Thanks Ramesh, Purvi, Pooja and Prasanna for a wonderfully organized event, and Swaroop for putting together a great set of puzzles. It was fun to be a part of the IPC & ISC this year.

Edited by lenson 2018-08-20 11:26 AM

It was our pleasure to be part of this event. Organizing the event became more easier for us with such warm and friendly participants.
Thanks for your honest appreciation Lenson.

Detailed Results of the Indian Puzzle Championship 2018






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Continuing from my post on the ISC here is the belated post on the IPC

With the ISC completed we spent the evening playing board games like Splendor, Kingdomino and 6 Nimmt. We had late dinner at a cramped restaurant and headed back home.
I returned to the venue early on Sunday and we spend some time playing Bang! The Dice Game. The number of participants was reduced to less than half the number of ISC participants. After meeting some of the rare breed of WPC specialists and completing a brief Q&A session we started the puzzle rounds.

The first round contained all known variants and I started in order with the Hitori. Not able to get any start I skipped it and went quickly through the rest of the puzzles. All of them had nice logical solves. I came back to the Hitori and solved it with some trial. While solving I realized a technique with diagonal digits which I had not thought of earlier. I was happy to learn something new for a puzzle which is as standard as Hitori. I had finished with 11 minutes to spare, corrected a small mistake in Regionless Meandering Words and submitted with 8 minutes bonus. It was a good start as only Prasanna, Rohan and I ended up with a bonus.

The second round had a mix of well-known types and few lesser known variants. Again I started in order and got stuck on the third puzzle Doppelblock. I made the same logical error three times and eventually moved on to the next puzzle. I then got stuck on Maxi Loop and kept hitting a logical error. I completed the rest of the puzzles in quick time and came back to complete the Doppelblock. Erroneously thinking I had completed the round I started checking the rest of the puzzles, which helped as I corrected minor mistakes in Lakes and LiLits. Eventually I spotted that the Maxi Loop was not completed and did not have enough time to complete it in the end. I liked the MaxiLoop and the Pentomino Areas puzzle from this round.

The third round had a surprise with all puzzles in 9*9 format with 3*3 boxes as regions. Most of the puzzles flowed smoothly. I tripped on the Ripple Effect puzzle as the sudoku like grid created some confusion with the ripple effect rules. I loved the Falling Letters puzzle, especially with the deduction in the central box with one of the alphabets getting isolated. Maxi Loop was also very nice and in my hurry to close the round I ended up creating two loops, because of which I lost the points for the puzzle as well as the bonus.

Round 4 was a casual round which I usually enjoy a lot. I completed the low pointers easily and got stuck on the second evolution puzzle. Not able to find the logic I moved on to the first Gravity puzzle. I loved the logic with the As and the Es easily making it the favorite puzzle for the round. I soldiered through the second gravity puzzle and was not able to complete the Wormholes puzzle on time. I narrowly missed out on beating Prasanna in one of the rounds with a couple of silly mistakes costing me 35 points.

Ashish had an off day but was able to hold on to the fourth position to join Prasanna, Rohan and I in the INDIA A team for the first time. Our aim would be to try and beat the previous best rank (10th) by an Indian team.

I liked the concept of the Recreation Event especially as it attempted to bring together my two passions in Puzzles and boardgaming. I believe the idea has potential to be developed into a team round of a future world championship but it would require a lot of playtesting.

The evening was spent playing more of Bang and Splendor till it was time to go back to our homes. Overall it was a very fun weekend and time went by very fast. Hoping to meet everyone again soon.

Nice article (y) :)