WSPC + 24HPC 2025

 

Here is the recap of the unusually long week. I had much to do but finally returning to this. Some results are provided this year , so I will not write down about information available there.

WSC

Definitely for me compared to last year, but I was not certain about to what extent it would be.

Round 1

Simply chose the most preferable ones, with the genre and points. I heard Tantan used backward logic effectively, but it sounds risky expecialy in the very first round.

Round 2

Left: #1-6

Backwards as usual. No guess, not so much erasing, I was just slow. I have much to do for Sudoku basis. I broke #6 in the end and could not fix it.

Round 3

Left: Even/Odd (both), Tic-tac-toe

Error: Battenburg (partial credit), First Even/Odd (second, partial credit)

Solved from high pointers, so basically I did what I had to do. I had to restart the second First Even/Odd and still made 4-cell switch, and for Battenburg, which I finished in the very last second, soon I noticed that my final digit 4 was just below 4, and it was also the left cell of another 4....

Round 4

Left: Thermo (large)

Started from Killer, then large Outside and I broke it. It took long to fix it, and I had to choose not trying large Thermo, managed to finish the rest in the last minutes.

Round 5

Solved in the order. I know I was not that smooth, even erased a bit on the second one, still wonder what Letian did here. We prepared some logics for Diagonally NC but maybe it says more?

Round 6

Left: Same Product

From high pointers, and with a lot of guess; Arrow 0-8, Same Sum and Dot Sum. Finishable round if I did not break Upper Right Heavy Killer.

Round 7

I think everyone prepared combination pattern, actually it was much easier and doable by comparing each two grids. So it was almost about Classics, producing less upset.

Round 8

Due to the small size of paper, I and Kota sat in front, I started from bottom left, Kota from bottom right. Our usual strategy is to keep left-handed to left, not to disturb each other, so Hideaki from top left, Rintaro from top right. We all went to anti-clockwise way, I moved to bottom right, Kota even ended in top left. We had some confusion about genres, made wrong deduction and erased it several times.

Round 9

I forget who took which genre, probable Relation was for Kota. And I began with Inside Next-to, as the most puzzle type, and that seems good choice. Most of my work was just fitting pieces, once the grid is complete or near to that, it was sent to Kota or someone else.

Round 10

Left: #1-3

From 40 to 55, then returned from 35 points. Mostly with trials, it might fit better on this difficulty.

Round 11

Left: 8x8 (40/85), 9x9 (0/105)

Then big trouble occurred. I was near to finish in around 20 minutes, but found a unresolvable pattern in 9x9, then found a broken clue. I retried 9x9, broke again, once more in failure, good reason to erase 8x8. And I could not come back to 9x9. I know it may happen in such a structure, yet a disappointment to clearly lose podium with one puzzle.

Round 12

Left: Classic, Self-Joint, Pole position

From high pointers as usual, but with low tension. Good enough considering my state.

Round 13

I forget who took which set (Kota has the booklets), maybe I saw the Irregular pattern of set C. I had some trouble in the midway, somewhere around Next to Nine or so (but not regarding clue orders - we never cared about it), and received some clues from the others. I could catch up in the last Outside but Rintaro was trapped here, spent some additional minutes but managed to correct it. Good result but could have been much better.

Round 14

Same seat as Round 8. Each quadrant is almost solvable independently, but quite hard. I worked together with Hideaki in the left two, and we all gathered in the top right, probably Rintaro was not comfortable with this puzzle.

Sudoku GP Final

I was not involved but note the selection:

Tantan: pick Region Sum Lines

Kota: ban Coded

Suzhe: pick Classic 1

Tantan: ban Coded, so it goes to  Suzhe

Kota: pick Classic 3

Suzhe: pick Classic 2, complete the set

Tantan: ban Determinant, so it goes to Kota

Kota: ban No Touch, so it goes to Tantan

Tantan: ban Quadruple, so it goes to Kota, and Tantan gets Parquet and Palindrome

And the orders in each round were:

Coded, Classic 1, Classic 2

Classic 3, Determinant, Quadruple

Palindrome, No Touch, Parquet, Region Sum Lines

I heard from Kota that he wanted to avoid lottery in Coded, and he likes Classic from Minako. Actually I made a lucky guess in that Classic, and I think I was not that slow at finding the trick of Determinant, but bad at filling classic part in it, and also in Quadruple. And time disadvantage is significant in such a sprint, of course.

WPC
Supposed to be my main target.

Round 1

Beginning with Double Choco and Star Battle Builder, then tackled to Scrabble. Lucky to have good intuition on it. Erases in the second Star Battle Builder and the first Doppelblock Figures were the main losses.

Round 2

Error: Clouds (second)

First from Cave to Coral, mostly taking only the second ones but taking both for Easy as ABC and Domino, then returned from the end. Jumping Crosswords was time consuming but doable for me. I skipped the second No Four in a Row (I don't like this word this year) for time management, leaving a few minutes but that is okay. Bigger problem was the minor error in the Clouds, and this was the sign of my error prone days....

Round 3

Left: 4 minutes

Error: Non-consecutive (first), Domino (second)

Rather complicated strategy here, my order was Domino, Fillomino, Non-consecutive, Skyscrapers, Futari and classics. I expected the trick of the first Fillomino but still overlooked the pattern. And two errors, both of two-cell switch were critical, I am not sure what I was doing.... About the puzzles, I love Hitori with good logics, not just searching, and I am happy to see such kinds here.

Round 4

Planned to solve Pentopia, Skyscrapers, Statue Park, Easy as Battleships and then backwards. But I made no progress in Pentopia for long, even skipped once. I cannot find the reason from post-solve, what I missed?

Round 5

Eternal trial of connecting via zigzag parts. After the round I heard that Ryotaro expected the theme of the solution, that knowledge would have changed the game!

Round 6

Start position was based on the genre preference:

Top Left: Ryusuke

Top Right: Naoki

Bottom Left: Kota

Bottom Right: me

I cooperated more with Naoki, completing right half and gradually moved to left. At some point someone found broken part in top left, so we erased leftmost column, and maybe Chess too because of uncertainty. After several attempts we also erased Tapa Line part, still broke and almost concluded that the puzzle is wrong, and tried to fill the remaining parts.

Round 7

If I remember correctly, original distribution was:

me: Ice and Water

Kota: Fire and Matrix

Ryusuke: Adjacenct and Morning

Naoki: Miasma and Robotic

left: Energy

Even though I was more accustomed to the newish genres, I was ask to speed up in classical ones. I could make good progress on both, then worked on placing grids. We had to confirm the rules at some points, even in the very end we forgot the rule of Energy forbidding direct connection.

Puzzle GP Final

The selection was:

me: pick Kakuro

Thomas: pick Yin Yang

Naoki: ban Sudoku Battleships

me: pick Blokus (Given Set, Polygraph)

Thomas: ban Sudoku Battleships, so it goes to me

Naoki: pick Slitherlink (Pentominoes)

me: pick Nurikabe, complete the set

Thomas: ban Skyscrapers (With Blanks, Distinct Diagonals), so it goes to Naoki

Naoki: ban Maxi Loop + Country Road (Permaculture), so it goes to Thomas

Thomas: pick Rail Pool, and Naoki gets Pentominous

And the orders in each round were:

Skyscrapers, Pentominous, Slitherlink

Maxi Loop + Country Road, Rail Pool, Yin Yang

Blokus, Kakuro, Sudoku, Nurikabe

It might have caused no difference, but Naoki could have picked something without banning Permaculture? Regarding my choice, I did not mind any genre, only considered the balance. I wanted some number filling types and Kakuro was the most likely be taken by others, so I took it first. Sudoku would almost automatically come to me, and three number filling could be too unbalanced, especially when I did not know who would come to the fourth spot, so my next choice was Blokus, a bit skewed type but rather comfortable for me. And Nurikabe was for nothing, only to make it to three-puzzle game. Yin Yang was my preferable choice for that purpose, with less risk, but luckily for me it was already picked. Actually I had trouble in number filling part and saved by it (sorry to Freddie with my error). And even for that I had some frozen time, diagonally touching 2 and  3 reminded me of Cave and I had to check the puzzle name. I will prepare better for this new format.

