Friday Puzzles #32

EDIT (May 2022): I have noticed from blog analytics that this post has been continually and regularly viewed over the last couple of years.  

I suspect someone has bookmarked a link with the idea of trying to discredit or blackmail.  I am not stupid, nor do I think I should airbrush my past.  For better or worse I choose to blog, and that means living in something approaching the public domain.

So if you are the sort of pathetic being looking to discredit or blackmail me - or simply have vague plans to do so - please come out of the shadows.  Analytics already lets me know where you are based, which in itself is already quite telling.  Rest assured I am long-prepared for any contemptible shenanigans on your part.

EDIT:  Before you jump to any conclusions, please read this:
http://tcollyer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/communication-breakdown_8893.html

Welcome to Friday Puzzles, where I am pleased to announce the Puzzled Medium TM 2010 Sudoku qualifiers!!!

The prize you, dearest reader, could win is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to lick your very own elbow, under world championship conditions, whilst looking at this lovely picture of some Philadelphia cheese!

Well, let me temporarily avert your excitement, whilst I lay out the law of the Puzzled Medium TM 2010 Sudoku qualifier. It’s very important you pay full attention to the rules. These can never be broken. NEVER!

First off, this is only the first round. The top 50 entrants will be invited to part two. If I can be bothered to write a part two. Which I probably can, it’ll be good practice for the UK 2010 WSC qualifier, as kindly run by Puzzler Media. By the way, that is in no way affiliated or endorsed by anyone involved with Puzzled Medium TM.

Next is that although the aim of this competition is to find the best and most deserving people to lick their own elbows, do note that one place is already reserved for one of my cronies – who in all fairness has impeccable sudoku pedigree, but never mind the principle of competition or anything. Just bear in mind I do have another crony, who has pretty good (though admittedly not impeccable) sudoku pedigree, including another notable victory in a national sudoku championship (whose puzzles, by the way, were supplied by us at Puzzled Medium TM) and excellent performances when licking their own elbow in the past.  He They will definitely not be getting special treatment. We have principles regarding competition!

The eagle-eyed amongst you might have caught on to the fact that being a good sudoku solver has nothing to do with successfully licking your own elbow. This is where you’d be wrong (even though I said fact!) Here at Puzzled Medium TM, we know best, and have a proven track record in previous years of selecting the best people to lick their own arses elbows. Honest.

Oh, please don’t cheat. Here at Puzzled Medium TM, we have never ever ever had any problems with cheating, and it’d be a shame for it to start now. Even though are lots of easy ways to hypothetically do so for example by using the solvers at Scanraid and then submitting a plausibly competitive time. I shouldn’t really tell you that, but there we are, I’ve crossed it out. You were probably far too stupid to work that out for yourselves anyway.

And before I forget, let me tell you how to submit your answers. After completing the puzzles in an innocent fashion, select 18 digits from each puzzle and send them to me, along with your time. Hopefully your time-keeping device works in a similar sort of way to the ones we keep at Puzzled Medium TM…

Actually, you’ve already seen puzzles 1-4 in this first round of qualifiers in the last three weeks:

Puzzle 1: #036 Sudoku
Puzzle 2: #037 Sudoku
Puzzle 3: #034 Diagonal Sudoku
Puzzle 4: #035 Diagonal Sudoku
Puzzle 5: That’s this week’s novelty – enjoy!

    #038 Killer Sudoku – rated hard

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

Friday Puzzles #31

EDIT:  Before you jump to any conclusions, please read this:
http://tcollyer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/communication-breakdown_8893.html

So my pointed dig at the Puzzler media qualification scheme for the WSC continues with two sudoku puzzles I’ve written this week. One might be interpreted as a juvenile dig at the culture of following rules and regulations to the book, and the other is the finest sudoku puzzle I’ve ever written.

    #036 Sudoku – rated hard

    #037 Sudoku – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

Friday Puzzles #30

EDIT:  Before you jump to any conclusions, please read this:
http://tcollyer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/communication-breakdown_8893.html

Oh no I didn’t! You’d better solve this one in a hurry lest anyone look over your shoulder and think you’re some kind of communist scumbag!

