Oops. I meant “Tapa-Like Loop” when I said Railroad Tracks.

R8 Tapa-Like Loop: The loops will not be able to intersect at a cell orthogonally adjacent to a neutral clue, since it means that a loop will cross-over to the cell with a neutral clue (which is prohibited in the rules). It can, however, intersect at a diagonally-adjacent cell to a neutral clue, in which case the total of both loops is counted. Therefore, it is possible for a neutral clue to have numbers add up to more than 8.

Yes ;)

Hi all, I'm reading the Puzzle IB and I noticed that 9 out of 10 rounds have a ratio total_points/minutes very close to 10; the only exception is the "Made in China" round with a ratio of 1500/80 = 16,6
Can you confirm the total point of this round will be 1500? it seems very strange to me, but I'm certainly not an expert, such an "anomalous" deviation from the rest of the rounds. In such a way round 3 (Made in China) seems to have, on average, a greater weight than the other rounds on the final result

(Triple Jump ha s a ratio 950/80=11,8, all others have ratio of exactly 10 or very close to 10)

Thnaks very much,
Gabriele

The total points is accurate.

Gabriele: my guess is that, because the puzzles in "Made in China" are quite far away from classics, and have relatively few distinct puzzle types for such a long round, the authors have provided way more puzzles than can be completed (by mere mortals at least) in the 90 minutes, so that most of us will be able to choose what types of puzzles we wish to work on and still aim for roughly the same amount of points per minute as in other rounds.

In other terms: if you expect to barely finish the other rounds in the allotted time, expect to be able to get a score of roughly 900 on this round, and it's ok if you are completely incompetent a., for instance, Mahjongg Mazes because there are enough puzzles of other types.

In Gokigen Naname 3D, instructions say that draw the diagonal lines. However, in the solution, both the top 2s are connecting along the line instead of diagonal?

Yes, this mistake has been pointed out before in this thread, the cells are drawn wrong in that part of the puzzle. The rules are correct.

In the instruction book for Cave, did the sample solution flip the shaded squares? The shaded squares are not supposed to be part of the cave, correct?

The puzzle solves the same either way, its just different notations.

"Shade some cells to leave behind a single, connected group (the cave), with no enclosed, shaded cells. In other words, all shaded cells must be connected by other shaded cells to an edge of the grid."

This plus the flip of what's shaded in the example led me to think that what I wasn't shading were the walls of the cave and because they were unshaded, the walls were allowed to be enclosed. I should've tried to solve the example - I would've noticed there wasn't a unique solution with that interpretation.

Going back to the competition puzzle, this is making much more sense now, thanks. :)

How do I post an image of the puzzle in the discussion forum post ???