Round 8

Solved: Yajilin (second), Masyu (second), Kakuro (second), LITS, Easy as

Error: Aqre (second)

Badly started the second day. Misunderstanding of number of stars in the second Easy as was a big loss, and one-cell error in the 160 pointer was much more critical.

Round 9

Left: Letter Fragment Crosswords, Pointing at the Crowd (second), Hungarian Numberlink (second), Letter Cocktail, Hexa Islands, X-Crossward

As planned, I started with Crossing Masyu, From 1 to 20, Orbits, Domino Square, Pentonuri Romanis, Pento Paint, Binary Stars and Regional Yajilin. Less problem so far. Then I tried X-Crossword but found nothing, feared to try another word puzzles, which was the bad decision. After that I just wasted time on the second Hexa Islands and grabbed some points in the end.

Round 10

Backwards, with some guesses. Tried to get back to my pace.

Round 11

With the experience of WSC Round 1, I used many backward deductions here.  Some of Easy as grids were left till the end.

Round 12

This was not well performed. I was not smooth at the start, could not find the pattern of bottom left and even thought there were no solution.

Round 13

I solved Heyawake + Island Nations + LITS and Double Country Road, then helped Kota with Shikaku. At that point Kota had solved Ripple Effect + Suguru, Naoki did Ice Walk + Double Choco and Double Galaxies, Ryusuke did Scrabble + Nurikabe Snakes. After Shikaku, Kota continued checking continent puzzles, and I joined in Pangaea.

Round 14

Left: 6 minutes

Error : Solar System

Original distribution was:

me: Hidato and Black Hole Tapa

Kota: Four Winds and Kropki

Ryusuke: Simple Loop and Choco Banana

Naoki: Pentominous and Fillomino

I was not smooth on Hidato even after setting the orientation, more stuck on Tapa and Kota helped me. Still we could not do it, probably due to wrong position of outer ring. At that point Naoki found multiple solutions of Fillomino and I went to check it, we spent too much time on it. I wonder how the other teams dealt with it.... Thankfully Kota managed to solve Tapa, and  we decided to leave Fillomino, but finally made a wrong setting of Uranus in the final puzzle.

Round 15

Left: 11 minutes

Error: Compass (second), Bosnian Road (second)

Solved order was Cave, Skyscrapers, Bosnian Road, Compass, Slitherlink and Akari. And I still made silly errors: the second Compass had a clue with bottom 1 in the top row, but I somehow saw it as left 1. The other error was the only proper error in this WPC and I can accept it for taking risk.

Round 16

Left: 30 minutes

Error: Aqre

Silly again. First I broke Aqre, then finished it without looking at D. In the end  I knew the number of D but found it nowhere, wrongly thought it as useless clue.

Round 17

Left: 9 minutes

Error: Dice Poker (fourth)

Spent some minutes in vain by confusing 2 and 2+2 in Dice Poker. And the error came from the final filling steps.

Round 18

Left: 22+5 minutes

Went backwards. In the middle I saw another large grid, felt some similarity with the first boss, and went to next page, then I saw front page in the center of the booklet! Front page - boss combination was somehow mixed in the middle. I could not notice because the round concept was to solve what  I see. I called for Pal at the front, he soon understood the situation and I proceeded. I had to correct 2-loop error in #3 but finished with 22 minutes left, and it was discussed later. Luckily I was in the front row, and the competition director was watching my solve of the boss, checked the time as 5 minutes, so I was given another 5 minutes. Maybe my second solve was faster than 5 minutes but considering the confusion I think it was rational, and the best thing was that it did not affect to anything.

Totally bad days, losing 1005 points from errors is way too much, and too much misreading. Probably I made the same mistake as in Kirchheim, but not sure about the exact reason for now. Anyway it happened again and I have some possible reasons in my mind, many things to check.

24HPC

I had to read the instruction but no power to concentrate on it. Good thing was that I had a chance to watch Road World Championship on TV, I was watching it between reading, or even reading between watching, good refresh on Sunday.

Round 1

Left: 2 minutes

Error: Tapa Egg (first)

Went forward but skipped Scrabble at first. A lot of erasing from the beginning, especially on VAMA.

Round 2

Error: Linesweeper, Capsules, Country Road (Large)

Backwards but skipping Slovak Sums after breaking twice.

Round 3

Error: Penthouse + Numbered Rooms (3/4 correct)

Went forward from Choco Banana but skipped Fillomino + Country Road after initial steps, also skipped Tapa + Skyscrapers without finding anything. And I spent too much on Magnets + Underground, very inefficient work.

Round 14

Left: 32 minutes

Backwards, good rest with comfortable solving.

Round 5

Left: Odd/Even Not-Quite-Sudoku (first and second), Antignight Not-Quite-Sudoku (first)

Error: Kropki (second)

Classics first, then variants from revealed ones and high pointers. Many erasing on this mad round, maybe more on small ones. Filling error on the trivial Kropki (switched 4 and 6 in the top right) was crazy, and actually I made a swap in the last puzzle of the round, which was saved by the warmer marking.

Round 6

Left: Twins (6/8 found)

First went from Pentomino in the Box to Tumbleweed Loop, then took 3D Scrabble, Monopoly Sudoku, Star Battle Kakuro, then mostly backwards for the remaining. I tried to find the hidden trick but failed again (or solved before noticing).

Round 7

Left: Instructionless, Countries, Count the Shapes (Jigsaw), Triple Choco, Halfdomino, Easy as (Curve Data)

Basically planned to start from Sudoku (Thermo). Big loss on Countries, I spent so much but failed in the end, then collected some cheap ones.

Round 8

Left: 0 minute (probably)

Error: Maxi Loop (third), Sudoku Minus One (first), Suguru (first)

Forgot the order but my last one was the first Sudoku Minus One, I thought I hit the guess but it was not correct at all. And many errors, Suguru was actually correct and just thin, but I was saved for empty cells for the second one, and the second Kuroshiro was also saved, and as far as I heard from Pal this year marking was a bit more rigid for top players.

Round 9

Left: 5 minutes (probably)

Basically high pointers first, word puzzles in the middle and sprint in the end.

Round 10

Left: Barriers (both), Diagonal Irregular Sudoku

Planned to start from higher ones but found nothing for Diagonal Irregular Sudoku, so changed my mind to solve all except it. I did not notice not touching Barriers till the end, almost started checking.

Round 11

Left: Arithmetic Square (both), Easy as ABC (both), Battleships (second), Context (both), Futoshiki (second), Tango (second)

Error: Scrabble

From high pointers, erasing a lot. And I missed Chiel on Scrabble, sorry!

Round 12

Left: ? minutes (busy on checking)

Combos forwards, then classics backwards. I tried Latin Combo several times and believed that it happened again on this cursed genre. I also broke Kropki and doubted if the classic rule is not that I know in fact. Skipped it and got back in the end, luckily looking over the wrong part that time.

Round 13

Left: 12 minutes

From high pointers. I felt I was apparently getting slow.

Round 4

Left: 26 minutes

Easy post-solve, glad to see their contribution here.

I was almost unsure what I was doing, just solved and survived with many sacrifices. I continued making many errors, so this is good evidence to say this was not caused from pressure or Hungarian creation, though I cannot say this is good thing. Thanks organizers for such a combination of big events, I am looking forward to visit again, hopefully in better form.

At last I will provide all of my heart rate record:

WSC Day1 Part1

WSC Day1 Part2

WSC Day1 Part3

WSC Day2 Part1

WSC Day2 Part2

Sudoku GP Final

WPC Day1 Part1

WPC Day1 Part2

WPC Day1 Part3

Puzzle GP Final

WPC Day2 Part1

WPC Day2 Part2

WPC Day2 Part3

WPC Day3

24HPC

WSPC 2024

 

Here is my recap of the last WSPC, returning to my first WSPC city.

