WPC 2014

Many days have passed since WPC. I didn't have enough time to recall, but now it's time for me to review briefly.


WSC
Well, I don't remember so much about WSC. Apparently I didn't concentrate on it. I wish I could enjoy sudokus more.... But I was able to practice finishing in the last individual round, this should be good. And congratulations, Kota!


Q&A and Open meeting
I was a bit tired after the sightseeing (it was enjoyable, of course!). It is still difficult for me to understand the whole English. Almost no problem in Q&A, but I needed to rely on Yuhei many times in open meeting. I should improve my skill.

Talking about Q&A, I usually paint all black cells in Yajilin. And what I knew about Area 51 was only concerning baseball. The pronunciation of some Japanese puzzle names was surprising for us.


Round 1
Before the start, I noticed that Palmer was behind me and Florian was in the front left. How should this have been decided?

I finished with 8min left and began checking, then I found a mistake on Striped Snake. I could not correct it soon, and I managed to submit with 1min left. But it was still incorrect. I overlooked the wrong place while tweaking.

The last one uses some Japanese puzzle names. We thought we had an advantage, but in fact, we don't know "KURODOKU". What we know is "KURODOKO". Dangerous.


Round 2
No problem, of course. I used a minute for checking. I needed to shout because I feared to be ignored, but maybe no need?

My submit time was strangely recorded as 16:56 at first, so I had to protest to get 15 points.


Round 3
I had to erase the 2nd Tapa, Tents, Battleships and Hashi again and again. Kota told me a logical path of Tents, and that was interesting.


Round 4
Hard round for me. After I finished Kropki, I went back from the last. So I left No.12-14, and the 2nd Mathrax was wrong with 3 cells.


Round 5
I could not figure out the rule of Kakuro-like one soon, so I left the 2nd one. And both of word puzzles were wrong with 1 cell or 2 cells. I should accept sincerely that I am not a native alphabet user.

All rules seem reasonable to me.


Round 6
I left 3min. Yeah, I finished this round. But I made so many 3 mistakes. Shikaku has only ambiguity problem,  but the 2nd Unequal Length Maze was completely wrong, and I was laughed at by teammates because of the mistake in the 2nd Slitherlink.

Wow.

I'm wondering how to solve No Four in a Row logically. In this type, try&error is just boring.


Round 7
We had a bad performance. Hideaki was exhausted at that time. I thank Kota for helping my intuition in the 3rd one, but I feel we could be more intuitive.


Puzzle GP Final
Before the audience gather, I checked whether I can distinguish the score table. I tried better glasses, but I could not (I have bad eyesight), so what I could learn from the table during the final was only the color.

I was caught by the first Crisscross (word puzzle again!). This was the same situation with the other Japanese, but the difference is that this was my first playoff. I was too hurried and made 4 errors (Easy as x2, Spiral Galaxies, Kakuro) from minor to major. And Count Number was treated as wrong at first. I checked my solution, but I could not find any mistake, so I said to Helen, "What's wrong?" But of course she could not answer. So I connected 1 from N in each region, then she dubiously looked at my paper. Without my submission, she brought it to Wei-Hwa, and I went ahead without waiting a minute. Later, I knew that my poor numbers caused her misreading. Sorry Helen!

When I looked at the scoreboard after the final, I learned that I didn't need to be hurry. I often forget this important thing and result in many errors, like in Round 6. I learned the same thing again.


Round 8
I erased the 3rd Flowerbeds, the 2nd Vegetable Plots and the 2nd Snail Skyscrapers many times. I managed to solve the Flowerbeds but it was still wrong. However, my most regret is that I didn't even try to solve the last one.


Round 9
Caught by the first one, but small problem as a result. Checked a minute again, then shouted again. Starting point of Hiking path is tricky and interesting.

In spite of the result, I have never thought that loop puzzles are my best. On the contrary, I believed that I 'm bad at Slitherlink for example, but maybe this is because I'm in Japan.

Combination of Cave and other types was a problem for me, because Cave is the only puzzle I usually paint inside the loop. After the Beginner's Contest, I'm thinking about changing my style.


Round 10
Kakuro and Magnets were left. Happy if the last quarter of Kakuro were completed, but I wasted much time in Pentominos, one of the easiest. I had little time for checking, so no mistake is enough here.


Round 11
Why did I top this round?


Round 12
I heard that Toroidal Numberlink was the hardest, but luckily, no problem for me. I was caught by the 2nd Every Third One, which I left for last, but still I could finish.


