last year's CTC link

You'll also be able to find Tapa among other puzzles on various blogs like mine/Serkan's/Palmer's etc. or on the Grandmaster Puzzles website.

Comments on 2013-09-04's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-04 00:09:32
A little difficult to start with. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so stubborn to not use uniqueness logic and actually see where the connectivity breaks. At least I didn't make a mistake on a big puzzle again like the first day.

macherlakumar commented at 2013-09-04 00:19:58
Honestly started at a point where I did not deduce any logic to shade it. Solved most of puzzle on guess work and intuition. Too hard puzzle for me, should solve it logically now.

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-04 00:25:16
Actually I looked back and tried to spot another break-in. Is R3C6 the only break-in? Quite a nice one, but makes it a little narrow. I'll probably have to go and see others' solves and how they've done it.

yureklis commented at 2013-09-04 00:43:22
Yes, it is difficult, but some of 35 Tapas must be difficult. This one is one of them. I planned to hide the starting point, I think it's done. You should consider these clues together: R2C5 + R3C7 + R4C6 (This is a clue pattern that I discovered recently). Then you can complete the puzzle smoothly.

macherlakumar commented at 2013-09-04 00:44:55
Just now solved it logically. R3C6 is the break-in (coincidentally this is where I started R4C7 just diagonal) where I found the solving path to progress quickly. After that it is all about connectivity. Brilliantly constructed with more difficulty level. 10+ :)

gareth commented at 2013-09-04 06:19:38
Too hard for me, but that's probably just me and not a criticism of the puzzle.

Tapa Grid Sizes for Week 3

For this week, the sizes of Tapa grid are
Sep 9 : 12X12
Sep 10 : 10X10
Sep 11 : 18X18
Sep 12 : 19X19
Sep 13 : 20X20
Sep 14 : 14X14
Sep 15 : 15X15

Administrator - 2013-09-07 12:13 PM

Sep 9 : 12X12
Sep 10 : 10X10
Sep 11 : 18X18
Sep 12 : 19X19
Sep 13 : 20X20
Sep 14 : 14X14
Sep 15 : 15X15

About the big grid size days, I wonder if the 1 hour time limit should be extended. We don't want majority of the solvers not finishing I suppose?

Comments on 2013-09-05's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-05 00:08:32
Could've saved 5 seconds at the end if I wasn't convinced I'd made a mistake when I hadn't :|

macherlakumar commented at 2013-09-05 00:11:49
Good one, but I solved it slowly.

gareth commented at 2013-09-05 00:28:36
Wow, I made that much harder than it was. I kept making the exact same (dumb) mistake at bottom-left.

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-09-05 01:15:22
after making virtual mistake yesterday i had to solve it slowly today awesome puzzles it had been from past 2-3 days which has nice tricks and all. Hope to avoid mistakes in further days :)

Yes, if possible, please extend the timer. I am certainly not playing for speed, just for fun. But when I take over an hour, it would be nice to still submit it so I can know for sure that it is - finally! - correct.

Also, is there any way to slow, or better yet pause or reverse the playback of "other people's solves?"

Thanks!

Submissions will be accepted even after 1 hour

Considering that there will be some big sized grids next week, we have decided that submissions will now be accepted even after an hour. However, we didn't want to change the scoring system middle of the competition. So all submissions beyond an hour will be ignored from scoring point of view.

Note that this change is applicable irrespective of the size of the grids. So basically, the timer no more stops at 60:00.

Thanks PS and EMJ for bringing it up. I still think puzzles won't be too difficult, and will be solvable within an hour.

Comments on 2013-09-06's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-06 00:11:23
Got distracted for a long time from the true opening near the bottom left :) Flow was nice after that.

carljohan commented at 2013-09-06 11:57:20
So difficult...

Thanks much for the timer extension!
Cheers,
EMJ

Comments on 2013-09-07's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-07 00:08:12
Pretty much had to use uniqueness on this one, just wasn't spotting the necessary logic. Went back and resolved and it was pretty well constructed. I see Serkan used the 22-22-23 pattern again ;)

gareth commented at 2013-09-07 00:13:30
Nice solving theme, although trying to solve it quickly I only spotted it by accident as I repeatedly got it wrong. :)

macherlakumar commented at 2013-09-07 12:55:00
Certainly a hard one right from start to end. Serkan has put the same trick as Sep 4 puzzle. R4C3,R5C4 and R6C2 clues. Puzzle is completely packed with deductions only. Honestly solved this by intuition only.

carljohan commented at 2013-09-08 11:50:31
Too hard for me too :(

so with bigger size grids this time,
i guess with big PuPo, the rankings gonna be affected by large amounts if we do mistakes :)
Hope to do good. :)

swaroop2011 - 2013-09-11 6:09 AM

i guess with big PuPo, the rankings gonna be affected by large amounts if we do mistakes :)

I'm one of the first victims :P Hopefully, I make it up with the other big ones.