WSC

I was doubting my adaption to Chinese authors.

Round 1

Left: Fortress, Palindrome

Planned to start from the end and skip the above two and cheap Abacus, but I had to restart Weiqi. I had enough time to get Palindrome in the end but broke it too, so just saved 5 points. Well themed round.

Round 2

Left: #1

Went backward. No significant trouble, just lacking speed.

Round 3

Left: Odd

Error: Consecutive

Backwards again. Argyle was done by an assumption of R4C5. Good round except this strange error, wrong in two way.

Round 4

Left: 3D Consecutive

Error: Sum Next to Nine Renban

Went forward from the second one. Our preparation for Penta Diagonal helped me a lot but it was still tough. My error was major one in this round, and also I had to restart No Touch Windoku.

Round 5

Left: Multiples, 24-Trio

Went forward from the second one. This kind of round is usually for me, actually not bad but not enough. My prepared list for 24-Trio was badly in vain.

Round 6

Smoothly found the entrance logic. I spent a minute for checking, too much for only one puzzle. As expected, the result shows this was puzzly round. And as usual of such a round, it was unfortunate for some players. I still remember my 0 in 2013, luckily not again.

Round 7

Left: Unmarked Thermo, Outside Sequence, Arrow-or-Thermo

I had to guess in the first Large-or-Sum. Next Liar was ok but then erased Uncertain Inequality, losing much time. After that I solved from higher ones, but could not make good progress in Outside Sequence.

Round 8

Our planned solving order was:

Kota: Inequality, Rossini, Argyle, Clock Faces

me: XV, Kropki, Mathdoku, Anti-Knight

Rintaro: Arrow, area 6

Ryotaro: Between 1 & 9, Irregular Dots, area 5 or 7

I do not have our sheet and forget the details of the teammates (same for the other team rounds), just know that I erased Anti-Knight three times and failed to finish it. I even forgot to erase it from the list! Apparently I caused the biggest problem here.

Round 9

We tried to be careful but still erased a lot, though we cannot see how it happened. Our team was rather fresh this year and our communication was not that good, maybe some of the error came from this. It seems most of the other teams did the similar mistake, but anyway we lost good chance.

Sudoku GP Final

I felt much better in online stage compared to the last year, but it was not reflected to the result. I should get at least one better time than Tantan... or change my seed.

In live stage, my last minute submission of Factor Lines was incorrect, again due to the Classic filling mistake. And no chance in the final Clock Faces.

Round 10

Left: #1-4, 10

Way too bad. Went forward from #5, and erased 3 out of 5. Big potential to improve....

Round 11

Left: Pyramid

Error: Rossini

Began from hard Numbered Rooms, then backwards from the end. Quite comfortable solve but made a major error.

Round 12

I mainly solved Anti-Knight and... broke. So sorry again. So most of our work was tweaking. We had confidence in only one grid, lucky to get another.

Round 13

Apparently our strength. First we collected Non-Consecutive slips, and I constructed it. Then I did No Three in a Row too, and almost everything was done at that time. The biggest problem for us was pasting, I was the fastest but also roughest.

Playoff
Puzzle selections for the semifinal were:

me: Quadruple to first

Tiit: Clone to second

Kota: Extra Regions to third

I missed to note banned ones, but I must have banned Classic, and probably Irregular from Tiit. The reason of my choice was to expect many clues and reduce disadvantage. I am not certain if this was good, there was no calculation types and I am worse in any of those common types. I managed to follow the others but messed up due to the coloring of Extra Regions.

WPC
Even with small jet lag, I was afraid of my condition. Since individual rounds have less contribution to both team and playoff, I tried to save my power, especially on the first day. Normally I dislike this kinds but the competition structure forced me to do so. Before to start, Helen (in front of me) asked me to finish silently, which matched my object.

Round 1

Left: Scrabble

Solved in the order. I tweaked from the beginning, forecasting tough contest. So I checked high pointers very carefully. I had more than 5 minutes for Scrabble but the progress was little.

Round 2

Solved in the order. Here I understood cheap ones were not that easy. I am still unsure why connections were required in Tents, normally I do so but needed some additional care.

Round 3

Left: Pyramid Climbers, Battleships

I used a few minutes for the first one but left it, then went forward. I could not solve Battleships and returned to it in the end, but just continued erasing.

Round 4

Left: Double Choco, Choco Banana

Error: Arrow Maze

Started with two high pointers, then from the front. I was a bit slow in Japanese Sums, and somehow swapped 13 and 14 in Arrow Maze.

Round 5

Error: Laser

50+ pointers first, then the rest. I thought I finished in the last minute but Laser had isolated loop. I checked outside clues but did not considered such a case. I expected it could happen with this difficulty level, did not want it to be the highest one though.

Round 6

Interesting theme, I know them as a Japanese and can understand a bit more. Forwards with 75+ and then backwards with the others. I had to remember connecting Tents again and the direction of Slalom, I feel these requirement are quite unnatural even after I solved them.

Round 7

Left: Domino Domino, Binairo, Not Alone

Error: Light and Shadow

Nicely themed pairs. Forwards with 50+ and then backwards with the others. My error was that a region contained two black circles. Interestingly, one of my teammates made the same mistake. This was solved in the last minute (just before Yin-Yang) so I can accept this error.

Round 8

Left: Diagonal Dissection

Solved in the order but skipping casual Diagonal Dissection and Hexagon Arrangement. I erased the latter in the end, otherwise I had some time to try the remaining one, possibly for just wasting time. Again for this round, I had to remember connections in Hamle, I preferred answering grid for this.

Round 9

Left: Akari (Regional)

Pentopia, Doppelblock, Statue Park, then backwards. My biggest failure was restarting of Doppelblock, and missed a minute to finish this round.

Round 10

Left: Arithmetic Square (Cubic)

Error: Straight Cross (Hexagonal)

Basically in the given order but once skipped Koburin, Double Choco and Area Division, and returned to them after I thought Arithmetic Square was hard one. Good tactics, except this silly error.... This was my only error this day.

Round 11

Full power here, just went forward. I spent a full minute for checking, 30 seconds are not enough for 40 puzzles. And I did not notice multiple solutions in Line of Sight, maybe it affected on the next round.

Round 12

Left: #7 Shikaku variant

Nice combination with the previous round, including their theme. It was not a joy to memorize the rules, though. Began from #1, and stopped at #3. Went to #4, returned, #9, returned, other ones (except cheap #7), again returned. I determined as many cells as possible, still though it was not unique. I used all the remaining time for this 125 points by re-reading the instruction. Otherwise I had finished with good amount of bonus.

Round 13

I do not remember my solving order, but Slash Pack was the last. Here I had some trouble, because I assigned T to Four Winds. It was actually "at least T", O as a result, but I tried to solve Slash Pack as O. And I would like to mention that I used ruler for Angle Loop!

Round 14

Solved: Old Maid, Password Path, Crisscross, Letter Weights, Darts

After Password Path, I tried Maze Collector and wasted a lot of time. Then checked Elastic Sums and gave up soon. I could relax a bit after completed next Letter Weights, and collected some solvable ones. It was completely out of plan to solve Old Maid. With the result, Maze Collector is what I should have solved.

Puzzle GP Final

Bad performance for this online stage. I made a typo in Binary Stars but it was corrected soon. Worse error was in Ripple Effect, I put 6 in pentomino area! And I missed an easy step in Offspring, which I must have banned in Round C. Also I would have never chosen Ripple Effect against possible Kota, the random choice was way too unlucky for me. In live stage, I completely messed up in Easy As, losing even a podium spot, and was forced to solve Word Arithmetic. I wonder how this skewed set (both online and live stages) were selected by the way.

