Current mood:	getting better
Entry tags:	puzzles

WSC Report -- Day 1 (Part 2): Always Crush Me
So, let's see...last time I posted, we were just about to enter the team portion of the first day's program, having just completed four individual rounds.  The recap of the team stuff will come later, but I wanted to expound on / moan about some of the early stuff, especially now that I've gotten my papers back.

The Mix round (round 1) went truly awfully: 56 points (out of...180-ish).  I never in my wildest dreams figured I would lay an egg -- effectively knocking me out of the individual competition immediately -- over two hours (and one minute) of testing.  Especially with some pretty easy-looking puzzles in the round.  Especially first thing in the morning.  TWO HOURS!

Looking back -- I am still infuriated about the feedback/feedforward part of the quiz.  I believe I have every right to be, and I don't imagine we'll be seeing something like this anytime in the future.  Then again, I got 56 points -- *I* may not be seeing any tournaments like this in the future anyhow!

Puzzle 1 -- PUZZLE 1!!!! -- should have clued me in.  A 4x4 sudoku -- I mean, for pete's sake, talk about easy.  It's right there for the taking/inferring, tho: there's no 1 *or* 3 in the grid, and since you can't tell the two of them apart, it must be the case that the gray cell (which I'd been expecting to find and then drop into another puzzle) is a 1 or 3 that you get from elsewhere.  Instead I took a stupid guess, got a valid solution, and received zero points, because my gray square does not match the one you get from puzzle 29 when you solve it right.  Which, as it were, I didn't even consider doing -- not just solving it right, but solving it at all.

An earlier commenter is right -- the instructions should be known backwards and forwards before the rounds begin.  But, with that in mind -- when something says "Put the digit from the shaded cell into the shaded cell in the puzzle A29", that tells me that A29 depends on this one, not the other way around.  Unforgiveable.  The fact that the puzzles were on different pages was also annoying, but that's no big deal.  I figured multiple solutions were possible (seeing as that's how a few of the practice puzzles went) and just plugged away.  In the rare instance when I *did* look at the later puzzles to try and get a hint for the earlier ones, I thought I was being clever.  I should know better.

I'm curious to see how I would do on this set if I followed the right path.  I guarantee not any worse.  I got no points (despite major effort) on puzzles 1 and 5.  And 8.  14.  17.  18.  20.  23.  And 24.  Some of these were going right until I made a mental glitch.  Some of these I just couldn't get through.  And a few of them actually had valid solutions but were worthless because of the stupid other-puzzle-dependency bit.

Lastly (and, seriously, I'll drop it after this...maybe) -- the classic puzzles...like the ones you see in the paper without any fancy rules...were just stupid hard.  I shouldn't feel like I have to guess at a solution on 80% of the puzzles I see.  The variations were almost uniformly terrific -- this one's kinda like a crossword, this one's has a main-diagonal constraint, this one's got irregular shapes -- but the round gets a fat F in my book anyhow.  Apologies to the well-meaning constructors and administrators, but there's no need for counterintuitive and fallacious bells and whistles.  Sorry guys.

In some sense, the second round (with all the non-Arabic numeral puzzles) was a fine round, if it weren't for the stupid "No extra paper" restriction.  And I guess the "Solve this puzzle in another language, just because" restriction.  I got that back -- 11 points, which put me (appropriately) tied for 29th for the round.  36 people advance to the playoffs, but still -- that's quite a dropoff from where I'd like to be.  Speaking of where I'd like to be...

Round 3 -- Snowman (00:30)

Wow, this is just a terrific round.  The two of you who like sudoku should definitely skip the first two rounds in the WSC09 Valu-Pak and dive right in here.

The "Snowman" fellow was created by the combination of four puzzles of different type.  The Snowflake puzzle made up his head, the Pencilmarks one made up his body, and his feet were made of two 8x8 puzzles -- an Irregular and a new style called Duo.  Furthermore, there was something of a VERY VERY OBVIOUS TO SEE (there you go again -- ed.  Sorry, it's force of habit now) connection between the neighboring puzzles.  In particular, two of the triangles of the Snowflake were equal to the two squares (respectively) from the Pencilmarks that they abutted.  Similarly, on the fellow's lower-half, one cell from each of the 8x8's lined up to one cell of the Pencilmarks.  So now not only is there an apparent connection between separate puzzles, but there's even a *reason* for the connection; these two touch and we wrote the puzzles so they're the same.  Not, say, a hypothetical round where they decided to pick a cell from two different puzzles and make them equal for no obvious reason...

The Snowflake was a good time, and its geometry (six clusters of six, well, essentially a Trivial Pursuit piece with all six pie pieces) makes for some neat deductions.  The Irregular was 8x8, but otherwise was a typical irregular, which has non-rectangular shapes for the regions.  Duo is something I had hardly seen before getting here, and was a type where each digit (1-4) appeared TWICE in each row/column/region.  There was also the restriction that two identical digits couldn't be in adjacent cells.  Neat!