Comments on 2013-09-09's Tapa

MellowMelon commented at 2013-09-09 00:19:39
Adjacent clues... still my nemesis.

kiwijam commented at 2013-09-09 08:18:14
A minor setback, but I'm sure you'll survive (unless Serkan suddenly changes the rest of the puzzles). I enjoy adjacent clues, they're better for us logical plodders, whereas separated clues are better for the intuitive solvers. What do others think?

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-09 12:18:58
I'm not sure what to classify mysellf as. I'd say I use a bit of both, but mainly, compared to last year, I'm solving a little slower and going for consistency. Within that constraint, I think I'm faster when there's more of connectivity type logic, and a bit slower at clue-influenced logic. Many times I just forget to mark the basic patterns until its a bit late.

yureklis commented at 2013-09-09 14:18:03
I'll make some changes :)

Comments on 2013-09-11's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-11 00:06:09
What a stupid error! Great thematic puzzle.

rob commented at 2013-09-11 01:39:27
Well... took quite a while to realise that two neighbouring 2s aren't neighbouring 22s.

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-09-11 06:11:07
Ahha, I guess because of symmetric clues arrenged symmetrically i was able to do fast as most of the places no need to think again :)

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-09-11 06:11:43
But yes an awesome and beautiful puzzle to begin the bigger grids :)

kiwijam commented at 2013-09-11 16:09:06
Serrkan, I was just kidding ;)

yureklis commented at 2013-09-11 16:12:43
:) I know. I made these puzzles nearly one week ago

debmohanty commented at 2013-09-11 16:27:16
I will have the solution ready in a paper, and see if I can type it in '113' seconds

chaotic_iak commented at 2013-09-11 18:34:30
@deb: Actually it's possible; you only need to shade the black cells right. If you don't just see the paper (but also thinking for some trivial steps so no time wasted looking on the paper), 113 sounds likely. :P

figonometry commented at 2013-09-11 23:08:00
I like the big grids, except when it takes forever to find a stupid error.

Tapa Grid Sizes for Week 4

For this week, the sizes of Tapa grid are
16th Sep: 11x11
17th Sep: 10x10
18th Sep: 11x11
19th Sep: 13x13
20th Sep: 13x13
21th Sep: 13x13
22th Sep: 10x10

Comments on 2013-09-12's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-12 00:14:15
The 2s of the right side reminded me of yesterday :P

xevs commented at 2013-09-12 08:39:15
1 cell wrong at 186(ToT)

deu commented at 2013-09-13 12:52:49
Same time with my wife!

debmohanty commented at 2013-09-13 12:57:00
!!! Interesting coincidence !!!

Comments on 2013-09-13's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-13 00:09:31
Got a slight pause for connectivity in the middle, not as easy as the other two big ones I think. I could be proved wrong though :)

yureklis commented at 2013-09-13 00:14:56
You are right, this one is harder than last two big puzzles. If I remember correctly you need to black just one cell for connecting two groups in the end. Probably some solvers will miss this.

gpagano commented at 2013-09-13 03:51:16
I probably am one of the solvers who missed that last square :P. Thanks for all the puzzles so far Serkan.

Comments on 2013-09-14's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-14 00:03:25
Ok wow, I really thought I dragged through that area. :|

rajeshk commented at 2013-09-14 22:21:39
Very good puzzle. Cleared many of my concepts of Tapa puzzle

Comments on 2013-09-15's Tapa

Para commented at 2013-09-15 05:17:59
Couldn't find the logical path during my solve for the left side, but got it afterwards. Tricky finish.

feels good to be at first place even though for some time ;) :)

Comments on 2013-09-16's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-16 00:55:02
Used just a little uniqueness in some places there. Its pretty hard logically. Some nice little patterns that aren't normally used. 2,1-2 reastricted the 1-1-1-1 to just one possibility and that gives a fair start.

yureklis commented at 2013-09-16 01:03:02
Yes, you are right about the starting point. I used minesweeper logic, it worked well. I tried to preserve whole design from uniqueness effect, but it could be put final position of clue 6 with using uniqueness. However this is not big deal for the puzzle. I think this is a hardrock Tapa :).

