Participation at the WSC

This is a post in a series of blogs where I'd like to engage the Sudoku community in various discussions relating to the World Sudoku Championship.

The first two posts I've made have general been exaggerated versions of opinions I'm curious about, and wondering whether I have really considered all the relevant points of view.  Certainly not, I'm pleased to say given the excellent ensuing decisions we've had.
This time I'm going to jump off the fence and have a bit of a rant about something that is really beginning to annoy me.  Admittedly the examples I am about to raise have more to do with the World Puzzle Championship (WPC), but the WSC operates under exactly the same rules.

For many years the set up at the WPC was that a country could send at most 4 people to the competition to compete.  If 4 members were sent, they formed an official team for the team rankings, and if not, there was an opportunity to mingle with other short-staffed countries to form unofficial UN teams which didn't appear in the official rankings..  Everyone who participated individually was ranked!

At the WSC the situation was a slightly different, to reflect the popularity of Sudoku and the WSC.  Teams used to be of size 3, and a maximum of 6 people per country could be sent to compete.  Again, where the numbers didn't add up, unofficial UN teams could be formed.  Again, everyone who turned up ended up with an official ranking.

The one complication came with countries who had both an A and a B team.  What if the B team's ranking in the team competition was higher than the A team's ranking?  Well, then the B team's ranking was used to display the final result for that country.  This happened to the UK, for example, in 2009.  A completely natural and sensible compromise, you'd have thought.

In 2011 things changed when the WPC and WSC merged and players from one championship were able to have a go at the other.  A new set of rules was brought in, and in my opinion this was a change for the worse.  Given the status quo is not entirely clear, let me spell it out to you.

1. WSC and WPC teams are defined as 4 players and possibly 1 non-playing captain.
2. Where a country sends 1-3 players, they will appear in the official individual rankings, but the country will not appear in the official team rankings.
3. A country can send at most an A and a B team.
4. Only the A team will be considered in the official team rankings.
5. The formation of UN teams, including from guests, is at the host's discretion.
6. B team members aren't included in the official individual ranking.
7. Guests aren't included in the official individual ranking, but may appear in the full individual rankings if they are in a UN team (since individual scores contribute to team scores).

Perhaps some of you, like me, are a little bemused by all this talk of unofficial and official rankings.  Aren't all these rules overcomplicating things a little bit?  Should alarm bells be ringing?

The best 10 solvers at the 2011 WPC were, objectively:

Ulrich Voigt	5075 points
Palmer Mebane	4769
Thomas Snyder	4546
Hideaki Jo	4280
Bram de Laat	4189
Peter Hudak	4174
Michael Ley	4062
Nikola Zivanovic	3974
Roland Voigt	3967
Wei-Hwa Huang	3896

Is it not very strange then, that Michael Ley was not allowed to be one of the 10 finalists, and instead my compatriot Neil Zussman was - even though Neil's points total of 3864 was nearly 200 down on Michael's?

The reason was that Michael Ley was on the German B team.  And so his results were null and void.  They didn't count.  He may as well have not bothered.  Of course this situation was known to everyone beforehand, and Michael will be the first to admit that participation is equally as important at the result.  Even so, I'd argue it makes a mockery of the notion of a world championships if some of the best solvers in the world are not getting a fair chance at the title.

We were fortunate enough not to have a situation like this in 2012, but let's examine the situation in 2013.  Objectively, the best 10 solvers at the WPC were:

Palmer Mebane	6060 points
Ulrich Voigt	5169
Hideaki Jo	5127
Thomas Snyder	5107
Bram de Laat	4893
Ken Endo	4797
Ko Okamoto	4776
Qiu Yanzhe	4553
Peter Hudak	4506
Kota Morinishi	4301

And who were the 10 finalists?  Well, no sign of Ken Endo, who was on the Japanese B team, and so his results were null and void.  No sign either of Ko Okamoto, who wasn't even on the Japanese B team, but was instead competing as a guest, and a member of a UN team.  He had an individual score in the results because individual results are counted towards the final team score.  But to add an extra element of farce, he wasn't even give a ranking!  Qiu Yanzhe was listed as 6th on the official list, and 7th on the "all" (hahahaha) list - despite the fact his was objectively the 8th best score.  Count them!

