Thanks for a great contest!
In Nikoli magazine and Nikoli.com puzzles, some difficult techniques are not used.
So, at least for me, this contest was a good chance to solve Nikoli puzzles which never appears on Nikoli
(Yajilin (small) and Fillomino are typical examples).

As for my performance, I feel very satisfied to achieve what author did not expect.
After entering and checking my 16 answers, I had 40 minutes to solve three marathon puzzles.
When I solved Heyawake in 12 minutes, I became convinced that there was enough possibility of finishing all puzzles if I made no mistakes.

It was a nice contest, and there was something for everyone. And this one turned out much better than the first edition. I hope Nikoli Selection 2012 will be even grander.

Congratulations to everyone who finished all 16 from the main section. They are all winners of this contest. And special congratulations to those who managed to solve even one marathon !!!

From the main section, I liked Nurikabe, Hitori, Shikaku, and, of course, Suraromu.

Very fun test, with some really good puzzles. Nice sudoku, excellent suramoru, ripple effect and LIT(s), amongst others.

I made some stupid tactical choices, like wasting the last 10' on the Hashi, a puzzle I dislike, instead of solving the Numberlink and checking my Fillomino on which I was almost sure of having done something bad - and indeed, I had. But all in all, a satisfying performance for me.

Thanks Tom, and big congrats to Hideaki for such an impressive performance.

I agree, very fun puzzles. During the contest I had to rely a little bit on intuition on some puzzles (the Yajilin which I've solved properly afterwards, the Fillomino where I should probably have summed up the clues at some point, and also the Nurikabe. I still need to revisit that one.

Just now I looked at the marathon Heyawake, and was wondering if anyone else is having trouble with uniqueness? I solved it properly until just a patch in the bottom right and the top right are not filled in. Aside from room 'B' which is still open, my solution agrees with the correct code. It looks like the bottom right should close up so that connectivity forces a path along the right edge, forcing the top right including B=1, but I think I have a valid solution with B=2…

Most likely I'm missing some wrong room count or three-room violation, but I really can't find any at the moment. (A uniqueness argument forces B=1, so there's a very small chance an ambiguity would have been missed in the tournament.)

Edited by rob 2011-07-13 2:47 AM

I shall post a solution...give me a sec to do it in paint :)

Here we go - not quite in Hideaki's time, but I did have to faff around uploading and stuff!

http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~marear/36x20_heyawake_abc_solution.PNG

Thanks, that helped! A 4-room some distance away had just three black cells… I'll give it a fresh try tomorrow.