Round A

Error: Detour (top right)

Even with the relaxed Thursday, I had a small fever and felt bad in the morning. So I had to take some small rest during this round. Here I started from Barns, just because it was in front of me. For the other members, Naoki from Tapa-like Loop, Kota from Yajilin and Soji from Masyu. Then I solved some part of Dotchi Loop, moved to Maxi Loop and Detour. We had to fix Yajilin (missed the possibility of 1-cell passing) but I did not have enough energy and left it to others, only made some progress in Country Road. Finally we smoothly found global parity, confirmed by three members, and concluded in Dotchi Loop. We checked all the connection and left 13 minutes, but unfortunately there was a small loop, which is hard to find. This was the first one of our troubles in each team round.

Round B

Again we just solved randomly. Naoki finished Pentopia soon, and most of my work was matching the pieces. I was not so efficient, with the impression from post-solving, but good enough. And finished the round with some correction work (but after finding my pen, which I did no use for a while). Here we finished with 19 minutes left, but there was bad communication with the proctor, regarding whether we should use our envelope before the finish. Our bonus was once decreased by one minute, but corrected after protest.

Round C

left: C1 NIKOJI, Shape Jigsaw (19/32 filled)

We were conservative to solve Countries by all four. Distribution for the next phase was:

set W: me and Soji

set S: Kota and Naoki

then

set P: me and Naoki

set C: Kota and Soji

I did Lohkous, Araf and Shape Division (with some help in the end) for set W, moved to next earlier than set S, and then solved Compass and Shikaku for set P. Set C NIKOJI was tough if forgetting the orientation of unused domino, I and Naoki did not wait for it and intuitively placed the pieces. When we received the marked sheets, the sheets inside JPN-A envelope was not ours (USA-A in fact). It was funny that our Japanese note was good evidence.

Round D

left: Falling Letters, Double Choco, all the final set puzzles

Conservative tactics again, the worst thing for us was that the round was finishable. Our planned distribution was:

me: Akari, Heyawake, Kurotto, Vertigo, Look-Air, Fillomino, Japanese Sums, Arrows

Kota: X-Sums, Spokes, Geradeweg, Simple Gako, Hashi, Tren, Magnets, Letter Weights

Naoki: Meadows, Square Jam, Pentominous, Statue Park, Nagenawa, Sukoro, Slitherlink, One to X

Soji: Numberlink, Anglers, Gaps, Scrin, Mintonette, Masyu, Double Choco, Snake

I was mostly OK with my part, so I helped others or joined in the remaining ones, even finishing Lohkous by myself. My only fault was in Fillomino (Matching Splitter), where I wrongly convinced myself that top left region needed split line. The hole caused some confusion about splitting, and we managed to solve it after all the team gathered and Soji pointed out my mistake. Hashi was once marked as incorrect due to the messy writing, and amended in third check, but our score was 2780 at first, this was our last protest.

Playoff
Puzzle selections for the final were:

me: Kropki Pairs to second, banned Lohkous

Thomas: Kurodoko to third, banned Doppelblock (Anti-Knight)

Christian: Barns to first, banned Statue Park (Hitori)

Kota: Cave to fourth, left Fillomino

My impression throughout this championship was that cheap ones are not that easy, thus not good for my choice. So I went aggressively, chose higher number filling type to get advantage from two. I also expected Thomas or Christian would choose the highest Statue Park, but it did not happen. Also I think Thomas could leave Doppelblock and force Christian to ban it, but maybe he was ok with all the other puzzles. For my ban, I wanted to choose cheap one with inefficiency, and Lohkous seemed more risky. I felt comfortable with it in previous team rounds, so this was difficult decision. Unusual placement to the second spot was somewhat whimsical, I felt it was better not showing my speed on Kropki Pairs. And this choice and placement save me. I broke Barns many times with wrong logics, almost losing my advantage. I did well in the team round but I was not in hurry there, I should have done in the same way here. But I was able to calm down thanks to Kropki Pairs, I knew I could recover here, and actually it was beyond my expectation. I failed to get my sheets back but as far as I remember, I used many 1-degree assumptions for Kropki Pairs, and even used 2-degree assumptions for the following two puzzles, but anyway I did it.

So, I think it is time to confront my long term task; Classic Sudoku is always my obstacle, and I still have energy problem in WSPC week. I know these will not be resolved soon but I would like to try more, believing that this will lead to another ground.

Heart Rate and Puzzling

 

I bought heart rate monitor after WSPC. There are some usage I expect, but the main reason is to understand what is happening when I solve puzzles.

In some endurance sports, heart rate is used to estimate energy consumption. For theoretical background, the best summary I have is here. I found some articles about energy consumption in chess, but no theory or data, so now I am collecting my own data. I will show some of them.

First one is from Japan Puzzle Championship.

Obviously high heart rate in the first round, especially at the end of that round, when I rushed in the final puzzle. It marked the highest 149, matching my feeling. Second peak is in the lunch break, just ascending stairs.

Next from recent LMD contest.

Quite low compared to the previous one, maybe because in home? Relatively high in Skyscrapers + Snake period and at initial finish. I predicted it was high when I found my error in post-checking, but it was not true.

And at an event.

Low rate in the final hour because I finished my main task. Still 2700kcal in 8 hours is unusual, explaining why I get sicky in highly competitive situation. I missed food during this record, and had bad headache in the next day, probably showing the importance of fueling.

Another feature is instability of heart rate. In comparison, pure walking is like this:

But I do not know what this means, I am not the specialist. Any information related to this field is welcomed. For the time being, I will continue to record, maybe I can attach the heart rate link to my YouTube video. I cannot record during WSPC under current regulation because I have to connect monitor and phone (this is why I began now), but maybe it will change in the future?

24HPC 2024

Time to look back my revisit to Budapest. Again I arrived on Thursday, walked around the repaired bridge and west side. Exit rooms on Friday were also fun.

Round 1

I failed to note my time but left 14 minutes or so. My plan was to solve in order but skipping Letter Table and Criss Cross (apparent reason), and did in that way. I also had a choice of skipping small Word Search Sudoku, but no need with enough time. Good theme and comfortable start.

Round 2

Left: From 1 To 9 (second), Scrabble 2

Planned to skip both of From 1 To 9, cheap Japanese Sums and Scrabble. Not so bad except the final Scrabble, where I somehow missed a pattern, put wrong words in top left, resulted in no solution. Finally I gathered most of the skipped ones but the trouble was too costly.

Round 3

Left: 2-1-Snake, Topology (all), No Four In A Row (second)

Error: Little Star Battle (second)

After Little Star Battle, I jumped to Suguru and follow the order. My first trouble was in Topology, maybe I wrongly understood the iff rule? Then I moved to get the remaining 100s. YinYang Triplets were the hardest, I had to make multiple assumptions. And I rushed to the small pointers, but could not find a way of Snake, even stopped at No Four In A Row. Badly I had touching stars in Star Battle, 6 in the first Suguru pentomino (one cell error was allowed). YinYang Triplets was also marked as wrong at first, due to the thin writing.

Round 4

39 minutes left, but later corrected a minor error in Isowatari. Simply in the given order, much easier than feared. Small Evolmino was the erasing point, though.

Round 14

8 minutes left. This time I went backwards. Mainly due to the points, but also because once I missed the in/out rule of Times Zones. Not so smooth, especially around Galaxies and its variants, but good enough.

Round 6

Left: Coded Cave

Backwards again. Lovely set, my regret was that I messed up in nice Coded Cave. I even had some time to return here, but still wasted time. I used brute force for Coded Tents but are there any better ways?

Round 7

Error: Fillomino Roman, Slitherlink Odd Even, Minesweeper Odd Even

Fillomino set first, then from the end. I thought I managed to tweak on Fillomino Roman but there was still one unsatisfied clue. And for Minesweeper Odd Even, I had to restart but made an mistake again. Slitherlink Odd Even was in the last minute, I intuitively drew 3x3 square. Rather acceptable but also avoidable. Nice and finishable set, bad performance.

Round 8

Left: Twins, Wiring (all), High Low Mastermind (all), 33% Word Search (23/27 found, but actually 22?)

Planned to skip Twins, Wiring (tough example), High Low Mastermind and actually did it, but the final Word Search was time consuming, much more than expected. I think I persisted on my original plan and expected difficulty, which should be improved. Any other puzzles (or even guessing) were more effective. Btw I do not know some names in Word Search, even in Japanese.

