24HPC 2018

So here are my results and comments for 24HPC this year.

Round 1 1000 (-14 minutes)
Spent much time on the 2nd Curve Data. Are there logical paths for Different Neighbours?

Round 2 938
Left: Kiss Wordsearch (partially)
I wasted much time by assuming Scrabble as Pentominous. It was not completely in vain, though. Spy Battleships is nice as usual.

Round 3 850
Left: Ripple Effect, Kropki
I expected something easier, but it turned out to be cruel. My favorite is Triplits.

Round 4 1000 (-40 minutes)
Fortress Sudoku has multiple solutions.

Round 5 840
Left: Word Search, Hidden Words, Mastermind, Sudoku, Sudoku Mastermind
Good theme as usual, and quite challenging. Maybe I should have been more intuitive from the beginning.

Round 6 525
Left: Start With 1, Roleplay, Seek and Scrabble, Islands and Capitals, Largest Number Sudoku, Cipher Cave, Fusion
Hard as last year. I assumed the rule of Worm Web differently. I spent too much time on Fusion, without reading no-touch rule.

Round 7 1000 (-6 minutes)
Stable as usual. I found a uncompleted error while checking. :P

Round 8 825
Left: Coral Finder Starbattle, Error: Compass Starbattle (dividing error in top-right)
Interesting theme. Easy as ABC Starbattle was tough for me.

Round 9 1000 (-6 minutes)
The large Tomtom caused trouble to me, but I managed to finish in the end. Yajilin-Shapes includes some funny tricks.

Round 10 1000 (-3 minutes)
Easier than expected. I could not expect puzzle difficulty from the point distribution.

Round 11 845
Left: Atomic Attraction (both), Error: Morra Path (not completed a line), Skyblocks (filling error in a grid)
Full of errors. Positional Minesweeper is not unique, and it costed much time.

Round 12 835
Left: Triangular Minesweeper (both), Slasher (large), Error: Easy as ABC (1st, filling trouble)
Continuing easy errors. Badly I forgot a logic in Slasher. Triangular Minesweeper should have been solved.

Round 13 1000 (-6 minutes)
Expected theme from the instruction. Meandering Words was tough, and I got it so carefully in the end.

Round 14 1000 (-38 minutes)
Stable. Corrected some strange errors. Falling Letters is nicely becoming classics.

I took more than a week to complete, but still tough contest it was.

Topics of 2018

No update for a while. Here is a short summary of this year.

・I joined in Asia Sudoku Championship in Korea again. 2nd place was beyond my expectation.

・Unfortunately, I caught flu in Korea, and it affected on the 1st round of Puzzle GP. Thus I had a bad start, but I managed to come back to my pace later. This year, contest duration returned to 90 minutes, and I think this benefited me. Sometimes I wondered where are the classics.

・JZC 2018 was held in March as usual. This year I prepared a round with Serkan. I would like to introduce our round, but probably after WSPC!

・I could not participate in 24HPC this year, nor could we gather in Japan. I solved it alone recently (not in one day), so I will make some comments in another post.

・I and Kota published a puzzle book in Japan. 3 chapters out of 10 use Japanese letters, but 2 of which can be solved without Japanese knowledge (more enjoyable if you know). And instructions are obvious for accustomed puzzlers. Check it out if you are interested in.