These smaller grids seems to be much more exciting than the bigger size grid ones ;)

Comments on 2013-09-17's Tapa

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-09-17 03:59:28
shyeah silly mistakes :(

Comments on 2013-09-18's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-18 00:09:00
Very nice logic here, I made a complete and utter mess of things. Kept thinking I had it wrong and then actually going the wrong way and then confusing myself entirely :|

yureklis commented at 2013-09-18 00:17:36
This one is based on connectivity. How do you connect upper left blocks to bottom left blocks?

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-18 01:12:31
I think the puzzle can be solved a lot by using the top left 4s area. I did do that the first time but made a few misclicks resulting in lot of clearing and problems.

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-18 01:12:51
Eek, top right I mean. I'm confused at everything today apparently :P

deu commented at 2013-09-18 06:10:10
Extremely hard for me! Connectivity logic is always my weakness.

easonrevant commented at 2013-09-18 08:00:02
I started with a lucky guess!! i should be using deductive logic -_-

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-09-19 02:06:01
excellent puzzle :)

MellowMelon commented at 2013-09-19 09:56:56
The email conversations I've had with Serkan suggests he considers it a personal victory whenever he gets me to make a mistake. I think he won two victories with this puzzle...

yureklis commented at 2013-09-19 12:21:38
Actually this is not my intention. You are so fast in the Tapa. So I'm thinking Palmer is so fast, how should I make puzzle so that all solvers has a chance for being winner of the day, or winner of the whole contest. So my intention, my goal is that balance. I want the contest to be fun and I want that every solver has this feeling that they can be the winner of a day. Nothing to do with my personal satisfaction :) I'm such an old puzzlemaker for this stuff :)

Comments on 2013-09-19's Tapa

macherlakumar commented at 2013-09-19 00:45:25
The puzzle is a very brilliant construction, has many heavy deductions. The complete puzzle is based on connecting the middle two blocks with upper block and in the end with lower right block. The puzzle itself needs to be solved considering the connectivity of middle two blocks with upper block 10+

rob commented at 2013-09-19 01:25:30
Definitely missed the proper solving path here, quite a bit of uniqueness deductions with a bit of guessing at the end (lower left).

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-09-19 02:05:15
awesome one :) Too many deductions to be made great construction 10++++

Comments on 2013-09-20's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-20 00:11:12
Phew. Ended my free-fall. Not great, but I think I did ok today. Nice puzzle, as always.

gareth commented at 2013-09-20 01:33:38
Missed a single square in the centre. Bah.

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-09-20 17:56:53
unknowingly i put some dot at some place which in turn made it no solution to reach until later i realized why the hell that dot is der. :(

Comments on 2013-09-21's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-21 00:06:28
I think thats the end of any chance I had at 3rd. I just hope I stay in the top 10 :P

macherlakumar commented at 2013-09-21 00:12:36
I am not sure why I read the center as 221 but ended up with a valid solution even for that clue, after penatly found that its 211 and luckliy the fix was small

MellowMelon commented at 2013-09-21 00:39:59
Oh, that 1-4 up top is more constrained than it looked. That explains why I found this one so hard; I went around the middle in the wrong direction...

ksun48 commented at 2013-09-21 04:22:37
Okay, I think this has got to be the hardest puzzle so far.

Grizix commented at 2013-09-21 08:19:14
Wow, really hard, as I went through a lot of trial & error, I would really appreciate a walkthrough for this one.

rajeshk commented at 2013-09-21 08:24:09
I thought that I will not use trail & error in CTC but this puzzle made me to use that.

kiwijam commented at 2013-09-21 17:35:27
Walkthrough start: The cell at the bottom-left corner of the centre 112 cannot be filled, because it cannot escape in any direction. This means the other 3 corners of the 112 are all filled.

For everyone's information, we had to redo CTC computations for dates 11th to 23rd after we disqualified a player. ToPo for all players at the top have increased by around 1 point because of that.

Will all Tapas be available for download after the contest?

wicktroll - 2013-09-24 5:19 PM

Will all Tapas be available for download after the contest?

