2 months have passed, but I finally solved the leftovers of 24HPC as my practice before Japanese qualifying, so here are some thoughts as usual.
I left Japan
at 10pm, 27 April, transited in Doha, and arrived in Budapest around noon, 28 April. I had some time to go to the city center for sightseeing.
Round 1
13 minutes left. I made some lucky guess, but
anyway this is
loop-round.... A bad point was that I forgot the restriction of Slitherlink Loop.
Round 2
Small error in Minesweepres Trench was saved. I did not notice multiple solutions in the second Sun and Moon. The first Statue Park cost me too much time than expected.
Tawan's round is usually tough for me, due to Sudoku and Wordsearch (especially when I compete in Japan with Kota and Hideaki), so I think I did well. About Wordsearch, I prefer
partial credit format of this year.
Round 3
40 minutes left. Maybe I spent too much on start dash? It was enough to correct some errors and then take a short rest. The puzzles are on comfortable side.
Round 4
23 minutes left. Construction of Japanese Sums is surprising.
Round 5
Several puzzles are so heavy. I would like to know better ways for the first Different
Neighbours and Non-
Concecutive Sudoku.
Round 6
After finding a path of the optimization, I spent my last minutes for Find the Differences or Common clues. Maybe I could store more minutes for these remains, but still I had few ways to get this round.
Round 7
The harder Heterocut worked well for me. Path Plus did not.
Michael pointed out the theme after the championship. Wonderful as usual.
Round 8
I made two errors: The second Skyscrapers and the third Central Park. My failure was that I broke the 2nd Killer Sudoku and could not find the entrance of
F.Sudoku. Both are good ones.
Round 9
14 minutes left, with some lucky guesses. Double Path was simple and impressive.
Round 10
Way too bad performance. I wasted too much time on Domino Castle, Pentomino Fences and so on without getting anything. The result was a kind of surprise.
The puzzles are on tweaking side, but it is also true that I just looked over logical ones.
Round 11
Error in the Product Square. The second
Honey-Comb Islands was saved. It seems that the NBA All Star was the trap for me.
Round 12
The first Star Battle was quite hard. My solving order of skipping Easy as Labyrinth should have been correct.
Round 13
My worst ranking round, giving 3 special certificates. After giving
up Skyscrapers Neighbours, I found an error in Easy as Nurikabe, and managed to correct it at the very last minute, but I still made errors in Retrograde Sudoku and Skyscrapers. In Sudoku, I failed to copy a cage correctly!
I like the logic in Retrograde Pentomino.
Round 14
Solved later. 17 minutes left, but of course in better condition. The puzzles are stable, solvable step by step. By the way I had thought that players can choose their skip round.
And...
after the long 13 rounds, I left Hungary at 7pm, 30 April, then returned Japan at 7pm, 1 May. I was sleeping all the way.
I was happy to join in such a well-organized competition. It was surprising that marking was so smooth every time, even in midnight! This year, I had a chance to go thanks to the Golden Week. As I have said, I would like to participate again someday, even if it is not next year.
