so now just 1 day left...

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

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

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

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

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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

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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 :)

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

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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

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Comments on 2013-09-29's Tapa

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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.

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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 :)

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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.

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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.

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

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

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

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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.

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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? :)

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.

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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/

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Finally, TOP SOLVER of CTC 2013 is SAI!

Some statistics about CTC 2013

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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