Compass tapa:For the puzzle to be elegant,every arrow should find a unique path.This is not mentioned in the rules.I believe Takeya's third puzzle has unique paths,otherwise the puzzle would have three solutions.How is the test puzzle gonna be like?

Neither of Takeya's first and third puzzle has unique paths, and both are uniquely solvable. Also they're both elegant in my opinion…

For Tapa Tapa:

The directions say that the cities CAN have Tapa clues. Does this mean they also have the option of not having clues? (The example shows only length 1 segments adjacent to cities, but without clues there could be longer segments. Can a city be shaded?

Cities can have Tapa clues, using ONLY the digit 1. So 1, 1-1, 1-1-1, 1-1-1-1 are all possible around the train, and it has to be 1 of these 4 possibilities since otherwise a connective path between two trains wouldn't exist.

If I read you right, then, cities MUST have tapa clues - as a square with no tapa clues can have any number of segments around it.

Well true, I guess the cities are clue cells with at least a 1.

The rule is that any segment of the wall touching a city can only be 1 cell long.
From this my question comes. Do all cities have to be connected to eachother? For example, would the following puzzle be allowed?
The question of course can become irrelevant quickly if each city has at least one distance given.








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Valid Tapa Tapa.png (12KB - 3 downloads)

Interesting.Such a city can be used as a trick.But I think Serkan wouldnt, in all probability.The test puzzle would most likely show distances involving all cities
(certainly not all pairs though),and also likely have all cities connected.

So far i've solved only Rauno's example. I had some questions about the type too before solving. But, after solving the example i thought every city should have at least a 1 clue. I suppose that Rauno thought same way. So all cities have to be connected like in the example.

Edited by yureklis 2012-03-29 11:10 AM

Wired tapa: Can the wire loop in to itself? This is different from using all four nodes of a cell. I know this is possible,but a bit useful to know in advance so we know that such loops do not exist.

Puzzle Points Group 1a. Visionary Tapa 59 Puzzles 1-2 1b. Make Room For Tapa 104 Puzzles 1-2 2a. Twilight Tapa 25 Puzzles 1-2 2b. Twilight Tapa 83 Puzzles 1-2 3a. Compass Tapa 14 Puzzles 3-4 3b. Compass Tapa 92 Puzzles 3-4 4a. Wired Tapa 33 Puzzles 3-4 4b. Wired Tapa 94 Puzzles 3-4 5a. Broken Tapa 40 Puzzles 5-6 5b. Broken Tapa 71 Puzzles 5-6 6a. Roman Tapa 19 Puzzles 5-6 6b. Roman Tapa 63 Puzzles 5-6 7a. Sweeper Tapa 42 Puzzles 7-8 7b. Sweeper Tapa 163 Puzzles 7-8 8a. Tapa - Like Loop 14 Puzzles 7-8 8b. Tapa - Like Loop 90 Puzzles 7-8 9a. Tapa [Borders] 35 Puzzles 9-10 9b. Tapa [Borders] 144 Puzzles 9-10 10. TAPA TAPA 62 Puzzles 9-10

Announcements Password protected puzzle has 12 pages (including a cover page) Time bonus will be computed after you click "Claim Bonus" Penalty will be given irrespective of correctness of submission Contest Length : 75 minutes Total Points : 1247 Bonus : 13 points per minute saved Grace Period : 5 minutes Penalty : 9 points per minute used (Computed upto seconds)

19 puzzles in 75 minutes. That's going to be challenging. Although I guess I did 50 in an hour at the WPC.

Link to score page - http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/XII/score.asp

Excellent puzzles. Absolutely loved some of them (Yet to do 2). Thanks for a great 2 months of puzzles Serkan :)

Nice Puzzles. Njoyed a lot. I only knew 6 types to solve . So Kept a target to solve 12 puzzles at least. But was able to do only 10.
But even then i guess it was better than my first two tvcs and worst than 3rd tvc.
My favorite was Compass Tapa and Tapa Borders.

Having struggled with Bram & Palmer's practise puzzles far more here than the previous TVCs, I dreaded this test much more than the last one, but there were some nice puzzles, thanks Serkan.
(And thanks to Bram and Palmer too, for taking the time to create practise puzzles)

Rohan Rao, I told you to either do really good or really bad.. did you do either of those??

Thanks Serkan for the wonderful TVC series. You can make Tapa as popular as Sudoku :)

Thanks to Bram and Palmer for the practise puzzles, they were extremely useful.

@Pras
I tried doing really good. But 70% into the contest I realised it was not possible, and by then, it was too late to do really bad :|

Its never too late. I got a wrong submission during the penalty period because of a one cell error. You're just not good enough when it comes to turning a good performance into a bad one in the space of seconds. Learn from me.

I certainly picked the wrong puzzle to typo :(. Great puzzles again. Thanks for the whole series Serkan.

Now that it looks like I'll be out of the top 20, (I assume MellowMelon will submit by the end of the day,) I'll ask about claiming points:

I submitted during the grace period because I got the answer key wrong on one of the puzzles. Would that 'wrong' answer have been accepted as correct? I don't remember when exactly I submitted, so I can't tell if my penalty on the score page includes this or not. (Note that I submitted two times during the grace period: first to finish one puzzle, and second to correct this answer.)

I'll just round it up by making my 100th post on the forum as this all draws to a close (mainly because I'm fed up of all the "almost there"s that I've managed over the last 2 months).

From a personal POV, its been wonderful to participate fully in the last 2 months. Last year, I was new to everything, I think I gave 2 TVCs and ended up getting a bigger rank than the points scored! So, even though I knew I've obviously improved since, I didn't really know what to expect with Tapa in general on a competitive level. I've fully participated in every way, and minor negatives aside(mostly to do with my own idiocy), I've enjoyed every bit of it.

I'd gotten used to the whole routine at midnight, which Deb knows about. Its already proving a bit difficult to get out of that routine.

100!

I assume you are talking about '8a. Tapa - Like Loop'.
Yes, that 'wrong' answer is on our accepted list. So you would have got full points, even if you hadn't submitted the 'new' answer during grace period.

So, did I lose points for the second submission, even though that submission wouldn't have changed my score? It doesn't really matter, it's not going to affect my placement anyway. Sad face.

I just have to say that the last two months of TVCs were simply awesome, with tons of great puzzles. Huge thanks to Serkan! :D