24HPC 2024

Time to look back my revisit to Budapest. Again I arrived on Thursday, walked around the repaired bridge and west side. Exit rooms on Friday were also fun.

Round 1

I failed to note my time but left 14 minutes or so. My plan was to solve in order but skipping Letter Table and Criss Cross (apparent reason), and did in that way. I also had a choice of skipping small Word Search Sudoku, but no need with enough time. Good theme and comfortable start.

Round 2

Left: From 1 To 9 (second), Scrabble 2

Planned to skip both of From 1 To 9, cheap Japanese Sums and Scrabble. Not so bad except the final Scrabble, where I somehow missed a pattern, put wrong words in top left, resulted in no solution. Finally I gathered most of the skipped ones but the trouble was too costly.

Round 3

Left: 2-1-Snake, Topology (all), No Four In A Row (second)

Error: Little Star Battle (second)

After Little Star Battle, I jumped to Suguru and follow the order. My first trouble was in Topology, maybe I wrongly understood the iff rule? Then I moved to get the remaining 100s. YinYang Triplets were the hardest, I had to make multiple assumptions. And I rushed to the small pointers, but could not find a way of Snake, even stopped at No Four In A Row. Badly I had touching stars in Star Battle, 6 in the first Suguru pentomino (one cell error was allowed). YinYang Triplets was also marked as wrong at first, due to the thin writing.

Round 4

39 minutes left, but later corrected a minor error in Isowatari. Simply in the given order, much easier than feared. Small Evolmino was the erasing point, though.

Round 14

8 minutes left. This time I went backwards. Mainly due to the points, but also because once I missed the in/out rule of Times Zones. Not so smooth, especially around Galaxies and its variants, but good enough.

Round 6

Left: Coded Cave

Backwards again. Lovely set, my regret was that I messed up in nice Coded Cave. I even had some time to return here, but still wasted time. I used brute force for Coded Tents but are there any better ways?

Round 7

Error: Fillomino Roman, Slitherlink Odd Even, Minesweeper Odd Even

Fillomino set first, then from the end. I thought I managed to tweak on Fillomino Roman but there was still one unsatisfied clue. And for Minesweeper Odd Even, I had to restart but made an mistake again. Slitherlink Odd Even was in the last minute, I intuitively drew 3x3 square. Rather acceptable but also avoidable. Nice and finishable set, bad performance.

Round 8

Left: Twins, Wiring (all), High Low Mastermind (all), 33% Word Search (23/27 found, but actually 22?)

Planned to skip Twins, Wiring (tough example), High Low Mastermind and actually did it, but the final Word Search was time consuming, much more than expected. I think I persisted on my original plan and expected difficulty, which should be improved. Any other puzzles (or even guessing) were more effective. Btw I do not know some names in Word Search, even in Japanese.

Round 9

3 minutes left. In the order but skipping cheap Parallels, so I started from Starship Battle with a smile. I had to reread the instruction of Slopes, where I found multiple solutions in the first one and noted a question mark, which was confirmed by my grader. Then hurried to Parallels, good usage of time with small rest.

Round 10

Error: Double Back (first)

7 minutes left, but could not find my error in the last step. In the order but skipping cheap Pentominous and unfamiliar Tachiawase Block, returned after Ripple Effect. Good to see some rare types.

Round 11

Left: Barriers (both), Number Tables (both)

Error: Sudoku Minesweeper (second)

In the order but move to Arrow Maze after Kakuro, and once reached the end go to Honeycomb Islands and forward. Tactically good but just slow. An missing arrow in the first Arrows was allowed.

Round 12

Left: Little Killer, Tiger in the Woods, Bunnyhop, Old Maid, Greener Grasses

Planned to go forward from TomTom but skipping Old Maid, then return to the front, but I got stuck in Greener Grasses, and lost much time on Rampage and Icewater Walk especially, so in the end I just gathered comfortable ones. Length error in Tren was allowed.

Round 13

Left: Triplets

Planned to go backward till Light and Shadow, then Triplets, and forward from the front page. Actually I spent some time for Triplets but found nothing, and due to the lack of power I had almost no time to return. It seems I did not understand its basic logics. Foreshadow contained nice argument, happy to find it in the end of the long day.

Round 5

In my home. 3 minutes left, with safety solve. Latter 8 puzzles were done in 37 minutes but lost much time in Cave (Twilight). Here I can estimate the effect of better condition....

So in total, I made too many errors this year, including some accepted ones. And this tendency is from the beginning, my 20+km walk with some climbs on Thursday might affected somehow? I lost 3kg in this trip, though I took enough food compared to my usual. Anyway I need more power for the next year, and also to improve many other aspects of course.