WPC 2012 Update 2

Three more individual rounds done. Not much scoring done yet though; I might post on that in the morning.

Round 3 was the round with puzzles where the rules are violated in one place, like a Tents puzzle where one tree has two campers attached instead of one. This one went quite well for me with a lot of lucky pinpointing of the “errors”, although Thomas blew me (and everyone else) away. In a 60 minute round, he finished 20.5 minutes early, I was 7.5, and Ulrich was 4.5. I don’t think many others claimed time bonus..

Round 4 was a short Easy as ABC round. As if dominoes wasn’t bad enough. Fortunately two of the types were a Crossword and a Snake (both ABC style), which I got all of. The third was actual Easy As, except on a hex grid. These slowed me down, and then the last one (which no one I’ve talked to found anything like a logical solution for) stumped me for a large portion of the round. No time bonus for me…

Round 5 was Black and White, with a lot of types like Tapa that I’m okay on, mixed with a few like Paint By that are more yucky. It went decently, with only two high-valued puzzles undone and a Thermometers. But then one of those puzzles was one I had a near-solution for and spent a huge amount of time (15 of 90 minutes) trying to tweak. Never got it. I don’t want to think about how much people gained on me from that wasted time when that should have been a high-scoring round for me.

That’s the last of the individual rounds today; there’s one weird team round to finish out and then we’re done for the day. Overall I’m quite unsatisfied with how I did given the rank I was aiming for, and mistakes haven’t even entered the equation. The themed rounds tomorrow (Skyscrapers + Half Dominoes, vs. Domino Hunt and Easy as ABC today) are better suited to me, but that doesn’t guarantee I’ll do well on them, given how many screwups on things I’m usually quick at I’ve been making. Winning the prelims might have to wait for a later year, but I think a respectable rank is within reach.

WPC 2012 Update 1

And the morning begins, with 2 rounds.

The first round was all Domino Hunt puzzles. One of my least favorite types. I did the best I could, but ended up with the two hardest left unsolved when the people I’m trying to keep up with are finishing with a substantial bonus. I had a shot at getting one of the last two when I went on a promising bifurcation route, but it broke at the end with about a minute left. Lovely.

The second round was the 2 hour marathon round of 21-themed puzzles, called Blackjack. It was going pretty well for awhile, and then I decided to try the Octopus (8 snakes on one grid, each length 21). 5 minutes in, I was pretty confident in one half. 25 minutes later, I had been trying and failing to get the other half to work and decided I needed to get to other things. One thing you don’t want to do on these marathon rounds is throw a quarter of the time limit at a puzzle you don’t get. Indeed, I ended up at about 75% of the score other top finishers were getting. In last year’s WPC these marathon rounds were where I accumulated most of my advantage, so this is a bad sign for me.

At this point, I have about 100 points of disadvantage to make up to keep up with the top, which translates to about 400-500 points on last year’s scale. The afternoon rounds are a little more suited to me, but not by much. We’ll see what happens.