Round 13
Larger Tapa was the hardest for me. I used 10+min for T sets in the LMI practice test, so I solved this in the end. But no problem here.

I wonder how to solve this round within 30min....


Round 14
Masyu&Yin Yang was assigned to me. I think this was because I am accustomed to a special strategy of Yin Yang (I solved both in Beijing with the same reason, too). After this, I went to LITS&Star Battle, and then helped Kota with the highest Cave. But maybe I should have changed this order. Yuki's Numberlink solving within 90sec was impressive.


Night session
Great one! I think Ko would have liked it if he had been there. I will probably show papers to him.

I broke poker puzzle twice and left it to Takuya. Sorry, but I was tired.


Round 15
I'm so sorry for my knight step error.

I feel we should prepare much more for team rounds. It is obvious from the result (including WSC) that Japan is bad in team rounds, but this is natural considering we don't prepare at all.


Playoffs
With the result of GP final, I changed myself not to do the same thing again. This was achieved, but not enough to complete the race. I had bad experience in almost all puzzles, even in Area 51 (Nurikabe might have been the only exception). Just the result of my weakness. And I should have searched this site before.

Congratulations to all the podiums, especially to Palmer on his great performance in the final. I still have much to learn from my idol in my early LMI days.

My target this year was to be the youngest champion (as long as my knowledge is correct). One dream has broken, but I believe I can be much better. I will try for my next target.

...a little bit bitter to know that I was the only Japanese who won nothing in London, though.

By the way, how can I solve the remaining Masyu and the puzzles in previous rounds?


Others
Thanks for all who bought Toketa. I hope you enjoy it. And there is a questionnaire here. Please tell us your opinion for future Toketa.

I learned that the order of my first name&family name can be misunderstood. When I registered in LMI, the order was not designated, so I used the Japanese order, but I should have used capital letters for the family name like Yuta.

Anyway, I had a wonderful week in London. I could feel to be treated as a player, a large difference from last year. I should start from JPC again next year. I know that I would not have been in London only if Yuta could have participated in JPC. Hard qualification, but I will do my best to go to Bulgaria.

GP 2014

All GP series ended last week. Here I write about two things.

First, about examples in the instructions. What are the roles of examples? Of course they should tell us how its rules work, but sometimes I saw examples which don’t need all rules to solve, and had trouble with contest puzzles. As I’m an accustomed solver, I need to learn only the rules which I see for the first time, but for beginners, the risk of wrong rule interpretation will increase if bad examples are provided.

Another role of examples is to tell how contest puzzles will be. PGP Round 2 is a good example for this. In this round we can learn from the instruction that grid shape is not rectangular, and we may even predict that all grids are the same shape. Moreover, proper examples can give more information to the solvers, but this power of examples seems not recognized enough. Though non-rectangular example makes us wonder if the contest puzzle is also non-rectangular, we saw such bad examples many times. And one more point: some examples are used again and again, but the sources of them are not mentioned. Example puzzles should also be thought highly of.

The next is about the difficulty of the GP series. It is said here that “The puzzles in the Grand Prix will be designed for all the players with different solving skills, for beginners as well as for the best world players.”. The difficulty I expected from the sentence is that of PGP Round6, so I felt the other PGP contests are too hard. I introduced GP to my puzzle friends who are not familiar with contests, but sadly, one of them even asked to me that “is it really for beginners?”. Satisfying both top solvers and beginners in the same contest is a hard job. If we want to do so, I think we should allow some differences between GP and other contests, and maybe the differences of results as a consequence, too.

By the way, I asked my friends the order they solve in the contests. They start from the types they know well: mostly from nikoli puzzles (this is natural because they are Japanese, though solving steps are far from that of nikoli’s puzzles.) and next, try for the types they think they can solve. They tend to challenge the types they have seen in the earlier GP series, so using the same types continuously may be good in GP. And they also look at the points tables when choosing which to solve, so proper point distributions “for beginners” is important. I felt some puzzles had improper points, and others were valued only from the seasoner’s side; sometimes this makes big trouble for beginners. We should keep in mind that difficulty for top solvers is far from that for beginners.

So I think GP series should be controlled more by the organizers. I want to see appropriate difficulty and point tables. And I also want to ask the organizers for not changing difficulty and maximal points in the series. I think I had an advantage from lower points in the last round of PGP, and my 2nd position in the final result is unfair. But anyway, I can enjoy the final as a solver.