WSC '11: update 3

Ok I’m now well fed and have now had my 9th variety of cake, and feel much the better for it. First some book-keeping.

David McNeill has complained that my blog posts haven’t been Sarcy enough so far, and Thomas Snyder has claimed that of the 4 Coll’s (Collins, Collison, Colloby, Collyer) forming the UK contingent, I am not his favourite. In lieu of these two facts I shall now make a heart-felt plea to Thomas, proclaiming my love of American football in a hope to rectify all this.

The 1st team round was an absolute monster, a big circular job on a table with 8 puzzle interlinked by a devilish wheels system which the UK team couldn’t really make heard or tail of, and anything we thought was right turned out to be flawed information. We may have got 1 of the 8 interlinked puzzles out, but I am not even confident about this. Oh well. I realise this description probably doesn’t shed much light on this puzzle but I don’t care. It is over and never needs to be though about ever again!

The 2nd team round was much better. A collection of 4 puzzles together with 32 pieces to be placed as givens in the grids, 8 pieces per puzzle. The particular grid I was given was very hard to deduce anything from, but the others (in case I’ve not introduced them yet – David M, David Collison and Michael Collins) steadily deduced things, which simplified things nicely and we finished with 10 minutes to spare. This marked the end of the afternoon’s puzzling and we headed straight to the bar for a beer. Which was cold, and beer-like. Magic. There’s now a pop-rock quiz, a la Jeopardy, about to happen, so this is probably all you’re going to get for today. No scores available, as of yet.