tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2031071943178978556.post2682844956033447465..comments2023-12-03T22:29:11.592+00:00Comments on detuned radio: How Many More TimesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2031071943178978556.post-89749749304036550112010-06-14T23:39:22.000+01:002010-06-14T23:39:22.000+01:00What is this Players’ Association of which you spe...What is this Players’ Association of which you speak? Its existence is news to me, which shows how far out of the loop I am.<br><br>It strikes me as being very good news, pretty much exactly what I had hoped might happen some day, but I would argue that UK puzzle competition history should look upon Puzzler Media very favourably; they were extremely generous, gracious, encouraging and wise sponsors for ten years – a mighty long time – even if (a) I wouldn’t necessarily agree with every decision they took and (b) the blightuggerstards once turned a job application of mine down, about 13 years ago. ;-)<br><br>Chris M. Dicksonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2031071943178978556.post-16699583699796177622010-06-11T18:16:13.000+01:002010-06-11T18:16:13.000+01:00Having watched basically every kind of sport I can...Having watched basically every kind of sport I can appreciate where Tom C. is coming from. Tennis commentary is a great example where almost all the time during a point there is no commentation and only afterwards will they frame what you just saw. I myself get turned off by (American) football commentary that shares the wisdom “You know, if they don’t score more points than the other team, they are not going to win”.<br><br>What I can say is that neither of us had any time to orally prepare the delivery here. We got some materials ready to talk about the puzzle construction that we felt would be entertaining, made our heat chart, and then we were just reacting and working off of each other and so it may have been a bit more talking than Tom wanted but for a first go I think we did rather well.<br><br>Thomas Snydernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2031071943178978556.post-30776079915529172432010-06-08T11:54:16.000+01:002010-06-08T11:54:16.000+01:00Only just read your report. Interesting adjectival...Only just read your report. Interesting adjectival usage here and there. I think you have been fairly restrained otherwise. How could Wei Hwa and Thomas ever be accused of being patronising?!<br><br>Even though I was concentrating on Florian, the commentary was wonderfully innovative. You forgot to mention Stanley’s shack with endless crisps, peanuts etc. Niels Roest taught us how to play farmers’ bridge with a new scoring system which penalised my conservative play. I was trailing badly and had to be replaced by someone more competitive.<br><br>I really must give you a cryptic crossword tutorial some time.<br><br>Happy memories of a truly competitive UK team. Hope we’ll get to do it again.<br><br>David.<br><br>David McNeillnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2031071943178978556.post-55429370173110759752010-05-29T22:39:26.000+01:002010-05-29T22:39:26.000+01:00Re 100m – I think my comment here is more a psycho...Re 100m – I think my comment here is more a psychological one. I read “easy” in a sudoku grading in almost any other context as meaning I should be disappointed if I don’t have it done in under 2 minutes. I think in individual context, each puzzle was definitely doable in under 3 as promised. With added time pressure, I think for almost everyone there was going to be one which tripped them up.<br><br>Re the newspaper gradings – several Nikoli mediums would definitely be fiendish. I have trouble these days differentiating between anything below a fiendish – often caning up a so-called “difficult” in less time than an easy. In this respect, the Times is disappointing somewhat – it was much better when they were supplied by Pappocom (rather than the current lot by Puzzler Media). Interestingly, PM do actually have a decent generator for harder puzzles, but tend to reserve these for super-fiendish. Grade-inflation before our very eyes.<br><br>In terms of the best newspaper sudoku, I think this title probably goes to The Guardian these days (although their kakuro tend to suck). I’m not sure whether they are still supplied by nikoli, but a lot of their puzzles tend to be very pretty. Even if there’s only one a day!<br><br>Thomas Collyerhttp://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/tcollyer/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2031071943178978556.post-3336776235262691452010-05-29T21:59:09.000+01:002010-05-29T21:59:09.000+01:00I’m not sure when it went away (I don’t see it kno...I’m not sure when it went away (I don’t see it know) but our original drafting of the 100m round criterion read: “This is a round of standard Sudoku of easy difficulty—the World’s Greatest Sudoku Solver should be able to solve each of these in less than 3 minutes”. It then followed by stating, as it still does, that the steps include Hidden Single, Hidden Pair, Pointing Pair, and Box-Line Reduction. At some point the 3 minute line got dropped but this should indicate these are more “Wednesday” puzzles, which they all were, and the round timing should have suggested this too since 2.5 minutes per puzzle is much more than you’d need on a monday = 1.5 minutes or less. I’m surprised these are where the current Fiendish are in England as they really aren’t that bad.<br><br>The 400m and 1500m then are both more Saturday puzzle-level, by either adding in the rest of basic steps in hard ways (400m), or more advanced steps in hard ways with the potential for bifurcation (1500m). You should realize for any 1500m puzzle that your time on one grid will have very high variance and potentially only take you 4 minutes – what any sudoku should take – if you guess well. You could also end up taking 40. The first paper I collected was someone in this boat. He had worked the whole time to crank out the last puzzle and had no time left for anything else. What separated the three roadblock puzzles in this round from the others was having many more potential spots to guess at (and many that are not going to be useful in the end or require further branching) and no logical approach at all (the first 6 were very solvable but the roadblocks were not). They should feel like Goes to 11 and such because they solve effectively the same with wide variance and encouraged bifurcation. Unlike those past years we were upfront about the intention.<br><br>In the initial planning, we did have a spot for “sprint” puzzles. It was going to be during a World Record Round run the first night for the top ~10 from the classics to that point. It would have contained sub-minute time puzzles to set a real value for the World Record, probably run over multiple iterations (5, keep best 3) of simple grids. When the final plans did not include this event, the breeze-easy puzzles went away too.<br><br>Thomas Snydernoreply@blogger.com