Instead we had the 11th and 12th best solvers, Sebastien Matschke (4251 - nearly 550 down on Ken) and Will Blatt (4240 - over 500 down on Ko) making up the final.  Both are great solvers, but 500 points is the equivalent of an entire round.  Go figure.

I think everyone can agree that these situations are immensely undesirable.  I'd go so far as to say they were embarrassing.  So what is there to be done?

Well, some might say nothing is broken at all.  In 2011 Germany were at fault for not selecting the best A team, and ditto Japan in 2013.  Everyone knew the rules.

But what if I were to say the rules were stupid.  What if I were to say I think things would be better another way.  What if everyone who competed in the WSC was actually given a ranking!?

Why not operate like the WSC used to?  That is to say:

1. WSC and WPC teams are defined as 4 players and possibly 1 non-playing captain.
2. Where a country sends 1-3 players, they will appear in the individual ranking, but not the team ranking.
3. A country can send at most an A and a B team.
4. The highest scoring team (A or B) will represent a country in the team rankings.
5. The formation of UN teams, including from guests, is at the host's discretion.
6. B team members are included in the individual ranking.
7. Guests are not permitted to compete in individual rounds, but can help make up the numbers for a UN team at the host's discretion.

Given that proposals to stop spitting in the face of anyone competing as a B team member and actually give them a ranking have been continually voted down at WPF general assemblies, perhaps my opinion is a minority opinion.

But I also believe that if this really is the way the WPF thinks, then they should stay consistent to their principles and explicitly limit participation to 4 people per country, and end the farces that we've seen in 2011 and 2013.

I believe my proposal is better.  And I'd love to know if people can tell me where I am wrong.

Endurance at the WSC

This is a post in a series of blogs where I'd like to engage the Sudoku community in various discussions relating to the World Sudoku Championship.

So I was pleasantly surprised by the wealth of wisdom and good discussion that followed on from my first post, and I hope that continues.  For this post I'd like to pick up on one comment from that discussion that opens up a new discussion:

my 2 cents to begin with, dont have too many rounds. it becomes a test of endurance rather than a test of your solving skills.

In my eyes endurance comes down to two different issues.  Firstly, there is the number of rounds, and secondly there is the relative length of these rounds.

To begin to address the first issue, it is helpful to examine the typical schedule of a WSC.  This has varied from year to year, but generally the entire competition, including individual rounds, team rounds and play-offs has fit into two days of competition.  A day is typically split up into morning, early afternoon and late afternoon sessions.  I've done a little (hasty - please point out any mistakes) research and summarised the information in a table.

WSC		Individual		Team		Play-off
2013	Beijing	5h 40m	(7 rounds)	1h 25m	(3 rounds)	1h 45m
2012	Kraljevica	4h 30m	(7 rounds)	0h 55m	(2 rounds)	3h 00m
2011	Eger	6h 40m	(10 rounds)	2h 20m	(2 rounds)	1h 00m
2010	Philadelphia	6h 05m	(10 rounds)	3h 10m	(5 rounds)	1h 00m
2009	Zilina	4h 10m	(5 rounds)	3h 45m	(4 rounds)	1h 15m
2008	Goa	5h 00m	(7 rounds)	1h 30m	(2 rounds)	?
2007	Prague	5h 30m	(6 rounds)	2h 00m	(2 rounds)	2h 00m
2006	Lucca	4h 15m	(8 rounds)	-	-	2h 00m

In terms of the first issue, we can see that a WSC is decided over roughly 5-6 hours of competition, with not too much variance.

This brings me on to the second issue, length of rounds.  In my research there were basically 3 types of round.  The first are shorter, 10-30 minute rounds, which are typically sprints or one-off novelty.  The second is the more bread-and-butter style rounds which are typically 35-60 minutes.  The third seems to be very much the exception, the longer 90+ minute rounds.