Two versions of the “same” diagonal puzzle this week. One is fairly challenging (emphasis on fair there), the other is very challenging, and probably unfair (at least for the purposes of competition). If you’re the sort of person who naively challenges themselves to try the hardest things possible, even when advised not to, then let me say to you the words “Y” and “wing”.

    #035 Diagonal Sudoku – rated hard

    #035a Diagonal Sudoku – rated (too) hard

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

Friday Puzzles #29

Ok, so here’s part one of my mini-crusade to provide a more enjoyable alternative to those who can’t have a go at the UK WSC qualifiers. And indeed to those who have done or will do them. Puzzler have bastardised the name of diagonal sudoku, and instead call it “X-Factor”. In my opinion this sounds really quite stupid, but there we go, I’m not a marketeer.

This is the first time I’ve written a sudoku puzzle introducing the diagonal constraint. I think It turned out quite nicely, and should make a good warm-up for the coming harder diagonal puzzle.

Incidentally, the remaining puzzles for this initial section will be a harder diagonal, two classic sudoku puzzles, and a killer. Bearing in mind I think the Puzzler killer generator is actually quite good, I’m going to have my work cut out with that, but those are worries for another time. For now, enjoy!

    #034 Diagonal Sudoku – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

Friday Puzzles to return!

After a little break over Christmas and the new year, I’m pleased to announce that my Friday Puzzles will be returning!

The return has been inspired by two things. The first of which is a sudoku competition, created by Thomas Snyder. There is an awful lot that you could say about Thomas Snyder, but I think the thing that strikes me about him most is that if he doesn’t like something, he may well moan vociferously about it, but he’ll also offer his own take on how things could be fixed. His sudoku cup was, in part, his personal reaction to the fiasco in Zilina.

The second source of inspiration is the upcoming UK WSC qualifier, which I’d like to point my interested British readers to here. I’ve not entered yet; I’ll leave that until the last week as I don’t like waiting for ages and ages to see whether I’ve screwed up or not but in my experience the advertising for it is absolutely piss poor and generally not in the interests of picking the strongest possible UK team.

On the other hand, that’s a criticism I’ve laid at these online qualifiers the past couple of years anyway. Part of that criticism lies at the actual test itself – its collection of vanilla variants still hot from the Puzzler Media generator, coupled with a couple of Vladimir Portugalov’s safer variants, doesn’t really make for the best indicator of the sort of skill set required to excel at WSC on-site solving of more and zestier variants. Especially when the test is online only! There hasn’t been a UK WSC qualifier that hasn’t involved technical hitches either on the part of solvers, or on the part of Puzzler not being sure about cheats yet. Additionally, last year in Zilina, the two people who had qualified by virtue of their test performance were the 5th and 6th best performing of the 6 people representing the UK. Just sayin’.

On a personal note, I’ll add that in most countries where there is an offline national sudoku competition, the winner qualifies for the national team. That sounds pretty reasonable to me…

Anyhow, in response to this, I thought I’d like to improve upon their efforts. As such, in the coming weeks you can expect to see some of the variants you’d see on a UK WSC qualifier – so think a couple of classics, a couple of diagonals, a couple of odd/evens, a couple of killers – and then perhaps a couple Portugalov variants too. These will be better both in quality than the qualifier, and in principle because since there’s nothing at stake, there’s no point in cheating[*]. You (I couldn’t possibly; I’m natural partisan to this argument) might even contend that hypothetically, those who excel at my hand authored puzzles are better prepared for what will be thrown at them in Philadelphia than those who have learned the nuances of the generator.

Anyhow, even if you think all of the above is bollocks, then at least enjoy my puzzles, and I’ll be glad to have helped prepare those who intend to enter the UK qualifier in my own small little way.

[*] This implicitly challenges Puzzler’s assertion that there is no point in cheating simply because “standards are high”.