Round 9

3 minutes left. In the order but skipping cheap Parallels, so I started from Starship Battle with a smile. I had to reread the instruction of Slopes, where I found multiple solutions in the first one and noted a question mark, which was confirmed by my grader. Then hurried to Parallels, good usage of time with small rest.

Round 10

Error: Double Back (first)

7 minutes left, but could not find my error in the last step. In the order but skipping cheap Pentominous and unfamiliar Tachiawase Block, returned after Ripple Effect. Good to see some rare types.

Round 11

Left: Barriers (both), Number Tables (both)

Error: Sudoku Minesweeper (second)

In the order but move to Arrow Maze after Kakuro, and once reached the end go to Honeycomb Islands and forward. Tactically good but just slow. An missing arrow in the first Arrows was allowed.

Round 12

Left: Little Killer, Tiger in the Woods, Bunnyhop, Old Maid, Greener Grasses

Planned to go forward from TomTom but skipping Old Maid, then return to the front, but I got stuck in Greener Grasses, and lost much time on Rampage and Icewater Walk especially, so in the end I just gathered comfortable ones. Length error in Tren was allowed.

Round 13

Left: Triplets

Planned to go backward till Light and Shadow, then Triplets, and forward from the front page. Actually I spent some time for Triplets but found nothing, and due to the lack of power I had almost no time to return. It seems I did not understand its basic logics. Foreshadow contained nice argument, happy to find it in the end of the long day.

Round 5

In my home. 3 minutes left, with safety solve. Latter 8 puzzles were done in 37 minutes but lost much time in Cave (Twilight). Here I can estimate the effect of better condition....

So in total, I made too many errors this year, including some accepted ones. And this tendency is from the beginning, my 20+km walk with some climbs on Thursday might affected somehow? I lost 3kg in this trip, though I took enough food compared to my usual. Anyway I need more power for the next year, and also to improve many other aspects of course.

WSPC 2023

And looking back the latest championship. Detailed results can be found in the official site.

WSC

I was clearly aiming for a playoff place.

Round 1
As my usual, I started from high pointers, which means two 70s in this round. And then solved the others, mostly from the end. I did not expect finishing here, the difficulty was much easier than expected.

Round 2
Went backwards. Surprisingly good result in Classic round, even without assumptions. Most of my Sudoku practice is for easy-middle Classic, so good reward?

Round 3
Solved 95 points Thermometer first (quite tough one), then mostly backwards but skipped Pencil Marks at first. I did not plan to solve this before the event, but with the difficulty of previous rounds, I decided to try it at some point. I was lucky to hit two-degree assumption. I tried Anti-Knight in the end but broke it, I tweaked and got valid Classic solution in time but it was still incorrect with 4-cell switch.

Round 4
Points distribution had less variance here, so in order to avoid confusion, I did not prefer Math Grid and Bubble. Maybe typical strategy? Then I went backwards, but my beginning Group Sum was the biggest trouble, where I missed repetition around the clue and wasted some time. Disappointing result considering the round theme.

Round 5
Then the trouble occurred; I was sleepy after the lunch, which is rare for me. This was my first visit to that area, and apparently I did not fit the time zone. This was significant trouble for my and our team throughout the week.  I do not want to recall this round so much... broke Triple Diagonal, major error in the first Renban, and an empty cell in Windoku!

Round 6
Went backwards. I had to reset my mind here. Not the best with some erasing, but happy to recover from the previous round.

Round 11
Kota and Hideaki solved 1-5, I and Takuya for 6-9. The pairing was just because of original seat. My side was slower with a wrong step, so Kota helped us in the end.

Round 12
My first role was to decide the position of Classic pieces, together with Killer pieces; we expected the orientation would be obvious for those. No progress for a while with given Killer clues, and I noticed the remaining sums could be calculated, and... gave them to Hideaki! It must have been the best choice. It was rather smooth after that.

 So I was 9th after day 1, largely affected by one bad round. Still not giving up the final, I had to perform so well on day 2.

Round 7
Backwards, with many guesses, managed to finish in the end but made a 2-cell switch error. I did not know that at that moment but it could have been critical.

Round 8
Starting from the second Outside, and then Skyscrapers where I smoothly found the logic. Then solved Rossini kinds and went backwards from String (it was very nice btw). I did not have enough time for the cheapest one, so checked for a while in the end. The result was better than expected, maybe puzzly side?

Round 9
Better than Classic, but  I am not comfortable with these kinds. Weave was the worst one for me, I learnt 45-degree rotation from Kota but still broke the example, so I left if for last and went backwards skipping it. I had less trouble thankfully.

Round 10
Easy to expect this round would benefit me, and actually it was. Just backwards.

Round 13
Expected construction, so my role was managing the final grid. It worked well enough.

Round 14
Kota and Takuya preferred Classic, then I chose Turquoise (green), so our positions are:

Turquoise: me

Blue: Takuya

Red: Hideaki

Yellow: Kota

We struggled with #1. Sometimes I had no progress on it, or even erased my seal which I place in my previous turn! After the round I heard that our stuck point was in Turquoise, but I do not remember the exact state. One funny thing was that I made no submission here, probably thanks to Kota.

Round 15
We sat the same seat as the previous round, and the puzzle distribution was:

Set A: Kota

Set B: Hideaki

Set C: me

Set D: Takuya

I had no trouble on instructionless part, and when I finished checking and was considering second check, Takuya submitted, so I joined in. Kota came a bit later, and it was good time to know the remaining rule. I and Takuya solved top-left grid, and when I noticed that 3-digit number can be determined, I gave it to Takuya! Similar work as round 12, again it was good decision. Hideaki managed to finish his part (probably the most troublesome set), so we could check Samurai together. We finished in 39 minutes and the round was extended for 15 minutes, so I think we should get bonus for that, but no change for the ranking.

Playoff
Yeah I achieved my first target! I had to wait for 6:20 but in case of severe playoff I might had a chance. It was not the case this year and easier than expected 50 minutes, I had no chance and just solved in my pace. But it must be good opportunity, and it is positive point that I was not too slow. Btw, I had strange feeling for no break between puzzles.

Sudoku GP Final

Unusual timing this year. Online Stage was announced in short, so I had to change my schedule. My online solving included breaking easy Classic, which made Tom (the author) laughing, but I believed that Tantan would not prefer Classic. It was true and I still had a chance for win in Live Stage. I was lucky in Classic here, and had a chance  of Grand Final, with Anti-Windoku (I think there was bad communication, her intention seemed to be Non-Consecutive). Badly I made a wrong Classic step, I need to improve this.

By the way, the rule says that a bye player always loses, but I think it was not applied in that way, if the structure is same next year, I would like to clarify. The best thing is that everyone can come to Live Stage, of course.

And I would like to leave my preference list:

Arrow

Sum by X

Big Bands

Thermo

Self-Joint

Classic C

Classic B

Classic A

Unfortunately I was sicky next day, had to give up Niagara Falls tour. Maybe I spent too much energy for WSC, or GP Final ended late.... Due to the jet lag I woke up every two hours, only four hour sleep in total, and after the sleepy round I reduced my lunch, there were so many reasons to lose my condition. I even doubted if I would survive WPC, at least I had to save my energy. This is why I wore more in WPC.

WPC

Anyway it began. Due to the announced difficulty, I changed my strategy, to be much more simple order.

Round 1
Went backwards. I had counting trouble on the second Fillomino, and guessed a lot on the second Kurotto, so high pointers were hard enough, but solvable. This year I checked very carefully after each solving, one error might lead to losing hundreds of points in this situation. I did not spend additional minutes in the end instead.

Round 2
The order was #4, 5, 6, 3, 2, 1, this was typical order in many rounds with 6 puzzles. I feared the unique rule of Konkat-kuro but it was not used here. I almost missed a cell in Invisible Doubles but managed to find while checking.

