WPC - day 2
We'll do this in fake stream-of-consciousness at the time style even though this was written well after the events.
8:00 - wake up after a tiny bit of sleep in a stupor, likely from being interrupted during a dream. I manage a shower and a trip down to breakfast and see the latest standings with all of day 1 posted - 2nd place, 89 behind Ulrich and 95 ahead of 3rd, right where I don't mind being if I can't be in 1st. I had made some more errors on papers, including my favorite of writing 8*(1-7) = 48 in the puzzle as I was giving the clear product to get a common largest number. Just tired I guess. It was an amusing loss of some 17 points but not too costly. My battleships were clean which was my worry given placement and time bonuses. A bowl of ChocoChamps and some yogurt later and we are ready for round 1.
9:45 - Screen Test 2 - a bit delayed start, but the standard quick puzzle round which covers a lot of observational puzzles. However, the new twist this year, which I found really brilliant, is that the test organizers had a clicker-type technology to log competitors' answers. This system was actually used in other rounds where you logged your finished time which digitally time stamps your set of puzzles (a brilliant change that would affect proctoring elsewhere, add second-level data at other competitions, etc.) and allowed the organizers to post a list of finishers during the round to know your competition's results (for better or worse). The system was also used for attendance before rounds started - again a nice touch. They gave live results after each 5 of the 15 puzzles here. I got a 3/4/4 split which left me unhappy to be one behind the pace at the first break but back where I wanted to be at the end, in 2nd in the round with 6 gained on Ulrich. My one criticism - having failed to log an answer in a puzzle after knowing I could not change a button press later - is that the "disappearing digits" was not as clear a time indicator as a progress bar or actual clock.
10:25 - Now thirty minutes behind schedule due to delays in changing the lighting in the testing room after the screen test, we come to the round I was waiting for - Tapa (a painting/path/minesweeper type puzzle). Its my newfound specialty. Its a 35 minute round with 2 "standard", 2 hex, a tapa distiller with 4 puzzles that must extract clues from a single grid to form four valid answers while spending all clues, and a TAPA LOGIC which is basically a super-large Tapa with encrypted numbers. I blaze through the TAPA LOGIC, get a good number of reasonable solutions to the Distiller but decide to come back to finish it off, whip through the hex, and the standard, clean up the distiller, check that all cells in all grids are marked filled or empty as the common error is to miss the whole chain constraint with a single unshaded square, and tap my clicker to be finished. 1st with 11+ minutes on the clock - should be worth 20+48 bonus on the 200. Ulrich finishes second with 6 or so minutes left so I figure I got 19 more points back given his placement and time bonuses. Still, my best round to this point where everything clicked.
11:10 - Matchmaker - this round had 7 grids and 8 puzzle instructions all based around grid/number puzzles such that, in principle, any of the puzzles could work on any of the grids. But, some puzzles have particular constraints (like islands not having unlike numbers touching) or other reasons why they aren't valid. Our goal is to find the 6/7 grids that can be solved by 6/8 of the puzzle instructions. It seemed a high variance round where the order you searched things might pay off quickly or slowly. It was also an hour long and a likely source of huge time bonuses and large losses if mistakes were made. (This is not, at this point, a sign of impending doom since I just crushed the Tapa round. Just mentioning.)
I start with the Islands and show all 7 fail for it, then do the masyu and see 2 of the 6 work for it and after 3 minutes I'm already getting somewhere. I go through and try the Kuromasu next, which is a good choice, as it is also easily provable, since I've solved tons of these with Nikoli, that there are none of those. So I think I now have 7 grids and 6 puzzle types. The tetro minesweeper is the next type to go (you can see some of these I wrote in a recent GAMES PuzzleCraft). All but one are provably false. The last feels close to a solution, but does not yield for a long long time. I jump off of it, thinking I now have 7 grids and 5 puzzle types which is a problem. I focus on grids and prove 2 isn't anything but maybe Hamle. I spend 5 minutes solving it as a Hamle, get all but 1 number placed, and see the contradiction. Worried I'm making errors, I solve it again and find the same contradiction. So 2 is not a Hamle, I guess, but I still don't have 6 puzzles types even if I'm down to 6 grids now. 5 more minutes and Tetro Minesweeper is indeed the grid I felt it was which is encouraging but I wish I had that 15 minutes ago. I fill some top heavy number place puzzles for awhile - getting two of them working, then realize I should just force the remaining types to any grid instead of oversolving the types I have left. The pill sum comes fast, then I decide the 7 which isn't the hamle is likely the top heavy number place I still have written there. I try 4 as a hamle, get it, then check the rest of my work. I spot my fatal error (or so I think) by correcting a 122 pill sum entry to a 132 where it is obvious what I meant from what cells are actually touching but wrote too fast - broke "the speed limit" I guess - and had a problem. I have 16+ minutes on the clock, but the best finishers took only 30 minutes of the hour. I figure I've lost 50-75 points to Ulrich who finished around ~5th but should still be comfortably in second overall.
