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2018 WPF Puzzle GP Round 3 Announcement

We discovered about 12 hours into the competition that there was a PDF transparency mastering error that caused Puzzle 6 (the second Simple Loop puzzle) to print incorrectly on some PDF renderers. The puzzle always displayed correctly on screen, but, depending on the operating system and PDF tool used, could print with an extra unintended black cell.

The problem was discovered and corrected during the competition, with a replacement PDF uploaded.

Since we were unable to determine the extent of how many players were affected by this error (and the tournament director was stupidly unaware as to how to post News items), we put out a post on the player's forum asking affected players to send us an email at puzzlegp@worldpuzzle.org to describe their experience.

At the end, we decided to make the following scoring changes:

1. The intended-incorrect solutions of "ABDCMLJGHFEIKNOA" and "ABDCMLJGHFIEKNOA" for puzzle 6 are now graded as correct.

2. For any solvers who reported on the forum or to puzzlegp@worldpuzzle.org that they lost time as a result of solving the broken puzzle, they have been credited with a "puzzle 31", worth 40 points. The 40 points represents the average time that solvers reported to have lost. (For players ranked higher than about 20th, 40 points is somewhat less than fair compensation; for players ranked much lower, 40 points is very generous compensation.) Puzzle 31 is not required for time bonus.

3. Some small adjustments have been made to individual solvers, mostly regarding time bonus.

We recognize that these adjustments are not completely fair, and will disadvantage some players more than others, but the only "fair" thing to do would have been to throw out the entire round, and we believe the players would have generally been even more unhappy at that.

We also realize that our rules and system of protests are not completely compatible and in this particular case, caused some issues with player dissatisfaction.

We are doing our best efforts to avoid such situations in the future, and follow-up discussion is on the forums discussing this and other potential improvements to the system.

We are trying to do the best with the time we have (both your GP director and your webmaster have had a big important change in their personal lives within the last year) and we thank you for your continued patience as we work to improve the competition.

-- Wei-Hwa Huang, Puzzle GP Director