First off, great test as always. Hats off to the constructors on an excellent bunch of puzzles.

I competed "unofficially" this year, since I'm not able to make a [potential] trip to Croatia in October due to work commitments. Many thanks for the change to allow the ~24-hour window to participate, as it allowed me freedom to keep my normal weekend schedule intact and participate this afternoon (starting a little before 4:30 EDT).

I'm claiming a 317*, if puzzles and entries are both clean. I did no real checking on either, since I was submitting answers down to the buzzer and didn't really feel pressured to check everything without a WPC spot on the line. Since I've never had a completely clean USPC we'll see how that score holds up, but I'm still quite happy regardless. This is the first time I've ever felt like I was in the ballpark of completing a USPC, so I'm pretty excited regardless.

(*Shadow Boxing #2 was incorrect. Frozen Pentominos was also incorrect. But hey, no submission errors this year!)

I'll post a little more detailed/collected thoughts later once I've decompressed a bit and have a chance to look back through my completed puzzles/submissions and review the puzzles I didn't get to (Math Flip 2 and the Fences Variation). But again, excellent job to everyone involved with putting this on.

Edited by willwc 2012-08-26 5:52 AM

Answers: can we post answers here now?

You wouldn't happen to know if 146 would make Top 25, would you? :)

@Scott, you are near the high end of a huge pack, and it all depends on who avoided mistakes. You could be anywhere from 25-100.

I'm pleased to see that the Packing for Croatia puzzle was a stickler for a bunch of folks. It *absolutely* was for me; botched it, then botched it *again*, then botched it *again* during a post-mortem solve, then figured out the Secret of Dubrovnik. Now that's a band name!

Musketeer Sudoku went much more quickly for me than the classic sudoku in the middle. Gapped Kakuro was delightful if somewhat guess-y. I am crazy about Space Probes! Don't take that the wrong way.

Incidentally, of all the times for my stupid internet to decide to stop working, 1pm MDT today would not have been my first choice. I phoned in two solutions to Nick -- both of which appear to be legit after-the-fact, which I believe puts me right at a possible 200.

Great test, Nick! And congratulations to the top solvers, especially Thomas with his extremely impressive results.

*Hands nick a fiver*

How about now?

Hi all,

I was competing for the Italian's team selection and my target was to reach 200 points, in this competition I alway put my target at half of the max score (and I always fail but this is another story... :-)

At the end i claimed 175 points (hope all is right) but I'm very disappointing with my performance 'couse I started 2 time the Tapa, three times Tren end three times Pentahouses: I never guessed (at least intentionaly), I always made very stupid errors. Shame on me!
I was lucky enough to find the tenth differences 3'' (really!) to the and so I submitted exactily at 2h30'00''

As usual I really like the puzzles and now I wait for the International score (in Italy the race for top positions is not as hard as for US team :-)

Thanks to the organizers and congrats to all authors and solvers.

230! (assuming no typos)

As usual, I wish I could write the test twice, so I know which of the puzzles I skipped that I shouldn't have, (like Musketeer Sudoku,) and which I didn't solve and never should have started, (like Gapped Kakuro.) Of course, there's also the ones that I'm happy I went for, (like Tren and the Fences Variation), and the ones that took much longer than they should have, (like Battleships (again!) and Pentahouses.) All in all, it seemed like a more standard test from the instructions, but not so much in the final version.

Thanks again to everyone involved, and good luck.

Funny you should say that. I didn't make any assumptions about direction on the I but I did almost miss it when posting my answer because my line was going through it. I caught it because when I looked at my answer I thought it was strange that there wasn't an I so I went back and double checked.

One feature of LMI's entry system that I think Nick should consider adopting is the entry format checks that tell you your entry is one character too short/long (sometimes allowing for variable lengths but always 9,9 for a sudoku, or 15 masyu letters, .... Then even though "I" is not an ideal choice for spotting on a solved grid, the string length problem with the "I" is checked at the macro-level for you. One side effect is that it may greatly reduce the manual regrading requirements; at least this is something I've found from my own Decathlon tests here.

Edited by motris 2012-08-26 11:18 PM

Funny you should say that! Next weekend's sudoku test unveils my new answer format checking! Now available with the practice test. I want to start easy, so didn't use it for the USPC this year.

Funny story: I was doing the Musketeer sudoku with about 17ish minutes left on the clock, and I got to the last 10 digits or so. I then proved to myself that I had a contradiction, so I gave up on solving the puzzle with around 4 minutes left. After the test, I looked at my grid again and realized that there was actually no contradiction. Yeah, so I feel really dumb right now.

I also didn't read the Math Flip instructions carefully and came up with the solution 13376 for the second one. Whoops!

My stupid mistakes aside, this test was a lot of fun, and it had a lot of awesome puzzles (as usual). Gapped Kakuro, Space Probes, and Pentahouses were probably my favorites. The huge outside area in the Multiplicative Corral was very cute.

The site does not show elapsed time the way i wanted( i forgot to note the start time and had to rely on the site).I found some of the puzzles pointlessly tedious after getting more than half-way through and then having to backtrack.Packing for croatia and pentahouses were two of those.I think pentahouses had too few clues to pick the right pieces for the edges and corners. Space probes was satisfying though i had to erase here too.Math flip was the most enjoyable.tren was a smooth solve,but I made a teribble oversight in the end on the right half,only to realize after the test(didnt know when the test finished anyway). I fail to understand why it lets you submit endlessly.I hate doing spot the differences.It is annoying for that point value.Frozen pentominos was another great solve.

Edited by anurag 2012-08-27 11:41 AM

I thoroughly enjoyed the test - completed at the "official start time" - so the timer was fine for me. All the ones I did generally worked fine for me - a few quick abandons. Gapped Kakuro annoyed me at the time as I got a bit done, then couldn't see the next move. Went back to it last night - saw the next move virtually immediately and completed. Thanks to all concerned.

Just finished most of the set. I like Pentahouses, Space Probes, Tren, Musketeer Sudoku and Frozen Pentominos as my favorite 5. Gapped Kakuro, Tapa, were good too. Its unfortunate I couldn't evaluate myself well during the test.

If anyone has post-USPC blues, or are on a high needing another puzzling fix, the UKPC is still open for entries until 23:00 GMT today (Monday 27/8/12). 2.5 hrs duration http://www.ukpuzzles.org/contests.php?contestid=29

There is always room for improvement but I am decently happy with my tally of 201. Thanks to the organizers for the contest and congratulations to Thomas for his return to the top.

39 assuming no errors. Creating puzzles is my thing - solving not so much.

248 if I did not miss anything. I screwed several puzzles and clearly could have done better, so I take it as a good sign for the future.

Thanks to the authors and organizers. Some puzzles were very nice. As Thomas said, Complementary Domains is clearly a good (better) alternative to Four Winds. I would be pleased to see some more in the future. Multiplicative corral was a fun and quite easy solve, Sudoku was a superb example of its type, Tren was very good too although I did not solve it during the test, being far from confident after having repeatedly screwed one the day before. Pentahouses was great, the idea was very well exploited and it flowed nicely. Nice Space Probes too, that I am happy to have been able to solve logically. Frozen pentominoes I did only after the test, but I probably should have given it a try. Snail's Nest, Gapped Kakuro and Fences Variation were brilliant and Musketeer sudoku was of a very neat conception.

Now eagerly waiting for the USSC, that I hope to enjoy as much.

any idea when the results will be posted? the contest occurred 10 days ago...

http://wpc.puzzles.com/uspc2012/results.asp?mode=full