Round 3
Trying to go backwards, but after 20 minutes I had one unique side and one no-solution side, I made some wrong deduction but it was not easy to fix it. Giving it up, I managed to catch two middle pointers and still had 5 minutes or so, but I had some confusion in Skyscrapers and could not finish it. There were some risky round this year and this round was one of them, so with my condition I expected such trouble round, but... I was not welcomed to Niagara at all. One positive point was that my condition got a bit better with a lot of sweat during this round. And great performance from Naoki.

Round 4
Here the order was #5, 6 then backwards. Thankfully there were intuition-friendly.

Round 5
Same order as round 2. Well themed round. I tried not to guess so much because I did not want to do severe checking, and it worked well.

Round 6
Another risky round but it was rather smooth. I had to erase a bit but not too much.

Round 7
Clearly bad performance. Going backwards, I did not check given banks in Battleships and Statue Park, wasted too much time. I guessed a lot in these genres and was forced to check carefully.

Round 11
Same order as round 4, another typical way. The last steps of #2 was not easy and even after getting solution I tried the wrong side to confirm.

Round 12
Just  backwards. I broke Heyawake partially but only erased a bit.

Round 13
Next day, getting better but not perfect yet, and bad start. My solving order was #5 to 9 and then #4 to 1, and my first trouble was in #7, which I somehow broke many times and restart again and again. I spent some time for understanding #9 - at some point I felt it was similar to Mochikoro and that was the trigger. And other troubles were in easy ones, I forgot to connect same alphabets and only trying separating different alphabets. Our team did not prepare enough for this round, our fault.

Round 14
Same order as round 4. I could not see logical way for Antisymmetry, so it was solved with case distinction.

Round 15

Went backwards. Error-prone round, and I wanted to solve logically and keep accuracy, but Masyu Triangular was done by intuitive solve.

Round 16

Solved 100+ pointers first then went backwards. 140 points Exercise was the hardest for me but managed to find the pattern. One good surprise was that Aoi, our newcomer this year, finished for the first time and get out of the room.

Round 18

Same order as round 2, I wanted to finish Diagonal soon. Tough puzzles as expected, I guessed a lot, even in a cheaper one.

Round 19

After the falling in Niagara, here I began with Fillomino. Holes were not easy to grasp, when I needed one more cell and checked the grid, there was an unused hole cell.

Round 20

In the given order, for the first time this year or I should include round 6 or 19. Normally this is guessy type but I still feared for errors.

Round 10

After saving lunch, I felt hungry at the beginning of this round, maybe lacked some energy. I started from Crisscross, which I thought safe choice, but spent 20 minutes for this, clearly out of plan. Then solved Star-Crossed and One or Two, and my next plan was Crisscross Crash but could not find the trick, so went to Piece Arch, which I was to leave for last. Only 5 minutes or so was remaining then, so gathered 10 points Wordle Bank and checked for several minutes. Hard Wordle Bank was logical, so maybe I could have get some more points in different order, but not so much. Tough round for me and our team, I am not sure about the portion solving skill and language advantage, I would like to see a number-themed round to understand the situation.

To summarize the individual rounds, it was easy, maybe too much. It tested our accuracy again and again, and most of my conscious was spent for it, but I felt strategical aspect was not tested enough. Maybe finishable difficulty is good for saving my energy, but I also love tough contests too.

Puzzle GP Final

I decided to take enough dinner. I felt sleepy, but I could have some exercise during video presentation, and felt well in the Final. My preference list were:

Skyscrapers+Kakuro

Cave

Aqre

Snake Pit

Nurikabe

Infection

Kakuro

Letter Touch

When I knew the new format, my first impression was that I did not want to play "Printing" GP. Possibly I would change this next year after checking the data, but anyway this was my principal this year. Actually I had that trouble in Kakuro, as you can see in my video. Word types cannot be my preference, so my candidates were Skyscrapers+Kakuro, Cave and Aqre. I also considered adding classic Kakuro to this list, but imagining the tournament table (not revealed), Hideaki can be my opponent in my second match, and Kota in third (in fact both came true), so I chose Number types for the first. For Cave and Aqre, I believed in Matej from the result of last year, so placed Aqre to more important spot. The rule at that moment said I might choose the remaining puzzle, so my choice were to make more accident. I would have chosen differently in the correct format.

Online Stage was ok for me, and my possible opponents in Live Stage were Naoki, Jeffrey, Thomas at that moment. So my best choice for the Grand Final was Kakuro for sure. Even if I lose my first match, Naoki would skip Kakuro, so my task was how to beat him in one of the remaining three puzzles. No lose was better, but I had at most two chances. I knew his preference to Pentominous, and he must have been accustomed to Slitherlink, so chose Cave. I gave him Pentominous but I know man could have trouble in the playoff situation, and actually it was the case for him, not critical though.

It was a pity that there were no video for the audience, on the other hand we did not have to wait for setting and the Final was quite shorter than Sudoku.

Round 8

We could choose our pairs but not the puzzle sets.

First half: me and Hideaki

Second half: Kota and Naoki

Instructions were not difficult for our part. Hideaki soon finished the Latin puzzle and helped me, but we just wasted time for it. I even heard proctors talking about my stuck.... I am still not sure about good way for it. Somehow I found the solution, only 5 minutes or so to check the final grid. Loop part had been finished then but I could not fully understand the required rule. And we had an error in the third puzzle. Just a disaster round.

Round 9

We simply had one paper each and filled from outside of the grid. I and Naoki were faster by 3-4 pieces and help the others. We were anxious about error and slow to avoid it, I am very curious about how the German team did in this round.

Round 17

I and Naoki mainly handled the combination part, not strictly logical way. Kota missed copying a digit and we needed some time to notice it, but otherwise smooth.

Round 21

I do not remember what I solved in this round. We tried to use tricks in its attached grid, like rotating partial rectangles of Statue Park, changing clues of Nonogram into Ternary form (no solution), or even considering Country Road as 25x25 grid using vertices and midpoints. At some point I noticed that Cave could be rotated, and there was rotation trick in other place. Afterwards most of my work was matching, I did not solve any single grid by myself. The trick for Scrabble was obvious but we never considered using previous solutions because no other grid did that (by the way there was another spot for "NARF" in the first stage?), and I assumed changing grid size was for Observation Puzzle. I am so sorry for having asked so much work to Hideaki but in vain. That means we also missed Country Road and Nonogram. In the end of the round three of us (except Naoki in Country Road) cooperated in Word Search.

If I remember the Q&A session correctly, the round was quite harder than expected? With the round extension, USA should have more bonus points for 15 minutes, huge difference. But I think the round was well considered to be cultural neutral, at least better than word types. Just we lacked the ability....

Round 22

First we made the combination with 800, and optimized in the next step. It had been a while since my last folding/origami, but my hand remembered. Time setting was not severe here.

Mini Playoff
Due to my condition and some uncommon round, I did not aim for each playoff, this was just a result. Easel style has never been appeared officially since 2013, which I watched as an audience, so my only have some exhibition experience in Japan. This was unofficial thing, and I did not have to avoid errors too seriously here. Maybe I could do more roughly, though. First TomTom was not easy to start, I feared mistake with pen and used small numbers. This genre was almost decided here. In the next genre first Star Battle was again decisive. For Shading, I considered different notation on easel, but finally used my normal way. Here I made the only error during this WPC, lost another chance. The cause was more like easel style, maybe I felt some fatigue though. For Loop/Path, I wrongly left an end of the Slitherlink loop in the bottom half and had to correct it with some cross marks, and I also made a wrong deduction in Cross Border Parity Loop and took a while to notice it. And in the last round, I assumed global argument was required in Araf and wasted time, my bad tendency. It did not go well as a whole, but one good point was that I could solve all 15 puzzles, meaning less trouble.

Still much to improve physically and technically. My new year would start from ASC, maybe 24HPC, and WSPC would be in near place? And I have to prepare for next GP season too.

WSPC 2022

Assuming that one team round, playoff videos, detailed results and GP puzzles will not be released, I post this draft before mentioning the latest WSPC. Probably most of my memories are getting obscure.

