Tapa Variations Contest XIV

Date: 31^st August - 2^nd September 2013

Length: 75+5 minutes

IB and Submission Link : http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/XIV/

Tapa clones: are clue cells white?

Yes, clues are white cells. I noted that, but I forgot to add the instruction. I'll add it to puzzle booklet. Thanks Tawan.

I assume puzzle #5 is meant to be called Cyclic Tapa instead of Cylic Tapa?

Link to original post : TVC XIV Practise: Introduction

Upcoming weekend will be TVC XIV on Logicmasters India. I'll be trying to write an example of each puzzle type like last year. I missed TVC XIII as I was a bit late realising it would start and had other puzzles to write at that moment. Puzzles will be posted over the next few days.
I'm using this post to direct you to some of the previous examples of some of the variants used.

Tapa Loop:
http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/?test=TVC13
http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/?test=M201207P

Tapa Turns:
http://anuragthefirst.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/tapa-turns.html

Tapa [Regional]:
http://mellowmelon.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/puzzle-389/
http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/?test=M201209P

Pentapa:
http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/?test=TVC7

Elimination Tapa:
http://chaosatthesky.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/deception-5/
http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/?test=M201305P
http://puzzleparasite.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/puzzle-11-tapa-cross-out.html


Posted in TVC, Puzzleless, Tapa, LMI

In Logirace for Tapa bottom solution given as 13345. Pl let me know where I am wrong.

Can you post an image with your progress? Its difficult to say where you're wrong without knowing how much you've solved.

Unable to attach my file too large.
Ans;
W3B3W3B
WBWB3WBWB
2BW3BWBWB
B4W5B
BW4B2WBW
BWB2W5B
BWB4WBWB
BWBW4BWB
3BWB3W2B
4W5BW

I think your solution is right, but maybe your understanding of the Answer Key is off? If you see the Instruction booklet example, you are supposed to enter longest number of connected cells. Here connected means connected by the loop. If you actually draw the loop within your shaded wall, then you'll see the correct answer key - 13345 as given.

Thanks for your clarification.

Practice puzzles from Bram at http://puzzleparasite.blogspot.in/2013/08/tvc-xiv-practise-part-1.h...

More Practice puzzles from Bram at http://puzzleparasite.blogspot.in/2013/08/tvc-xiv-practise-part-2.h...

Some notes:

Cyclic Tapa: "Similar shapes within a puzzle do not have to necessarily have to contain the same clues" [WB]

Tapa In The Cave: "It could be worth putting an exception to the "Tapa rule" at the beginning of the document that this puzzle is an exception to the 'There are no wall segments on cells containing numbers' condition." [WB]

Puzzle Points 1. Tapa Loop 136 2. Tapa Clones 58 3a. Tapa Turns 48 3b. Tapa Turns 74 4. Tapa [Regional] 47 5. Cyclic Tapa 4 X 34 6. Wordic Tapa 42 7a. Pentapa 59 7b. Pentapa 99 8. Tapa Or Not Tapa 58 9a.Tapa In The Cave 49 9b.Tapa In The Cave 164 10.Elimination Tapa 30

Announcements Password protected puzzle has 11 pages (including a cover page with points table) Time bonus will be computed after you click 'Claim Bonus' Penalty will be given irrespective of correctness of submission Contest Length : 75 minutes Total Points : 1000 Bonus : 4 points per minute saved (Computed upto seconds) Grace Period : 5 minutes Penalty : 9 points per minute used (Computed upto seconds)

Link to score page : http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/XIV/score.asp

Please note feedback page is enabled - Same set of questions as usual LMI tests.

A note : We found that a particular player has rated all the puzzles even before taking the test, even giving different ratings to different puzzles of same type. Such ratings will be ignored without warning.

Wonderful Puzzles. I think thats the first time I've finished a TVC? Cool.

Well done Prasanna! (and of course the sugoi Japanese competitors!) I'm a minute behind you and also very pleased to finish for a change.
I didn't know there was a Claim Bonus button, I haven't been in that situation before. Although now I see it mentioned in the Announcements panel. Doesn't matter, it's quite tiny in my case, and would spoil my nice round score.

Great puzzles. I was never intending to do #8 "Tapa or no tapa", because the practice puzzles required too much thought. That is one of the 'advantages' of not being good enough to finish, we don't have to do them all! But unfortunately(?) I was forced to try it at the end, and actually really enjoyed Serkan's approach. Thank you! :-)

I saw some of your submission times, honestly I wondered what you would do for 3-4 puzzles in last 10-15 minutes, then I watched at the admin panel. Except for the Pentapa (b), others were easy, and you did smoothly all of them. When you didn't "push the button", I thought you were checking your submissions :)

About Tapa Or Not Tapa, first version of this puzzle had so many clues. I was thinking that it shouldn't be like this. So I made again, and my intention was to construct with a few clues, so 0-1 seemed very suitable for it.