12:30 - Four by Four for the Four
After a great morning, I figure I should change our team's original plan where I'd knock off black and white and instead do the Half-Life which starts with a Tapa and then transfers info to a corral, which transfers into a japanese sum, which transfers into an islands. The tapa and corral go really fast, and then the roadblock comes which is the japanese sum. I get a lot of the grid in, fit the extra info from the corral, and then get Roger who has finished the minesweeper to help on the sum and he is as good checking my thinking as doing the solving and we get it done together. The islands is trivial afterwards, particularly with a clear transfer of data. As I finish, the Mr. Universe and black and white are done and being checked and after a full round of checks we turn in first.
13:00 - So, a good morning and off to lunch. We decide to try one of the many other restaurants/food services at the hotel and go for Doner which is incredible. Much like my favorite non-Pinocchio's Pizza option in Harvard Square whose name I am forgetting, but now closer to its source. We talk briefly about the upcoming instructionless round (thinking maybe 3 new types, 2 of each type) and the OAPC puzzles. We also played some Tichu.
14:00 - Instructionless - the "Guess What I'm Thinking" round. I thought this round could be interesting - I enjoy the Nikoli magazines section where I start with no clue what an experimental puzzle is doing and then figure out what to do by looking at some of the puzzles and solutions and making sense of it. The issue I have is that the typical "example" is a tiny grid with a lot of subtle things going on that needs the text to work. I typically break in with a larger, deeper puzzle and then wipe the memory of the physical solution to be able to solve it. Here, two of the six examples (puzzles 4 and 6) seemed obvious from the small instructions. The other 4 fit into some general genres but were pretty much WTF?!? I came up with thoroughly consistent rules like "if the 1-4 gappy skyscrapery-puzzle is not giving a skyscraper clue, the clue is telling the distance of the 2 and 4 from each other." This sounds crazy, but it is fully consistent with the example and solves the grid (maybe 2-6 choices, but whatever). Its likely not what was going on, but without "guessing" exactly what the designer is thinking, its intractable to find the global maximum of thought space. No one feels really confident after the round and it was a bit exhausting to get 2 in 3 minutes and then in 22 more get no perfect clue sets on any of the others. Still, have to refocus for the OAPC round.
14:35 - OAPC 10 - I'd been eyeing this round for awhile as I tend to do well on many of these puzzle types. It was the longest round, at 130 minutes, and the highest valued, at 750 points. I get going ok, with the sigma snakes done in about 8 minutes, and get the first 2 of the next part before I hit quicksand for the first time. I jump between the two but don't get the answers. I move on. Polygraph is next. I get almost all of the first but one corner that trips me up for an unknown reason, so skip to 2,3,4 and get all of those and then come back to the first and clean it up. I go forward and intuit the slash packs well too. Then I start to hit some curious weaknesses. On my first pass, I could do none of the 4 tripod sudoku. Sudoku problems? I move on. I reach the four squares and somehow manage to break it early, not realize, and then try to tweak for a long long time. 20 minutes I bet, then I move on without an answer. +- 1 is a quick breeze, and so are the first 3 magic fences, but after spending 10 minutes with another almost solution of the 4th that I felt was good until checking, found the mistake, fixed, checked and found another mistake, I abandoned it. With 20 minutes left, I had to choose between the kakuro and returning to where I'd banked time but not finished like the four squares. I go back to the four squares. In 10 minutes I do clean it up, and then knock off two tripods before time ends. I never look at the kakuro! This would anger me as it seemed an easy type given how well I'd done the kakuro on day 1; the scores were high to boot. So, a good round without errors and with better puzzle choices and I get those 4 with what I basically have for all but 4 puzzles. As is, I'm down 224 or so points (before errors) from full marks.