----

Here is my playback of the great week, which I waited for three years. This kind of article happens only after I solve all the contest puzzles (including team ones), so it is a bit late this year.

WSC
Well, the championship which I hold for a while somehow. Now I know the results of Tawan's crystal ball contest and that many people expected my performance (more than I thought), and at least I tried doing my best.

Round 1
Left: #8, 9
Error: #1

All same points, so just in order. Managed to finish #7 in time but 2-cell switch in #1.

Round 2
Solved: #10

Then disaster began. I spent half of the round for #10, then went to #5 but broke it in the final phase. I could not finish tweaking in time.

Round 3
Solved: #2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

From high pointers. Much more smooth than the previous round. Two puzzles were marked as wrong at first due to bad writing.

Round 4
Solved: #2, 3

Bad work on high pointers this time. Normally I solve these to hide slow classic speed, and my performance relied too much on them this year. I had some time to try #5 but only filled 1/3.

Round 5
1 minute left.

Finishing this round or not would make big difference, so happy without any significant trouble.

Round 6
Solved: #4, 5, 7

Error: #9

5-cell error in #9 was critical. I tried to get #1 or #2 in the last minutes but got stuck soon in both.

Round 7
Solved: #1, 3, 6

Error: #2

Major error this time. I filled 1/3 of #4 but it could not be in time, so checked #6 and rushed. It was as expected, to make unique puzzle with this rule.

Round 8
I do not have our papers so not sure which ones we solved, but probably all Arrows and two Diagonals? We messed up with some letters, otherwise all Diagonals and some more could have been completed.

Round 9

Decisive round for team result. We should have guessed more?

Sudoku GP Final

My first appearance. No puzzle selecting, just solving unlike Puzzle GP. I broke my first puzzle, Thermometer, resulting in no solution. I even messed up next Non-Consecutive but managed to find the pattern. Afterwards it went much better, but I lost to Timothy twice. I even feared no-winning beforehand, so good result enough.

Round 10
Solved: #3, 4, 6, 7

#3 was marked as incorrect due to a thin writing. Barely finishing all high pointers, no time to check the others.

Round 11
Solved: #1, 5, 7, 9

My initial plan was to solve #8 but I had to give it up without any inner progress (due to wrong deduction?). And the round ended midway through #6.

Round 12
Solved: #1, 2, 9-12

Third set first, then first set half. Confused a bit for copying.

Round 13
So I was third in our team, relatively easy position in this round but expected to win all. I did not note our opponent team in the first round, probably we met Germany but I cannot recall others, sorry. But opponent did not matter here, time was the real opponent. The round concept is good in that many people can experience playoff-like things, but I wonder how they felt with this difficulty.

We won all matches in the first round, but second Antiknight was 1-0 (only me) and fourth Windoku was also 1-0 (Kota, this was the only one I missed). Thus second seed next to Czech.

I had a note for the second round, it says we met France, USA, UN with Vincent and UN of Tantan and Thais. Semifinal was 0-0 draw (again only one I missed) but we managed to win the tournament. Good reward.

Playoff
Believing my note, the selection was like this:

Fourth round

Tiit: Sudoku Fractions for first

Kota: Arrows for second

Tantan: Liar Frame Sum for fourth

Tiit: Diagonal (second) for third

Kota: Killer for fifth

Third round

Jakub: Outside for second

Jan: Irregular for third

Hideaki: Consecutive Sequence for first

Jakub: Kropki for fourth

Second round

Jakub: Sequence Top-Bot for first

Ken: Skyscrapers for second

Thomas: Antidiagonal for third

First round

Nikola: Fortress for first

Jan: Antiknight for second

Sinchai: Integral for third

I chose Skyscrapers as a puzzler, of course Thomas was there but I thought this was the best choice. Actually I did not do it well but I earned time in the first Sequence Top-Bot and kept the lead.

My next round, after waiting for 200 seconds, I had to start checking my instructions; it was Sequence in fact! The lines pass the border so it was quite strange, but I could not believe in myself because I had not checked this type in previous round. Jakub somehow solved it and the other puzzles, and Jan happened to see the next Outside, so keeping Jakub's time for Irregular and Kropki, reselection happened:

Irregular for first, Kropki for second (original choice)

Jakub: Classic (first) for fourth

Hideaki: Squares in squares for third

This Hideaki's choice really benefitted me and himself. I could start the final Classic but time disadvantage affected here, so my defending game ended.

I did not felt so much fatigue, as if I could not use my energy well. This was somewhat true, I could not adapt to the difficulty till the end. I need more skills to choose different strategy.

WPC
And my main target to stop the gap of five years....

Round 1
#1 to #3 and then went back from the last. Writing all numbers in Nanro is not my usual, so I wanted to do it early. After solving all puzzles, I checked 5 minutes or so, because irregular grids have more possibility of errors. But except Ripple Effect; it takes much time so I believed in my solving. Then I submitted with 28 minutes left.... And error in this! 4-cell error and no partial bonus, so my possible 730 points became exactly half. I heard this in lunch break, worst feeling in the week. But as a result, this was the only error in this WPC.

Round 2
8 minutes left.

Just went backwards.

Round 3
13 minutes left.

I cannot recall my order, but it was genre by genre, based on my preference and total points. I made some guesses, especially on loop types. And with many puzzles, I spent several minutes for checking before submission.

Round 4
15 minutes left.

Solved in the given order. I had some trouble in latter half but not critical.

Round 5
Left: Spiral Snake

Then more trouble occured. Nothing was smooth, the worst thing was Easy as Snake, which I broke in the last steps and had to fix by tweaking. I solved this round from the end but skipping Spiral Snake with insufficient remaining time, so I had to get this 100 points even ignoring 30+50. I managed to do that, and hurried for 30 points. I lost this round but this could have been much worse.

Round 6
Left: Slitherlink (Crossing + Toroidal + Liar)

First I solved two 115s and then checked 135 points for several minutes, but no progress. It seems I persisted too much on global argument. Giving up and tried the others, but I had to restart Suguru and lost time, so I could not return to Slitherlink. But strategically better choice at least.

Round 7
2 minutes left.

Same feeling as WSC, we should have guessed more? I was almost working on construction, and we were too much logical I think. We lost so much points here.

Round 8
10 minutes left.

Due to the points distribution, solved in the given order. First one was as expected, but I know the use of 0, I was careful about it. I felt my solving was a bit rough, and my error in the first day occurred in the morning, so I spent several minutes for checking before submission.

Round 9
27 minutes left.

Solved in the order. I wanted to be logical with this rule, but I hit an assumption for the last one.

Round 10
Left: Hidato (Knight) (second)

Crazy round as expected. I love the concept, but to be honest I do not prefer solving this in official competition; it often requires re-reading of the instructions, it is difficult to translate precisely in advance. Actually I heard that Hideaki had some confusion.

Due to the risk in this round, my solving order was complicated. I wanted go get all 70+ points, but at the same time I did not want to take too much risk, so I went from front page but skipping some uneasy puzzles like Hidato and Overlapping Square, and cheap ones like Meandering Numbers and Country Road. I was threatened by the gimmick many times but managed reach the last one, and returned to the skipped ones. Hidato twins were my last, with good remaining time, but I was too slow for the first one, I had to guess the second one in the last minutes but with no success.

Round 11
14 minutes left.

Probably did in the order, but maybe skipped cheap ones. I could not find logical way for Fuzuli during competition, thankfully I had plenty of time and decided to use brute force.

Round 12
6 minutes left.

If I remember correctly, went forward starting from Slitherlink, and returned to the skipped ones. I thought the second Slitherlink had two solutions but it was just wrong. Not stable work.

Round 13
1 minute left.

First gathered 110s, then 130, and the remaining ones. Kropki was my final puzzle, here I had to hurry for unexpected finish.

Round 14
6 minutes left.

I can see erasing in several puzzles, so I think it was not smooth for all of us.

