First contest of 2011 Tapa Series is over, many thanks to all participants and LMI.

The top three competitors are:

1- Thomas Snyder (USA) - 15/15 - 49:01
2- Andrey Bogdanov (Russia) - 15/15 - 71:27
3- Florian Kirch (Germany) - 15/15 - 72:32

Results can be viewed: http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/V/score.asp

Congratulations to Thomas for first victory of Tapa 2011 Series. He solved all puzzles in amazing total times. I think in this year Tapa Series will be more challening for everyone.

* TVC V has 15 puzzles, and next contests will have much more puzzles than this.

*
- The puzzle solved by least competitors was 10B - Tapa Possible.
- The puzzle solved by most competitors was 2 - Tapa Filler.
- The puzzle with the highest rating was 10B - Tapa Possible and the puzzle with the lowest rating was 2- Tapa Filler.

* Last year we mostly prefered to get B/W answering format. All competitors had to enter marked row/column contents. But this was hard for all of us, so we changed the general answer format. This one is shorter and easier than the old one. But as a contest designer I have doubts in this answer format, about the puzzles being solved almost completely by competitors. So I chose some rows which need being more careful, like Tapa Filler second row, or 2nd Tapa rotator first row. Please remember this for next contests.

* We will follow same pattern like previous year. So, your first contest results will be transferred to the general table multiplied by a constant. I think the table will be available after TVC VI.

* Same like last year contests' total points will rise, of course penalty points too.

* Please remember in this year best 3 results out of 4 will be considered. So, it is not important to have one bad performance.

* TVC VI instruction will be published on 14 February.

* One more thing, if you have variation ideas please share us.

All the best,

Serkan Yurekli

Edited by yureklis 2011-02-07 7:52 AM

Congratulations to Thomas for winning this contest (and also for winning Sudoku Cup V).

Thomas took just 49 minutes, and after that we checked to find that we've his split submission timings information stored in the database. I thought it will be interesting to share it here.

SubmitTime	PuzzleName
0:04:02	2 - Tapa Filler
0:08:05	1 - Tapa Chess
0:11:11	3 - Math Tapa
0:22:59	5C - Word Tapa
0:22:59	5B - Word Tapa
0:22:59	5A - Word Tapa
0:26:10	4 - Tapa Star
0:29:25	6B - Tapa Rotator
0:29:25	6T - Tapa Rotator
0:32:50	7A - Tapa with Borders
0:35:06	7B - Tapa with Borders
0:38:50	8 - Double Tapa
0:41:54	9 - Tapa Connection
0:44:23	10A - Tapa Possible
0:49:01	10B - Tapa Possible

I had an email exchange with him and here is what he had to say regarding his timings.

>>
So what I do on a test is submit puzzles when I finish a sheet and discard it to the floor. Sometimes I'll do this independently when there are two puzzles on a side, but certainly a full side when that's done as after I check the entry I won't look back at that page until everything is done.

You can see I solved from front to back (generally). I made a mistake in putting stars into the Tapa Star the first time through (there is a single cell that the Tapa can grow into that is necessary to solve it and I didn't consider this the first time), so I printed a new grid to put the wall in and restart the labeling. During this time I jumped and did the Words. So the gap to finish Tapa Star is not perfectly accurate. More like 3 minutes just to put the stars on it from the time data you see. Rotator was straightforward. Borders involved being lucky with 6x6 blocks a little bit (I excluded two edges in each case). Double Tapa was easy for me as I had learned the 221 corner break-in from some Crocopuzzle practice, and then I saw how to go along the right edge with the other wall. It was a very fun puzzle. Tapa Connection involved a few trials around the A and D, but eventually once I got one good path I could get the rest quickly. The Tapa Possible were really fun and at least the second solved from considering how the white clue areas would block you from getting to some of the grays twice. Figuring out to leave corners blank for the 3/3 gave a good nucleation site for the rest to grow out. Tapa is a puzzle type where some logic and also some intuition from a guess can work together really well. I got lucky more often than not this time around. We'll see how TVC VI goes.
>>

Thanks a lot for a beautiful contest. I had a lot of fun during solving.
Looking forward for the next parts.

Good start of the new season of tapa. Congrats to Thomas for an excellent time and also congrats to other toppers!

I didn't forget to submit my last puzzle. Somehow, but I still don't know how, I imagined in double tapa that two tapas cannot form 2x2 square. After the competition, when I realized where I'm wrong, I solved the puzzle in two minutes. Very stupid mistake.

Serkan, thanks for the password!

Nikola

Next time, could I play while sitting on the floor of Thomas' room?

Thank you Serkan, this was a really good competition.
The TAPA STAR and TAPAPOSSIBLE are very good new tapa variations. However, the WORD TAPA won't be my favourite tapa variation :)