16:45 - minutes after leaving the room frustrated at not doing well enough in the OAPC round to catch up to Ulrich, I catch a brief glimpse at the scores just posted. Hmm. Why is my tapa score 175 (an error on the second hex)? Second hmm. Why is my matchmaker score 250 (an error on one of the 6 puzzles). The first cost me 25 (puzzle)+20(place)+33(time)=78 points (39% of round value) I figure. The second cost me 65 (puzzle) + likely 1 or 0 place + 48 time = 113 points (36% of round value) I figure. No papers to see why I'm suddenly sick to my stomach but, yeah, ugh. I'm now in 6th and miles back of where I felt I would be.
I try my best at these tournaments to act like the travel and fatigue from work and other things aren't bothering me but it is clear the jet-laggy Thomas of today is not just making errors on puzzles but making errors in checking as well as points are slipping away. I now routinely check puzzles in a "quick" way after finishing, looking at the most likely ways I have an error and circling clues I've spent to confirm all constraints are met. Still, in some situations the adrenaline of finishing a round might make me declare finished before I spot what will ruin my score or worse, incorrectly confirm a constraint is met when a trivial fix is there if I find it. Still, the low feeling after these massive point losses that happen to me at each and every championship (I feel a photo gallery of my favorites will be here after the tournament) is often too much to bear. If not for a rejudging in Brazil, I would never have qualified in the top 3 after two days of a WPC, and in the Eastern Hemisphere I've dropped from 1st/2nd every year after some point in day 1 to much lower after day 2. 10 hours of jet lag has a way of catching up to you.
I'm steaming through the coffee break and head to the last individual round - Upgrade - with a goal to survive and maybe pull a miracle with a finish.
17:10 - The round involves placing dice on a 3x3 skyscraper to make a 5x5 skyscraper using sides and top faces to "upgrade" the smaller version. An interesting concept certainly. Three each of two chirally opposite but otherwise standard dice (with a "dead" 6 side that cannot be shown in a solution) are awaiting us. I suffer through the easy one for awhile but learn how to solve it/notate after 10 minutes. The second is much quicker, now knowing the type, at 4 minutes. The last 16 minutes are spent trying a lot of things that could work on the much less constrained and much much harder to try logic third grid. I don't get a solution.
Afterwards, I tell Nick (who has been advised by Husnu that I might need "consoling" when I see my papers from the morning rounds) that I never ever EVER EEEEEVVVEERRR!!!! want to see them.
18:00 - WPF - a team round to end things. I just want the day to be done still. Fortunately, Wei-Hwa is solid at manipulative puzzles and this one, a box puzzle with hinge-y blocks like the four winds variant I saw in Brazil, is solvable as we talk through the steps. We finish about 3rd, and leave the room to go to the lobby and play some Tichu. I eventually get the papers I never ever want to see (thanks Nick). Somehow, having a straight flush bomb waiting and two different people trying for tichu can let me handle a simple tapa error where I'd marked a blank in place of a full in a clear isolated side. If I'd seen (or not circled incorrectly) the 2 constraint filled, I would have trivially fixed the error. My check - of filled cells - can't account for complete idiocy. In the other round, in my Hamle, I did not write a single of the digits that transferred. Given the grid to grid writing, I'd tried some checking and circled the digits I moved. Somehow the 2 got circled in the upper-left and wasn't written two spots to the right. Again, two "obvious" and fixable mistakes. I might have just copied the grid from my scrap paper wrong - its hard to know. Its hard to come to this kind of competition, knowing how well I can solve in my time-zone in online competitions in various disciplines, to then perform so much worse than I could and to make so many "speed-limit breaking" violations that lead to lost points. Epic fail!
