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.

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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.