No.

Comments on 2013-09-22's Tapa

Grizix commented at 2013-09-22 23:46:46
That was harder than it seemed in first place. 2 errors for me ...

We have a mild shake-up at the top of the table. 5 more Tapas to go.

Edited by debmohanty 2013-09-25 12:03 AM

Do a fast solve, check for 20 seconds, and still make a mistake. Seems I'm back to last year.

Comments on 2013-09-24's Tapa

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-09-24 09:38:22
did a mistake again and i guess losing another big pointer :( but glad i realized the logic and mistake both at same time :p Another good puzzle :)

anurag commented at 2013-09-24 17:47:31
Definitely the hardest of this season.Very nice though.The bottom row had good connectivity based break-in I hadnt realized early.

carljohan commented at 2013-09-26 16:00:02
Hardest of the season? :) No, dont think so, probably you should look again. All of this went smoothly with logic.

Can we have the Grid sizes of Week 5.

Comments on 2013-09-25's Tapa

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-09-25 06:49:39
glad i again didn't missed a big pointer. Again an awesome puzzle.

so now just 1 day left...

The CTC Submit page shows 30th as a date too. Is there 2 more days or 1 more?

prasanna16391 - 2013-09-28 9:43 AM

The CTC Submit page shows 30th as a date too. Is there 2 more days or 1 more?

Fixed the Submit page. 29th is the last day.

Comments on 2013-09-26's Tapa

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-26 00:06:35
This was really nice, especially the middle bits.

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-09-26 07:43:10
lost somewhere between . awesome puzzle. though lost again a big pointer :(

anurag commented at 2013-09-26 18:06:34
One of the nicest tapas ever. Thanks

A nice contest. Feel sad to miss CTC from tomorrow.

Since it's basically certain now, congratulations to sai for his victory. I don't think I would have won even if I had been performing at my best for the past couple of weeks.

Comments on 2013-09-27's Tapa

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-09-27 05:38:26
another awesome one. did a mess in between, it was actually a real tricky. hopefully didnt did a mistake. but seeing the time i really dont know how good i have done :)

xevs commented at 2013-09-27 07:17:26
another new breakpoint. cool one!

chaotic_iak commented at 2013-09-27 07:28:47
...that was brutal for me. 15-20 minutes looking around and experimenting to figure out where's the crack. Fantastic one :D

anurag commented at 2013-09-27 15:02:37
The path started from bottom-left in my opinion. It was one of the easier tapas.

chaotic_iak commented at 2013-09-27 17:41:07
I can't figure out where to start from bottom-left. Can you elaborate?

anurag commented at 2013-09-27 23:39:19
I was lost in the middle and when I started again from the bottom row, iI could finish comfortably. Your experience might have differed. I am sure you can figure out the right and better way if you start afresh.

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-28 00:43:58
The 7 in R12C8 is the major break-in of the puzzle as far as I can see. If R11,12,13C9 are all shaded, that will lead to a contradiction of the 2-2 in R14C10. This means you can shade the other 5 cells around the 7 and go on from there. The bottom left is just as much a start as say the top left or the top right.

carljohan commented at 2013-09-28 06:40:44
Nice prasanna - I started by elimination around the 311, but that was more of a fake break-in, basically passing through yours on the way.

yureklis commented at 2013-09-28 06:52:53
The puzzle has 3 phases, top - middle - bottom. Top and bottom are just fake. As you can see there is not any bridge through top-middle if you start with the top, or if you start with the bottom. So the key is that Prasanna's clues in the middle.

Comments on 2013-09-29's Tapa

macherlakumar commented at 2013-09-29 00:16:36
It is not the end, will be waiting for CTC 2014 :) Absolutely very nice set of puzzles, thank you very much Serkan.

swaroop2011 commented at 2013-09-29 00:38:50
Here goes the last one :) It had been awesome one month solving these puzzles. Thanks Serkan. I screwed up some days but overall it had been better than last time. Will be waiting for CTC 2014 :)

prasanna16391 commented at 2013-09-29 00:55:07
I'm thankful to end on a good note after a bad patch in the middle of the series. Its been a lot of fun, and this last one was good too. Thanks Serkan.

kiwijam commented at 2013-09-29 04:56:49
The end? No? I'm just getting warmed up! Many thanks Serkan, every puzzle was a gem and the contest was great fun.

john_reid commented at 2013-09-29 08:45:21
Thanks very much Serkan. These puzzles were great. The TVC puzzles are awesome too!

rajeshk commented at 2013-09-29 10:45:56
Thanks for this great set of puzzles Serkan. Looking forward to next CTC.

gisha commented at 2013-09-29 22:43:49
Great puzzles, great competition. Good work Serkan, thank you very much bro!

gpagano commented at 2013-09-30 04:35:24
Thanks for all the puzzles this year Serkan. I really enjoyed the competition, even if I didn't stand the chance against some of the solvers here.