19:40 - Dinner brings more food (50%+ of desserts given my mental state) and a discussion of the puzzle spectrum (STDs are apparently the opposite of Sudoku) and the Sudoku spectrum in particular with Roger and others, in part framed about what "variants" should be allowed at a WSC. I rate different kinds of variants as being close or far from the sudoku end of the puzzle spectrum, touched closest by Latin Square puzzles which should not be confused with three constraint puzzles (Sudoku) even though many (skyscrapers, easy as, kenken, etc. are common). Anyway, Roger believes just classics should be at a WSC - he doesn't even allow 6x6 or 8x8 or 12x12 in his world - maybe relays, certainly not diagonals, etc. His opinion is wrong, but he is a sit-out noncompetitor in WSC matters despite some fast solving times. Nick mentions the next WSC will go "back to basics" and I say what does that mean and apparently it means lots of classics which means my interest will be low. I pull out the Turk's sudoku magazine to practice before the competition and before I get started we decide to just go to the testing room. On the way I spot a cool Yurekli variation that achieves an unknown regions that builds together jigsaw bits with unclear borders to form a jigsaw sudoku. Basically, a 6x6 sudoku with 12 three-cell regions with 6 pairs needing to be made considering numbers, geometry, etc. Really cool and I can't wait to try it. Much more fun than any classic.
20:20 - I want to get to the test room for the evening's sudoku cup and get 5-10 puzzles practice with the conceptis classics beforehand to relearn their feel when I'm pulled out to do another team photo - the 20 minute session the night before was without our guests so we needed to do it again. The photographer again acts like he's photographing a head of state or at least something for a book cover but honestly 30 shots in 4 poses aren't needed. I lose my cool a bit with the whole process much as I would after all the Prague videography a couple years ago.
20:30 - 2 practice sudoku and then a round of 6 to do to qualify. I finish in around 14 minutes, but as I warned others, I'd check for a long time. 4.5 minutes it seems (I timed). 3 full passes. I still eventually turn in for first (and clean). The top 8 again make the finals like last night's Karala cup and so I'm 1st against 8th (Frederique Rogeaux of France) in a single puzzle and run through it, check quickly, turn in simultaneous to the other first finisher at another table and am in the semis. Jan Novotny is my next opponent, the Czech champion and a talented sudoku-ist who similary was dealt a cruel Slovakian punishment in April. The large grid format of the playoffs is unfriendly with my scanning, as is all the flash photography going on. I bifurcate unluckily, but used a perfect spot so the right answer falls immediately from the other as well. Onto the finals, or so I think. A big controversy arises as seems to be the case in every sudoku tournament I'm in, half the time because of format. My prospective co-finalist, Salih Alan of Turkey, has turned in his paper with 80 cells filled, and a tiny tiny tiny note in the 81st cell. It was certainly written earlier in the solve process as an either-or choice, but it is the only thing in the otherwise empty space so it would technically be a correct number if you were searching for a number there instead of looking at the face of a solution for the big numbers that are what he means everywhere else. Lots of team captains are consulted on the result, and when Byron Calver of Canada finally finishes he is shown the paper and agrees to let Salih move on even though there is a case for an incorrect grid being turned in 5 or so minutes earlier.
The final breaks in several ways for me, and I spot some naked singles I normally suffer at to fill the 7th column as a quick break-in. After some slower progress and being seemingly stuck with 25 numbers to go, I again bifurcate to finish first. Looking at the puzzle later, I simply had not propagated a 3rd 7 into a column after I'd filled the second and couldn't see it for the size of the grid. I'll need to practice not only on whiteboards for the future but on 6x6 or 7x7 inch grids since organizers vary sudoku sizes so often. Can we agree on 3-4 inches (7.5-10 cm) square?
So a long and dispiriting day ended with one piece of hardware to bring home. I'm certainly still in the playoffs tomorrow, as is the team, but with a round to go I'm in 4th and probably falling below a magic cutoff at 6 when the OAPC comes in. There are 12 going in, with the bottom 6 playing in a choose your poison format like Belarus last year. The top 2 in that round face 3rd-6th in the same format, with the winners there joining Ulrich and whoever winds up in 2nd in the Final Four for the trophy. Without my "big" errors I'd be in that 2nd spot - probably without just the Matchmaker one certainly - but with both of them I'll likely be around one of the bubbles at 6th or 7th. The good part of this might be that having seen my sudoku speed, I doubt anyone else will choose this kind of type (if it occurs) for a round with me. If I don't choose them either, they'll remain if I get to face Ulrich. If I can find my tired adrenaline style like in Goa (or even the 1st of my playoffs in Belarus) I could have a shot. If I find my tired muddle-headed style like in the second Belarussian playoff round where I couldn't even do a kakuro, I won't. Ulrich is certainly the favorite and will have a head-start. A team playoff with unknown rules awaits as well as the US in second tries to catch up to a 1st place German team with a solid Ulrich and a similarly solid Philipp Weiss currently at 1/2 with one round to be reported. I've typed enough. Now to post.