The Pencilmarks one was essentially the only thing left for the last 20 minutes, and I was expecting the worst.  And I got...a surprisingly manageable puzzle!  Last year's WSC featured one of these buggers on the very first round, and (after probably 20 minutes of work) I was one of the choice few to actually finish it; I think only five people did.  The way it works is -- each cell in the (standard 9x9 grid) has some tiny digits written in it.  These are the only digits that could possibly go there.  You work with groups of cells to determine...say, these are the only cells in this row with a 2 in it, so I can cross off the 2's in the rest of the region...stuff like that.

Shockingly, this one had some...really quick-and-dirty half-obvious steps.  These two cells only have 3 and 4 in them -- so the rest of their row and region can see their 3's and 4's crossed out.  That gives us a 7.  Which gives us a 5.  Stuff like that.  Before you know it...well, ok, before you know it, five people raise their hands to claim the bonus points that come with finishing the round the fastest.  But furthermore -- I'm well on my way to being finished -- with a goodly number of minutes to spare.  How is this possible???

Whatever the case, I finished, and with the remaining time (and no bonus points left to be had), I checked the holy hell out of that thing.  No, not like that -- I mean I made sure I didn't make a mistake.  And on the others.  And...sure enough, I didn't.  30 points (out of 30) after, well, 56 out of 180+.  I won't be surprised if they check me for performance-enhancing drugs when I get back -- not because I'm doing so well, but because I did so awfully early on.

Oh baby -- it's time to really make my mark!

Round 4 -- World Record (00:10)

One puzzle, 27 givens, and 5:24 or less to glory.  Ummm...yeah.

So the puzzle they gave us -- a standard classic puzzle with one third of the cells filled in -- nothing really doing here.  I got one digit early on, then stared at it for another seven minutes, then made a series of guesses that got me nowhere.  No points for me, like much of the rest of the room.  Seriously, what's the point?

It would seem to be the case that -- the more givens at the start of a puzzle, the easier it is.  That's kinda true -- if I have a 26 given puzzle and you throw in a few more digits here and there, I don't imagine it could get any harder, and would probably get easier.  But for the most part, it's where and what the givens are, and not how many (per se).

This particular one had more givens than some I've successfully completed in the past, but it had just about as many useless givens as any I'd ever attempted.  It turns out the computers trying to solve this thing have to go through SIX crazy steps before getting to where it goes quickly.  I don't think any human is capable of that -- and certainly not in ten minutes.  I might seriously need a day with that puzzle to figure it out.

Speaking of performance-enhancing drugs -- there's a new world record holder.  A guy from Belgium successfully completed the puzzle in...3:06!  That is a phenomenal time -- over a full two minutes ahead of the old (suspiciously-determined) mark.  I don't imagine he figured out all the deep quirks here either -- he probably just took a guess early and it happened to be the right one.  In fact, I'll guarantee that's what he did.  I'd ask him myself, but I don't speak Belgish.

(Anecdote time!  Back in the day, Disneyland's California Adventure had a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? thing set up where everybody in the audience played along.  The way they figured out who sat in the chair first was -- you were given a Fastest Finger question (which asked you to put four things in order), and you clicked buttons on the back of the chair in front of you.  One of the questions was about Demi Moore movies -- something like...order these four movies by the number of distasteful nude scenes (I quote from memory).  I was super fast -- somewhere around 2s.  The winner?  Some 10yo kid was done in 0.20s.  The host asked him if he was a big Demi Moore fan.  His response?  "No, but I always hit DBCA on the Fastest Finger question".  I guess in a room of 500 people, the likelihood that someone could just randomly guess the order before even hearing the question is pretty good.)

Anyhow, sudoku puzzles aren't meant to be guess-fests, and guessing shouldn't be the best way to get points on a given puzzle.  I'll give the round a D-, because I'm feeling charitable.  It shouldn't affect the final standings (since it wasn't worth many points, and so few people got it right), and besides, I'm at the bottom anyhow.

The food has been great here, btw.  Breakfast will be better when I'm not scooping the few remaining bacon pieces out of the grease, but otherwise -- it was good, as was lunch and dinner.  No "Mahatma's Revenge" for me this year!  I hope.  Holiday Inn Zilina: come for the rooms, stay for the food.

The team rounds (and one extra-sudokular activity involving my lousy digital camera) came later on, but I'll hang onto writing about those until we get back the results.  It's almost time for the Nightmare in Zilina -- an extremely late-running round with puzzles having names (and themes) of horror movies of the past.  Me, I'm not afraid -- not after a frightening bad performance on 2-3 rounds.

Hasta lasagna.