Puzzle GP Final

I wanted to avoid lottery so I skipped Star Battle first, then used Japanese Sums considering my opponent. Next skip was Parking Lot, which I though also had some risk of lucky guess. Then Double Choco. Of course this also has some risk, but here I managed to left four stable genres, and as Japanese I might had some advantage to Thomas. It did not go as I wanted, but one lose yet.

Here a trouble happened, next puzzle should have been chosen by Kota, but Wei-Hwa mistakenly asked to Thomas. This was the earliest lose of top seed in this format, so possible confusion. Kota also wanted to choose Fillomino (and Thomas also for Yajilin in next round), so no difference luckily.

Fillomino and Yajilin were okay, but true problem was in classic Slitherlink; I broke it and could not fix it. This was out of plan, much worse than Double Choco. I was quite good in final Slitherlink (corners) (though missed a segment thus one error), so my largest regret was in losers final.

Round 15
I have a note for this side:

Pot 4: Greece

Pot 6: bye

Pot 2: UK

Pot 3: Bulgaria

Pot 5: Finland

All 4-0, so first seed. Tournament opponents were France, Czech, Netherlands, USA.

I remember Kota lost in Skyscrapers and Yuki lost in another match, but there were all. I faced many good players but did well enough. Winning both tournaments was nice.

Playoff
Round 1: Set 4

Round 2: Set 5

Round 3: Set 1

Round 4: Set 2

I was waiting in the hall, not seriously watching but checking the solving time to understand the difficulty. Set 2 and 3 were left for the final, and I just avoided the word type. At least one other finalist chose the same, but I know it was not Yuki. And there is no mention about time advantage in the instruction; it was based on the ratio of preliminary points but multiplied by 0.8. So my advantage to Thomas was (2400 seconds)*(1500/7560 points advantage)*0.8=(381 seconds). But I knew even 7 minutes had not been enough.

Before to start the final, I asked if the last puzzle type would be revealed beforehand. I did not want to re-read the instruction again. When we knew that... oh. I had bad experience in the previous round.

Smooth solve in Chained Block. Statue Park too. Context was not, I just hit an assumption. Skyscrapers was okay again. The problem was in Hidato. Due to the irregular gird, I missed some easy steps, and it was still hard even with that. Finally I hit three-degree assumption or so.

So, with relatively easy rounds, accuracy was more important this year. Large error in beginning but only that, I think I could fit the situation. And finally saved my position in the playoff. I was not solid at some point, but I believe there is some improvement. Still going.

24HPC 2023

 

So here is the recap of my second visit to Budapest. Normally I write this kinds after I solve the remaining puzzles and check the results, so this post goes before looking back the last WSPC. (I think I was waiting for results, videos and maybe more.)

This year I arrived on Thursday, and spent two days for sightseeing, including two exit rooms. I walked too much, but still my state was much better than in 2017.

Round 1

Left: Angle Loop (second), Two Way Stostone (second)

My original plan was, starting from the front page and go till Two Way Stostone, and then going back from the last one. But the second Angle Loop was apparently evil so I skipped it, and I spent much time on the second Two Way Stostone but in vain. Thankfully I was quite lucky in the Triple Jump, so I just collected the remainings. 

Round 2

Left: Top Heavy Number Place (second), Tapa (second)

I was planning to solve in order, but made bad start in Thermo Sudoku. Considering the pace, I skipped other Latin types, then my next trouble was in the second Tapa; I thought it was broken even after three attempts! Before the round Samu explained the case of broken puzzles, so maybe I was too suspicious. Finally I broke the second Top Heavy Number Place and could not complete it, resulted in bad round.

Round  3

Left: Easy as ABC (all six) , Pentominous (both)

Error: Knight Battleships (second)

Planned to go backward from the end, at least till Ripple Effect. But I could not find starts of the second Knight Battleships and move on to the first one, I managed to solve it (but missed a ship, which was saved though) and then I also solved the second one, but I made an error while checking the pentominoes, placed two Ps! This is my only (non-secured) error in this contest. After that, in the other types, I could make some progress at least, but the biggest problem was that I assumed wrong deduction in (Anti)knight Heyawacky. I finished (Anti)knight Makaro in the last seconds, and that saved my position.

Round 14

In my last participation, round 14 was my skip round, so this is my first experience. Just in order, 33 minutes left (from my note). Later I corrected my error in Kakuro (the highest one). Basically I check my solutions (but find no error except this round) after finish, and take some rest and food. I cannot get bonus but additional break is good thing anyway, and I could even check the puzzle theme.

Round 5

Went backward from the end, from high pointers. 26 minutes left. I think I was not smooth in Gapped Kakuro, and considering the last round, I checked Kakuro types especially. One funny thing is that my booklet was suffered from water while marking, but no problem.

Round 6

Left: Easy as Regional, Killer Skyscrapers (all three), Sudoku (both), Kuromasu (both)

Original plan was starting from Fences Out-Liars and go ahead, but puzzles were heavy on average. After I managed to solve Times Zones, I collected easy ones on the front page, and then time was up. Maybe I should choose Kuromasu? Definitely the toughest round for me.

Round 7

Left: Word Search, Word Search Sudoku, Coral Anglers, Slash Pack, Tetrapack

As planned, began from Top but skipping Word Search types, and after finishing Coral then returned to Word Search Sudoku. But badly I could not solve it, just wasted time. Giving it up and collected easy ones, but I could not tweak Slash Pack. Probably bad strategy, I should have left Word Search Sudoku till the end.

Round 8

Left: Twins (3/10)

Just in order but skipped Twins till the end. Twins and Word Search have partial points and I think I am not efficient for them, so left these for last sprint. Luckily gravity rule was benefit for me, and I could even leave some time for twins. Finish-able set if I was better at other puzzles.

Round 9

Beginning of 1000s and taking good rest in midnight. 18 minutes left. Just in order and of course leaving Corona in the Woods for the last. Actually I wrongly understood its rule and took some time during the round. I checked my solution after finishing, but I missed two-cell switch in the first Coded Skyscrapers, which was saved by judge.

Round 10

Went backward from the end. 15 minutes left. I talked about Perspective Skyscrapers with Tawan in Saturday night, and it helped me a lot - I still had some trouble though. I can see so many erasing places in my booklet, especially in the latter half (which I solved earlier in the round), so my performance in itself was not that good.

Round 11

Again from the end. This is often good choice for me if I want to confirm high pointers first. 29 minutes left. This time I made less erasing, except Kakuro [Twins] (again my first puzzle) and tweakings in Kurotto and Detour. Mostly common types and good for midnight, actually it was one of the easiest round.

Round 12

Solved in order, 48 minutes left. Definitely the easiest round for me, which I never expected beforehand; my worst result came from his round in my first appearance. Full of common types again, so maybe this tendency has good impact in this competition.

Round 13

Final round, where I was bad in 2017 (and from Bram). So I was careful for strategy, tried heavy ones first; meaning Poker, Winners, Kakuro, Barriers, Honey-comb Islands, Arrows in this order. Thankfully it went well, then I collected the remainings. I was too much relieved and forgot to note my time, 15-20 minutes left I think. BTW I am the exception of Winner. :P

Round 4

Left: Half Dominos (second)

What I did in Japan. The only sad thing in official 24HPC is that I miss a round there. My original strategy was starting from Word Snail and go ahead till Dotted Snake, then Statue Park, Summon, Password Battleships, All Even Fences, Scrabble, Banknotes and Decrypting. I wanted to keep latter two kinds for final sprint, and leave Scrabble as long as possible. It went almost as I planned, except leaving the second Half Dominoes for last; after several minutes I did not find any proper way. In the end I had only 3 minutes for that, needed additional 2 minutes. As my usual in home, I recorded my solving of this round, so I know the most critical trouble was in the first Half Dominoes, where I spent 10 minutes. Actually this was another chance to complete.

So, as a whole, the result is as wished, and my regret in the last round of 2017 was improved, which were my main targets this year. But I made bad start this time, and many points to improve are remaining. Anyway I really enjoyed my journey, I hope I can join in soon again.