8:00 - wake up after a tiny bit of sleep in a stupor, likely from being interrupted during a dream. I manage a shower and a trip down to breakfast and see the latest standings with all of day 1 posted - 2nd place, 89 behind Ulrich and 95 ahead of 3rd, right where I don't mind being if I can't be in 1st. I had made some more errors on papers, including my favorite of writing 8*(1-7) = 48 in the puzzle as I was giving the clear product to get a common largest number. Just tired I guess. It was an amusing loss of some 17 points but not too costly. My battleships were clean which was my worry given placement and time bonuses. A bowl of ChocoChamps and some yogurt later and we are ready for round 1.
9:45 - Screen Test 2 - a bit delayed start, but the standard quick puzzle round which covers a lot of observational puzzles. However, the new twist this year, which I found really brilliant, is that the test organizers had a clicker-type technology to log competitors' answers. This system was actually used in other rounds where you logged your finished time which digitally time stamps your set of puzzles (a brilliant change that would affect proctoring elsewhere, add second-level data at other competitions, etc.) and allowed the organizers to post a list of finishers during the round to know your competition's results (for better or worse). The system was also used for attendance before rounds started - again a nice touch. They gave live results after each 5 of the 15 puzzles here. I got a 3/4/4 split which left me unhappy to be one behind the pace at the first break but back where I wanted to be at the end, in 2nd in the round with 6 gained on Ulrich. My one criticism - having failed to log an answer in a puzzle after knowing I could not change a button press later - is that the "disappearing digits" was not as clear a time indicator as a progress bar or actual clock.
10:25 - Now thirty minutes behind schedule due to delays in changing the lighting in the testing room after the screen test, we come to the round I was waiting for - Tapa (a painting/path/minesweeper type puzzle). Its my newfound specialty. Its a 35 minute round with 2 "standard", 2 hex, a tapa distiller with 4 puzzles that must extract clues from a single grid to form four valid answers while spending all clues, and a TAPA LOGIC which is basically a super-large Tapa with encrypted numbers. I blaze through the TAPA LOGIC, get a good number of reasonable solutions to the Distiller but decide to come back to finish it off, whip through the hex, and the standard, clean up the distiller, check that all cells in all grids are marked filled or empty as the common error is to miss the whole chain constraint with a single unshaded square, and tap my clicker to be finished. 1st with 11+ minutes on the clock - should be worth 20+48 bonus on the 200. Ulrich finishes second with 6 or so minutes left so I figure I got 19 more points back given his placement and time bonuses. Still, my best round to this point where everything clicked.
11:10 - Matchmaker - this round had 7 grids and 8 puzzle instructions all based around grid/number puzzles such that, in principle, any of the puzzles could work on any of the grids. But, some puzzles have particular constraints (like islands not having unlike numbers touching) or other reasons why they aren't valid. Our goal is to find the 6/7 grids that can be solved by 6/8 of the puzzle instructions. It seemed a high variance round where the order you searched things might pay off quickly or slowly. It was also an hour long and a likely source of huge time bonuses and large losses if mistakes were made. (This is not, at this point, a sign of impending doom since I just crushed the Tapa round. Just mentioning.)
I start with the Islands and show all 7 fail for it, then do the masyu and see 2 of the 6 work for it and after 3 minutes I'm already getting somewhere. I go through and try the Kuromasu next, which is a good choice, as it is also easily provable, since I've solved tons of these with Nikoli, that there are none of those. So I think I now have 7 grids and 6 puzzle types. The tetro minesweeper is the next type to go (you can see some of these I wrote in a recent GAMES PuzzleCraft). All but one are provably false. The last feels close to a solution, but does not yield for a long long time. I jump off of it, thinking I now have 7 grids and 5 puzzle types which is a problem. I focus on grids and prove 2 isn't anything but maybe Hamle. I spend 5 minutes solving it as a Hamle, get all but 1 number placed, and see the contradiction. Worried I'm making errors, I solve it again and find the same contradiction. So 2 is not a Hamle, I guess, but I still don't have 6 puzzles types even if I'm down to 6 grids now. 5 more minutes and Tetro Minesweeper is indeed the grid I felt it was which is encouraging but I wish I had that 15 minutes ago. I fill some top heavy number place puzzles for awhile - getting two of them working, then realize I should just force the remaining types to any grid instead of oversolving the types I have left. The pill sum comes fast, then I decide the 7 which isn't the hamle is likely the top heavy number place I still have written there. I try 4 as a hamle, get it, then check the rest of my work. I spot my fatal error (or so I think) by correcting a 122 pill sum entry to a 132 where it is obvious what I meant from what cells are actually touching but wrote too fast - broke "the speed limit" I guess - and had a problem. I have 16+ minutes on the clock, but the best finishers took only 30 minutes of the hour. I figure I've lost 50-75 points to Ulrich who finished around ~5th but should still be comfortably in second overall.