Request players not use the "Comments" feature in the submission page any more since we won't be tracking them.

Great stuff, thanks for al the puzzles.

Why not make the puzzles available for download? Is there a way to buy the puzzles in either book or electronic versions instead? :)

carljohan - 2013-10-02 9:48 AM

Why not make the puzzles available for download? Is there a way to buy the puzzles in either book or electronic versions instead? :)

Last year they got collated into a pdf. It might take a while to do that though. So be patient.

The CTC 2013

I’m sure if I compete against CTC solvers on my own puzzles, many of them would beat me.

CTC 2013 was shorter than the previous one, but it had bigger grids. To include bigger grids was my wish, if a solver wants to become a solver you must face big grids. So if we wanted to reveal fastest Classic Tapa solver, we had to use big grids. In big grids of Tapa, I followed Nikoli style, that is big grids are just big, as James noticed “Serkan's large puzzles aren't too tough, they just look big.”

Before starting CTC 2013, I already had some Tapas which I made for this competition when I had free time. However I have experienced in two years, it is not meaningful to make CTC puzzles before. Because you need to arrange puzzles according to general solver’s ability, the course of event. So I didn’t use some of the ready Tapas in CTC. After first 10-15 days I started to make daily Tapas. I was making, drawing, checking and uploading to LMI, then one more check. When I passed through these steps, I pinged Deb with same words “Deb, I’ve already uploaded today’s Tapa, please check” Sometimes Deb instantly solved, sometimes later, but always responded me “Its fine, ok…” This was really exciting job :) Because it is easy to make a mistake while you are uploading the puzzle… No no, I must say this one. For example, let’s say the day is 22th August. So any solver can solve 20, 21, 22th puzzles. Imagine that I prepare 23th Tapa, I check and the next step is the upload. I open the admin page, and before uploading I must select the date. If in that day I am so sleepy, I can mark 22th in the calender. When I do this that puzzle shows up on the screen. But imagine that I miss this, and then I start to submit clues. I finish my work, and save the puzzle. Whoop! Current Tapa changes… This one was my biggest fear in CTC 2013 :)

Anyway, Palmer was the biggest candidate for being the winner of CTC 2013. Most of us was almost sure that he would get the first place. But I think he had misfortune with some Tapas, and sai (I don’t know his/her real name) got the first place. I’m very plaesed that any solver can get the first place with missing puzzles. You know, sai missed one puzzle of CTC, and he/she got the CTC victory with 34 puzzles. Really great job!

My general aim is everyone can meet an enjoyable Tapa, easy Tapa, big Tapa, hard Tapa, and you should know that there is always a chance to move up in the standings for Tapa solving.

...

Maybe Deb can publish some statistics about best puzzle, worst puzzle or easiest puzzle, hardest puzzle, top daily winners, most broken puzzle etc.

Deb and me talked about separating TVC and CTC, so it is not certain but CTC will be organized after TVC in 2014, not at the same time.

About CTC puzzle sharing, actually I want to use those Tapas in my future work, so I prefer not to share. I hope that it is reasonable for you.

Top three of CTC 2013

1. sai (Japan) - 34/35 ( - 407.8086
2. MellowMelon (USA) - 35/35 - 395.25
3. nyuta (Japan) - 35/35 - 372.277

CTC 2013 standings: http://logicmastersindia.com/2013/CTC/score.asp

newsbreak: http://puzzlepile.com/2013/10/02/classic-tapa-contest-2013-results/

...

Finally, TOP SOLVER of CTC 2013 is SAI!

Some statistics about CTC 2013

How are the best improvements decided? I thought I have a good claim for that one :P

prasanna16391 - 2013-10-06 11:23 AM

How are the best improvements decided? I thought I have a good claim for that one :P

It is just rank improvements; for example, Joo M.Y was 108 last year and is 27 this year, so an improvement of 81