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Stupid cell. Why'd I colour you? And why exactly there? Thanks for the puzzles Serkan. I had fun, except for a horrible false start on the first Pata.

ps. Palmer, dial it back a little.

One question on Tapa Islands
Instructions says that "each separate area MAY contain at most one clue cell". Does this mean that there may be some Island area without any clue cell?

Thanks for quickly clarifying this.

Wait, I thought islands could have no clue cell? When I solved it logically, I got at least one island that had no clue cell in it?

I'm sorry, I made a terrible mistake when replying to this. I was very sleepy and confused in the morning.

Your assumption is right, there may be islands without clues. Sorry again.

In that case does the example has multiple solutions e.g. if R1C2 is blackened and R1C6, R2C6 are made white (part of Island)?

Don't forget the single numbers are both Tapa clues and island clues. You've broken the 6 as a Tapa clue with that tweak.

Yes, I overlooked that one. Thanks for explaining it.

Argh, I actually solved the second Tapa loop in record time intuitively, but just couldn't make it to submit! Wonderful puzzles. Beautiful usage of the Diagonal Neighbors constraints. Pleasantly surprised by my ranking.

What did I do wrong... I am probably being really stupid right now...





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Around the middle left. The "+" of the +11 clue to the extreme left is where you can change things. Think vertical

TVC XIII is now over and score page is now public.
Password removed from puzzle booklet.

Hi. I am a beginner in puzzles, but I usually manage to take some points... This time I was very disappointed : 0 pts :(

Now I have solved most of the puzzles. But I have a problem with the Tapa Loops. "The loop cannot touch or cross itself." For me, this is not true. For example, in the first puzzle (7a) the loop touch itself 3 times : at the bottom (left) of the 6 et the 7 clues.

This point, and the fact that letters of the "TAPA LOGIC" were not ACGILOPT as announced, but E ? P ? M ? ("PALMER MEBANE" !) were enough to make me doubt, to disturb me, and finally ... 0 pts !
Of course, with some experience, it would have been different. But when you panic because you see the time go... The problem with a wrong rule is : when you finally observe it is not possible to solve the puzzle, you don't know what is the rule which is questionable...

You are mentioning two things: Tapa Loop touching and TAPA LOGIC letters. So we mentioned both of them in this thread. If you had read previous comments, you could see clearly them. So there is no "wrong rule". If there was, no one could solve those puzzles. There were some deficient explanations, but they were compensated with this thread. I'm sorry for your result. I'll focus on the instructions to make them clearer in next TVC's.

OK, yureklis, thanks for the answer.
I wasn't used to systematically read the threads before a contest, but I note this is necessary.
Afterwards, I took a real pleasure to solve your puzzles. Congratulations, and thanks for your focus on the next instructions :)

For me, loop is the white thin line, that should be found (drawn) onto the Tapa wall. It means that the black cells (forming a Tapa wall) may touch each other even if they contain nonconsecutive segments of loop.

Thanks to all participants.

Top three are as follows:

1. Palmer Mebane (USA) [14/14, 47:16 min]
2. Nagata Yuta (Japan) [14/14, 70:58 min]
3. Ulrich Voigt (Germany) [13/14, 61:51 min]

Palmer is continuing to solve Tapa puzzles like Usain Bolt runs :) Many competitors were close to completing the test but they could not succeed because of little mistakes.

- The puzzle solved by least competitors was Tapa Hamle. It was solved by 31 competitors.
- The puzzle solved by most competitors was Neanderthal a. It was solved by 108 competitors.
- The puzzle with the highest rating was Pata b (9.75) and the puzzle with the lowest rating was Tapa Hamle (7.0).

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

For next rounds, the number of puzzles will vary between 14 to 18. Penalty points will increase every round. Types will become more and more unfamiliar. I have something in mind, I don't know if it's possible: After publishing the IB for TVC XIV, there may be a poll for the following ones and some of the types may be decided by the competitors by majority voting.

Please feel free to share any ideas.

Best,

Serkan

Re poll for future TVCs: If you have sufficient time to collect results and make the puzzles, I don't see why not. Competitive competitors might attempt to pick the variations where they are best at though.