12:30 - Four by Four for the Four
After a great morning, I figure I should change our team's original plan where I'd knock off black and white and instead do the Half-Life which starts with a Tapa and then transfers info to a corral, which transfers into a japanese sum, which transfers into an islands. The tapa and corral go really fast, and then the roadblock comes which is the japanese sum. I get a lot of the grid in, fit the extra info from the corral, and then get Roger who has finished the minesweeper to help on the sum and he is as good checking my thinking as doing the solving and we get it done together. The islands is trivial afterwards, particularly with a clear transfer of data. As I finish, the Mr. Universe and black and white are done and being checked and after a full round of checks we turn in first.
13:00 - So, a good morning and off to lunch. We decide to try one of the many other restaurants/food services at the hotel and go for Doner which is incredible. Much like my favorite non-Pinocchio's Pizza option in Harvard Square whose name I am forgetting, but now closer to its source. We talk briefly about the upcoming instructionless round (thinking maybe 3 new types, 2 of each type) and the OAPC puzzles. We also played some Tichu.
14:00 - Instructionless - the "Guess What I'm Thinking" round. I thought this round could be interesting - I enjoy the Nikoli magazines section where I start with no clue what an experimental puzzle is doing and then figure out what to do by looking at some of the puzzles and solutions and making sense of it. The issue I have is that the typical "example" is a tiny grid with a lot of subtle things going on that needs the text to work. I typically break in with a larger, deeper puzzle and then wipe the memory of the physical solution to be able to solve it. Here, two of the six examples (puzzles 4 and 6) seemed obvious from the small instructions. The other 4 fit into some general genres but were pretty much WTF?!? I came up with thoroughly consistent rules like "if the 1-4 gappy skyscrapery-puzzle is not giving a skyscraper clue, the clue is telling the distance of the 2 and 4 from each other." This sounds crazy, but it is fully consistent with the example and solves the grid (maybe 2-6 choices, but whatever). Its likely not what was going on, but without "guessing" exactly what the designer is thinking, its intractable to find the global maximum of thought space. No one feels really confident after the round and it was a bit exhausting to get 2 in 3 minutes and then in 22 more get no perfect clue sets on any of the others. Still, have to refocus for the OAPC round.
14:35 - OAPC 10 - I'd been eyeing this round for awhile as I tend to do well on many of these puzzle types. It was the longest round, at 130 minutes, and the highest valued, at 750 points. I get going ok, with the sigma snakes done in about 8 minutes, and get the first 2 of the next part before I hit quicksand for the first time. I jump between the two but don't get the answers. I move on. Polygraph is next. I get almost all of the first but one corner that trips me up for an unknown reason, so skip to 2,3,4 and get all of those and then come back to the first and clean it up. I go forward and intuit the slash packs well too. Then I start to hit some curious weaknesses. On my first pass, I could do none of the 4 tripod sudoku. Sudoku problems? I move on. I reach the four squares and somehow manage to break it early, not realize, and then try to tweak for a long long time. 20 minutes I bet, then I move on without an answer. +- 1 is a quick breeze, and so are the first 3 magic fences, but after spending 10 minutes with another almost solution of the 4th that I felt was good until checking, found the mistake, fixed, checked and found another mistake, I abandoned it. With 20 minutes left, I had to choose between the kakuro and returning to where I'd banked time but not finished like the four squares. I go back to the four squares. In 10 minutes I do clean it up, and then knock off two tripods before time ends. I never look at the kakuro! This would anger me as it seemed an easy type given how well I'd done the kakuro on day 1; the scores were high to boot. So, a good round without errors and with better puzzle choices and I get those 4 with what I basically have for all but 4 puzzles. As is, I'm down 224 or so points (before errors) from full marks.
