A lot is happening in the puzzling calendar. The Sudoku Grand Prix season lifted off at the same time as LMI’s Puzzle Ramayan. The MIT Mystery Hunt is also keeping a lot of solvers busy. Therefore we are extending the deadline for our Holiday Quiz by a week. Submissions are accepted until January 19th.
Happy puzzling!
I would like to point to the existence of the 2022 United States Puzzle Championship. Hastily patched together and commenced just before the turn of the year. It runs until January 8th.
My first USPC participation was way back in 2009, not long after discovering WPC puzzles. I have made the effort to take part every year since despite the grueling time difference. (A blog post chronicling my 2017 experience is here.)
This year is different though. The competition is no longer in real-time, and you get to pick the time window that suits you best to attempt the test. It is 30 minutes longer than usual and is now 3 hours long. Unless you plan to finish all 22 puzzles, then strategizing will be a good idea.
An opportunity to be on the organizing side landed on me so this time round I’ll be sitting out. Two puzzles of mine appear in the test – it should be obvious which ones they are even without the author labels.
So sharpen your pencils, bring enough water and all the best to those taking part. Also there is over a week left to submit your answers to the Christmas Quiz.
Enjoy!
Merry Christmas everyone!
A long time ago my brother warned me that time zooms by once you get older. Last Christmas felt like yesterday so as much as I hate to admit that he’s been right all along, I hope I can be a lot more productive next year. Puzzle Bulletins are being posted weekly over at my new site, consider it a diversion for while things are being sorted back here in SOTR. Enjoy our annual Christmas Quiz and I’ll see you in 2023!
Instructions: Answer as many questions as you can. You do not have to answer all the questions. Submit your entry using the entry form below. The highest scorer will receive a copy of Nikoli no Penpa 2023, published by Nikoli. You can submit multiple times but only your latest submission will count – so you can change your answers until the deadline on Thursday 12th January [Contest deadline extended to January 19th]. Questions can be made by commenting on this post or by e-mail to roygbivpuzzles (at) gmail (dot) com.
Tie-Breaks: If the highest score is achieved by multiple entrants, the entry that scored the highest in Icon Mash (question 4) wins. If the tie remains unbroken; the entry that scored the highest in Instruction Mash (question 7) wins. Rock-Paper-Scissors will decide any further ties
Happy quizzing!
Before the 2022 WSPC I ran the Crystal Ball Contest where entrants try to make predictions on what will happen on the week of the competition.
Here are the correct answers: Continue reading
The 2022 World Sudoku and Puzzle Championship starts next week!
At the time of this writing, most of the instructions are released and the list of competitors is announced. For some fun, I’ll be running the Crystal Ball Contest. Entrants will make predictions as to what will happen throughout next week. The best scorer (sorcerer?) will receive a Nikoli puzzle book.
Continue reading
Namaste readers,
Held in Pune last month was the Indian Sudoku and Puzzle Championships. For the past 4 editions I’ve contributed Sudokus and often-questionable non-WPC puzzles (which end up in the aptly named “Hangover” round). The opportunity to organize ISPC came to me at the end of June, after no one apparently wanted to take the role.
On 20th August, I attended the Thailand Sudoku Championship, and it was a train wreck of an event. Continue reading
The 2022 UK Puzzle Championship ended last week. I wrote 6 puzzles including ones that were obviously by me. A Banksy sighting made the news last August, where the secretive artist’s work popped up in Suffolk. The picture has very little details and would make a lame Spot-the-Differences so I modified the boat a bit.
The 2022 United Kingdom Puzzle Championship happens next week. The instructions are out and you might be able to guess which puzzles I wrote. UKPA hosted what was my first ever stint as an author. I’ve always been glad to repay my gratitude by helping with their tests since. Now that I launched a puzzle mag, I’d like to offer a small prize to this year’s champion, to which UKPA kindly agreed.
The top UK solver, the top overall solver and the 29th best solver will receive our inaugural issue of PULZE. Should they already own it, we’ll send them the second issue instead. And should the top UK solver and the top overall solver be the same person (hi Freddie), we’ll give another prize to the best non-UK solver.
Good luck and get practising!
Hello everyone!
Sorry for yet another unexplained silence but I am back with news. While I was not tending to Puzzle Lounge, I closed another chapter of higher education. Though, I am technically still in an unsettled lingo of life transition. On the puzzle front, I was part of the team that organized the World Puzzle Convention. We crammed so much content into that event it’s crazy. It was weeks of meetings, grinding out hundreds of PDFs and hectic general maintenance. On one hand it broke me in half. I think I slept 2-3 hours a day that fortnight. On the other hand, it was a privilege to be part of such a strong team with so much combined WSPC hosting experience. I learnt a ton.
With that over, I was able to devote more time to something I have always wanted to do: start a magazine.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow 