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.