16:45 - minutes after leaving the room frustrated at not doing well enough in the OAPC round to catch up to Ulrich, I catch a brief glimpse at the scores just posted. Hmm. Why is my tapa score 175 (an error on the second hex)? Second hmm. Why is my matchmaker score 250 (an error on one of the 6 puzzles). The first cost me 25 (puzzle)+20(place)+33(time)=78 points (39% of round value) I figure. The second cost me 65 (puzzle) + likely 1 or 0 place + 48 time = 113 points (36% of round value) I figure. No papers to see why I'm suddenly sick to my stomach but, yeah, ugh. I'm now in 6th and miles back of where I felt I would be.
I try my best at these tournaments to act like the travel and fatigue from work and other things aren't bothering me but it is clear the jet-laggy Thomas of today is not just making errors on puzzles but making errors in checking as well as points are slipping away. I now routinely check puzzles in a "quick" way after finishing, looking at the most likely ways I have an error and circling clues I've spent to confirm all constraints are met. Still, in some situations the adrenaline of finishing a round might make me declare finished before I spot what will ruin my score or worse, incorrectly confirm a constraint is met when a trivial fix is there if I find it. Still, the low feeling after these massive point losses that happen to me at each and every championship (I feel a photo gallery of my favorites will be here after the tournament) is often too much to bear. If not for a rejudging in Brazil, I would never have qualified in the top 3 after two days of a WPC, and in the Eastern Hemisphere I've dropped from 1st/2nd every year after some point in day 1 to much lower after day 2. 10 hours of jet lag has a way of catching up to you.
I'm steaming through the coffee break and head to the last individual round - Upgrade - with a goal to survive and maybe pull a miracle with a finish.
17:10 - The round involves placing dice on a 3x3 skyscraper to make a 5x5 skyscraper using sides and top faces to "upgrade" the smaller version. An interesting concept certainly. Three each of two chirally opposite but otherwise standard dice (with a "dead" 6 side that cannot be shown in a solution) are awaiting us. I suffer through the easy one for awhile but learn how to solve it/notate after 10 minutes. The second is much quicker, now knowing the type, at 4 minutes. The last 16 minutes are spent trying a lot of things that could work on the much less constrained and much much harder to try logic third grid. I don't get a solution.
Afterwards, I tell Nick (who has been advised by Husnu that I might need "consoling" when I see my papers from the morning rounds) that I never ever EVER EEEEEVVVEERRR!!!! want to see them.
18:00 - WPF - a team round to end things. I just want the day to be done still. Fortunately, Wei-Hwa is solid at manipulative puzzles and this one, a box puzzle with hinge-y blocks like the four winds variant I saw in Brazil, is solvable as we talk through the steps. We finish about 3rd, and leave the room to go to the lobby and play some Tichu. I eventually get the papers I never ever want to see (thanks Nick). Somehow, having a straight flush bomb waiting and two different people trying for tichu can let me handle a simple tapa error where I'd marked a blank in place of a full in a clear isolated side. If I'd seen (or not circled incorrectly) the 2 constraint filled, I would have trivially fixed the error. My check - of filled cells - can't account for complete idiocy. In the other round, in my Hamle, I did not write a single of the digits that transferred. Given the grid to grid writing, I'd tried some checking and circled the digits I moved. Somehow the 2 got circled in the upper-left and wasn't written two spots to the right. Again, two "obvious" and fixable mistakes. I might have just copied the grid from my scrap paper wrong - its hard to know. Its hard to come to this kind of competition, knowing how well I can solve in my time-zone in online competitions in various disciplines, to then perform so much worse than I could and to make so many "speed-limit breaking" violations that lead to lost points. Epic fail!
19:40 - Dinner brings more food (50%+ of desserts given my mental state) and a discussion of the puzzle spectrum (STDs are apparently the opposite of Sudoku) and the Sudoku spectrum in particular with Roger and others, in part framed about what "variants" should be allowed at a WSC. I rate different kinds of variants as being close or far from the sudoku end of the puzzle spectrum, touched closest by Latin Square puzzles which should not be confused with three constraint puzzles (Sudoku) even though many (skyscrapers, easy as, kenken, etc. are common). Anyway, Roger believes just classics should be at a WSC - he doesn't even allow 6x6 or 8x8 or 12x12 in his world - maybe relays, certainly not diagonals, etc. His opinion is wrong, but he is a sit-out noncompetitor in WSC matters despite some fast solving times. Nick mentions the next WSC will go "back to basics" and I say what does that mean and apparently it means lots of classics which means my interest will be low. I pull out the Turk's sudoku magazine to practice before the competition and before I get started we decide to just go to the testing room. On the way I spot a cool Yurekli variation that achieves an unknown regions that builds together jigsaw bits with unclear borders to form a jigsaw sudoku. Basically, a 6x6 sudoku with 12 three-cell regions with 6 pairs needing to be made considering numbers, geometry, etc. Really cool and I can't wait to try it. Much more fun than any classic.