I'm really glad that so many solvers complete the test. I can balance difficulty easier than previous year, because William's solving times are incredibly helpful. If he can complete the test nearly 65-70 minutes, so many solvers can repeat the same. So I've stuck to his solving times for balancing the whole test difficulty. Normally, balancing whole test difficulty one tester's times not enough, if you make so many solvers happy. Also tester solving skills don’t have to be same. So the designer needs to get more than one's times. But this is not case for William's. I hope that he can find time for rest of the TVC.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	All puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Ayse Naz'a derslerinde basarilar dileriz.

Edited by bskbri 2013-09-01 8:32 PM

:) Ayse Naz is my nephew. She is 5.5 years old, and she is going to start the primary school two weeks later,1st-grade :)

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Yes, I always save small puzzles for the end, because I don't want to be halfway through a large puzzle when time runs out. And I found all the puzzles smooth this time, it's nice to watch them fall without getting stuck on one.You were right, I was checking my submissions. Which took a couple of minutes, and that finished inside the Grace Period (there is no point to claiming a bonus then). It surprises me that only one of the current finishers (= Ko) checked answers (unless perhaps the others made a correction before finishing). And there were 10+ people with a #correct of 15/16...

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	All puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

That Wordic Tapa clarification would have made preparing the practise puzzle so much easier.

I always write out my answer keys after solving a puzzle and then recheck when entering these days. So the checking goes in with the entering instead of afterwards as I notice that afterwards I really never feel for checking answer keys, but during entering I am more diligent.

Thanks Serkan, it was a fun set. Most of it went smoothly, except for having to restart part of the Cyclic as I entered a clue from a triangle into a circle. That was bound to happen considering I can't even manage to put the symbols in the same place in different grids when constructing.

Yeah I noticed that too. That's why I went with all the squares of clues so a bunch of Tapa clues would at least be forced true and would be able to influence the solve a bit.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	A bit too few puzzles
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	All puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

@witty, See your inbox

I like how you manage to sneak in one-off gimmicks (puzzles that only work once) in your tests.
Tapa Regional was very cute!

Really incredible puzzles, but I did "guess what you were thinking" a few times instead of doing logic like on the Wordic Tapa. Glad to not have made a mistake this time.

:) on the Wordic Tapa there were two possibilities for center 4's, and I forced them to be zero. I knew that some solvers would guess that. You know, sometimes the author has some request from the puzzle, in better words "author desire" :)

Edited by yureklis 2013-09-03 3:06 AM

I just finished the contest and, despite my (usual) low level result, I liked the puzzles very much.
I'm only very curious about the Tapa in the Cave A solution: I loss a lot of time on this puzzle but I'm sure that it has no solution... Obviously, if so many partecipants solved it, it has one, but I can prove (!?!) that is an impossible puzzle... :-) Looking for the solution

Thanks very much Serkan!

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Good concepts for the Puzzles. But personally too tough for me. Couldnt solve even a single puzzle. :P

Thanks Serkan for the wonderful test. I will try solving it offline whenever possible.

now I see the solution: shame on me!

I took almost a bit more than 40 hrs to solve all these puzzles. Except tapa cyclic I had all correct answers. Hope to do much better in the next contest.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	A bit too many puzzles
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Thanks to all participants.

Top three are as follows:

1. Endo Ken (Japan) [16/16, 49:15 min]
2. Thomas Snyder (USA) [16/16, 52:10 min]
3. Bram De Laat (Netherlands) [16/16, 55:50 min]

Almost everyone in the top 20 submitted answers for all 16 puzzles. Some of those lost crucial points with only one mistake. All of these incorrect submissions differed from the correct answer by only one digit, less or more.

In general, I am very happy about the overall difficulty and that many people completed the test. Many thanks to William Blatt that made this possible.
Endo Ken is not only the winner of this round, but also is the first Japanese solver to win a TVC round. Congratulations for both!
The solver with most wins in all TVCs is now Palmer M. (4), followed by Thomas S. (3) and Ulrcih V. (3). For details: http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/

- The puzzle solved by least competitors was Tapa In The Cave (b). It was solved by 26 competitors.
- The puzzle solved by most competitors was Elimination Tapa. It was solved by 89 competitors.
- The puzzle with the highest rating was Pentapa (b) (9.10) and the puzzle with the lowest rating was Wordic Tapa (7.50).

Full results table is here: http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/XIV/score.asp

Current ranking to determine Tapa Master 2013, after TVC XIII and TVC XIV: http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/2013.asp

For TVC XV, 6 of the 10 puzzle types were determined by your votes. The remaining 4 will be displayed in the IB to be published at the weekend. If you think this kind of voting system is reasonable, we can do it for TVC XVI.

Please feel free to share any ideas.

Best,

Serkan