As far as I can tell, there have only ever been 3 such rounds: the 120 minute round from Zilina, and the two 88 minute rounds in Beijing.  In contrast, I found it remarkable that no round was longer than 45 minutes in Philadelphia - which I have long regarded as the gold standard for a WSC.

My first post has already discussed the potentially skewing effects longer rounds can have, given they inevitably feature many harder variants; instead I'd like to look at things from an endurance point of view.

The first thing to say is that every now and again most solver will have a bad round.  The days are long and intense at a WSC, you are perhaps battling the effects of jet lag and so it seems inevitable that your concentration will lapse.  If this happens half way through a particular round, then the longer the round is, the more you will be punished.

A slightly different angle, which every solver is familiar with, is when you get halfway through solving and you find that you have made a mistake.  I know that when this happens to me it can often cause me to lose focus and confidence and affect the rest of my round - particularly when the puzzle is worth lots of points and I don't want my time to have been completely wasted.  Again, the longer the round is, the more you can end up punished.

The argument then goes that if you have more and shorter rounds, there is more chance to reset your mind and recover during the breaks, and approach the round after a bad one in a much better frame of mind.  One bad round doesn't have to make or break your championship.

As a counter-point, I'd also like to remark that most online competitions are typical 120 minutes long, and might be argued to be bigger tests of endurance than any single WSC round.  But regardless of the length of the competition, we tend to see the same old names at the top the majority of the time.

I could go on for longer, particularly with regards to WPC influence where rounds are often longer, but I think now is the appropriate moment to let my audience make up their own minds, and offer their own perspectives and insights into the issue of round length.  I look forward to your comments!

Points scoring at the WSC

This is the first post in a series of blogs where I'd like to engage the Sudoku community in various discussions relating to the World Sudoku Championship

For this first post, I'd like to talk about points scoring at the WSC.

The traditional model of the WSC goes like this.  The organisers will fashion together a set of puzzles of various types, and then group them into a number of rounds.  The puzzles will be test solved by a number of testers, and their times will be aggregated, and each puzzle will consistently be assigned a number of points according to how they tested.  For example, if we have decided each championship minute should be worth 10 points, a 2 minute puzzle will be graded as being worth 20 points.

I think there are a few things worth discussing here, but the first I'd like to concentrate on is that there are Sudoku puzzles, and there are Sudoku puzzles.  For the former, read things that are generally well known and recognised as Sudoku, your classics, diagonals, extra regions, odd/evens, irregulars and killer.  For the latter, you are almost encroaching onto WPC territory with things like Greater Than, Kropki and Skyscrapers - all of which exist as standalone Latin square puzzles without Sudoku's trademark Third Constraint.

At every WSC round there is inevitably (at least one) long round, typically 45 minutes to an hour, or even longer, full of challenging Sudoku variants (see also the Daily League project) that if you were to show them to the general public, you could be sure of a reaction of bemusement and bafflement.  Due to the length and difficulty of these rounds, they are usually the rounds that score the most points and decide who finishes where in the classification.

As such, the winner of the WSC tends to be the best all-round solver, combining a mix of WPC skills and raw Sudoku solving speed.

I think the balance used to be weighted much more to WPC skills than it was.  For example, in 2006 Rachel Roth-Huber bested David McNeill (and my good self!) at the Times Su Doku Championship.  But the following spring at the WSC in Prague, David - a WPC veteran - finished 4th, compared to Rachel who finished way back in 66th (for reference, I was 45th).  This is not to say David does not possess exceptional raw Sudoku solving speed (he certainly does), but I would certainly have forgiven you for expecting the gap between the two at the WSC to be a little closer.

These days, the WSC play-offs form a large (although not perfect) overlap between the best all round solvers and the quickest classic solvers, which I think is probably testament to the fact that Sudoku solvers have generally improved their puzzling skills.

However I'd like to finish by asking my audience to question this paradigm.  What if it were decided to place (for the sake of argument) a 0.8 multiplier on the long variants rounds at the WSC, to place more emphasis on the friendlier, more publicly recognisable puzzles?  Would this be a good idea?  And do you have any other thoughts regarding WSC scoring?

I'd love to know everyone's thoughts on this, no matter what kind of solver you are!