20:20 - I want to get to the test room for the evening's sudoku cup and get 5-10 puzzles practice with the conceptis classics beforehand to relearn their feel when I'm pulled out to do another team photo - the 20 minute session the night before was without our guests so we needed to do it again. The photographer again acts like he's photographing a head of state or at least something for a book cover but honestly 30 shots in 4 poses aren't needed. I lose my cool a bit with the whole process much as I would after all the Prague videography a couple years ago.
20:30 - 2 practice sudoku and then a round of 6 to do to qualify. I finish in around 14 minutes, but as I warned others, I'd check for a long time. 4.5 minutes it seems (I timed). 3 full passes. I still eventually turn in for first (and clean). The top 8 again make the finals like last night's Karala cup and so I'm 1st against 8th (Frederique Rogeaux of France) in a single puzzle and run through it, check quickly, turn in simultaneous to the other first finisher at another table and am in the semis. Jan Novotny is my next opponent, the Czech champion and a talented sudoku-ist who similary was dealt a cruel Slovakian punishment in April. The large grid format of the playoffs is unfriendly with my scanning, as is all the flash photography going on. I bifurcate unluckily, but used a perfect spot so the right answer falls immediately from the other as well. Onto the finals, or so I think. A big controversy arises as seems to be the case in every sudoku tournament I'm in, half the time because of format. My prospective co-finalist, Salih Alan of Turkey, has turned in his paper with 80 cells filled, and a tiny tiny tiny note in the 81st cell. It was certainly written earlier in the solve process as an either-or choice, but it is the only thing in the otherwise empty space so it would technically be a correct number if you were searching for a number there instead of looking at the face of a solution for the big numbers that are what he means everywhere else. Lots of team captains are consulted on the result, and when Byron Calver of Canada finally finishes he is shown the paper and agrees to let Salih move on even though there is a case for an incorrect grid being turned in 5 or so minutes earlier.
The final breaks in several ways for me, and I spot some naked singles I normally suffer at to fill the 7th column as a quick break-in. After some slower progress and being seemingly stuck with 25 numbers to go, I again bifurcate to finish first. Looking at the puzzle later, I simply had not propagated a 3rd 7 into a column after I'd filled the second and couldn't see it for the size of the grid. I'll need to practice not only on whiteboards for the future but on 6x6 or 7x7 inch grids since organizers vary sudoku sizes so often. Can we agree on 3-4 inches (7.5-10 cm) square?
So a long and dispiriting day ended with one piece of hardware to bring home. I'm certainly still in the playoffs tomorrow, as is the team, but with a round to go I'm in 4th and probably falling below a magic cutoff at 6 when the OAPC comes in. There are 12 going in, with the bottom 6 playing in a choose your poison format like Belarus last year. The top 2 in that round face 3rd-6th in the same format, with the winners there joining Ulrich and whoever winds up in 2nd in the Final Four for the trophy. Without my "big" errors I'd be in that 2nd spot - probably without just the Matchmaker one certainly - but with both of them I'll likely be around one of the bubbles at 6th or 7th. The good part of this might be that having seen my sudoku speed, I doubt anyone else will choose this kind of type (if it occurs) for a round with me. If I don't choose them either, they'll remain if I get to face Ulrich. If I can find my tired adrenaline style like in Goa (or even the 1st of my playoffs in Belarus) I could have a shot. If I find my tired muddle-headed style like in the second Belarussian playoff round where I couldn't even do a kakuro, I won't. Ulrich is certainly the favorite and will have a head-start. A team playoff with unknown rules awaits as well as the US in second tries to catch up to a 1st place German team with a solid Ulrich and a similarly solid Philipp Weiss currently at 1/2 with one round to be reported. I've typed enough. Now to post.