I plan be travelling for part of November 12 to 21. I might not have access to a computer and printer all the time. Should competitors plan to be available to compete every day from November 12 to 21, or will there be a multi-day window, as Sudoku GP has? Looking forward to this!!

The competitive portion will be open for the entire duration (This is clarified in the FAQ in the answer to "What is the Structure?"), the side events and interview panels have more specific windows.

Will an instruction booklet be available?

It's a big disappointment to not know anything 5 days before the start. If you have some fixed time windows, which are probably during night or working time for a lot of people, you should give some time to plan accordingly, if you expect any level of participation. It's also disastrous for promotion. "We know there will be this awesome event next weekend, but we don't know what it is." Guess who will take that bait who is not already well connected within the puzzle scene. That's a shame for all the hard work that probably went in.

Hi Christoph, I understand your frustration, and we have been working really hard to finalize event details. Everyone in the organization team did it voluntarily, and we all have commitments outside of this event. I appreciate your understanding in advance!

No puzzle-related rounds would require you to participate at a specific time. All the main competitions will be available for the whole period. Each monothematic contest will be available for 24 hours of each workday. There will be time trials every 6 hours, and people are not expected to participate in all of them unless they really want to. We made it every 6 hours so that it would be relatively fair for everyone.

Here are the tentative schedules for all the non-competitive events. All the time will be listed in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), and you can use https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ to convert to your timezone. The panel time varies due to the availability of the panelists. We will record all the events except the (Stuffed) Animal Chatroom for people who want to watch later at their convenience.

Saturday, November 13th:
1. Opening Ceremony 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
2. WS+PC Q&A 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM

Monday, November 15th:
1. Top Sudoku Solvers Panel 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Tuesday, November 16th:
1. Japanese Solvers Panel 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

Wednesday, November 17th:
1. Top Puzzle Solvers Panel 4:00 AM - 5:00 AM

Thursday, November 18th:
1. Setters/Puzzle Constructors Panel TBD

Friday, November 19th:
1. Experienced WSPC Participants Panel 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Saturday, November 20th:
1. WSPC Trivia 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Sunday, November 21st:
1. Closing Ceremony 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
2. (Stuffed) Animal Chatroom 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

This is what I can provide on my end for now. I am hoping that the schedule for the main events and the registration form could be available tomorrow. Please let me know if you have any further questions! Once again, I appreciate your understanding and patience!

Tantan

Edited by Wendy 2021-11-08 2:36 AM

Thanks for this schedule ! I'll try to adapt my work schedule to attend as much as possible :)

Thank you for the information

The national delegates have been informed by the WPF that the registration form is athttps://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScHgNb079CR-GIU8zsHS1itfmjaE_LfGDVFcjBo8Do77jW-iQ/viewform and that the IB will be published tomorrow (at LMI).

Edited by auroux 2021-11-08 8:07 PM

This will be a lot of hours of fun. Thanks to everyone involved in this project.

Will November 21st be definitely the last day for solving? If there are requests for an extension of the deadline, is it intended to meet that? I think it's fair that we know that right now so that we can make the best possible schedule for ourselves.

We will offer a clear response to this soon, we are discussing it.

I agree that this will definitely be hours and hours of fun.

Initially I thought that the 10 days time frame would be enough to leisurely enjoy everything. But it looks like, to enjoy this fully and attempt every round, more time would be needed to most competitors, like me, who are beginners to this level of puzzling and also have busy schedule otherwise too. So it might be good if the organizers, extend the time limit by another week, upto 28th, to include 3 week-ends, so that more number of competitors would attempt the competition in full. Knowing about the extension now before the competition begins rather than on the last day of the competition works best for scheduling purposes.

Our motives here are to simultaneously provide a good challenge for the world's best competitors and also allow other solvers to have a fun 10 days of solving and interacting. To that end, we may look at a slight extension (e.g. a day) so that 2 weekends are completely used, and that is what we are discussing. A week isn't on the cards unfortunately - please consider that the convention is going to take a huge load on the website and also on the people supervising things. Also remember that the puzzles will be available for you to try out after the event too.

We have shared an alternate registration form (a few posts above) so that participants who don't use google for whatever reason can access it. Please fill this OR the google form before participating.

We have a small new feature at the top right of the home page to keep track of the rounds beginning/ending, etc.

Note: Minor error in the key of a Puzzle in Round 10 is fixed. Since only 2 people attempted it so far, we will amend those results and let it stay. Apologies to those two participants.

just wondering how can i participate for the world sudoku for the first time.

I am seeing something confusing to me. In Temple of Sudoku (Part 4) Instruction booklet, puzzle 6, it shows numbers on the outside of the large cube and says that number is the number of digits of that parity within that line as the first number going inward, as I understand it. But in row 6 of that example puzzle, each side has an odd number as a starting number, and the "parity" number is 1, but there is a 1:3 string in that row. Also in column 3, same question -shouldn't that be a 2 for each of those rows or columns? Thanks for taking the time to answer! I'm new to this, and trying to understand the rules.

Hi! I'm not 100% sure I fully understood what you said. The outside digit being X means that the first X number of that direction has the same parity, and the (X+1)th number has a different parity. So, for example, in row 6, when you look from the left, the first digit is 7 (odd), and the second digit is 6 (even), which is of different parity from the first digit. So the outside number should be 1 from that direction, and similarly if you look from the right.

Let me know if this clears it up for you!

Hi tony60, it‘s pretty easy :)

Just check the instructions before taking part, especially the chapter "How to participate". https://www.worldpuzzle.org/files/106/header%20v3.pdf

For those of us who will not have time to do all the puzzle competitions during the allotted time period, but would like to be able to do the puzzles afterwards at our "leisure," will the puzzles still be accessible online after the Puzzle Convention ends? I would like not to have to open each puzzle competition just to print the puzzles, and then score zero in most of them. That would be embarrassing!

Hi! All the puzzles will be available here after the competition ends. As said in the opening ceremony, please go with your flow, enjoy the puzzles, and don't overwhelm yourself!