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Swiss crosses in round 7

The puzzles in this round were still very nice overall, but I find it very questionable that many of them could be done much more efficiently by applying guesswork and keeping in mind the seemingly very unimportant (but actually crucial) comment in "General notes" in the IB, than by logical reasoning. (I found that at least two of the puzzles that I had been unable to make progress on initially became much easier after I applied that general principle.) The theme was nice, mind you, but I don't expect the solve path for a Galaxies puzzle to involve the question "what happens if I assume all these regions are shaped like Swiss crosses?"

Denis

Oh, damn, that's bad. I was a bit irritated when I noticed the recurring cross theme in the galaxy solutions. Fine for one puzzle, but in general themed solutions as such are pretty questionable. And with a hint that was so easy to miss, and makes such a crucial difference to solving times, that really breaks the contest in my opinion.

It is a silly question, maybe ... but ... are you planning to publish the results of puzzle round 7?
(Usually it is out after 2 days, now we are waiting 4 days...)
Maybe, I should not be so curious about it. My performance was poor. Not only that I did not notice the "swiss cross trick"... But still, I am a bit curious how bad my rank will be.

I've thought about this a bit more. I still disagree with the choices, but I'm not against such themed solutions on a fundamental level.

* The information that the solutions are themed has massive impact on the solving time.
* It is very unusual to have themed solutions in puzzle contests.
* The GP series, this year in particular, has generally put a focus on standard puzzles. The contests have not been particularly experimental.
* The hint was not communicated particularly clearly.

I'd say that including this feature at all in the GP is questionable. But in any case, it should have been announced more prominently.

TiiT's picture

It's better to know your bad result than trying to imagine how bad it possibly is. I'm also curious about the results...

Dear players,

there has been published results of WPF Puzzle GP7: http://gp.worldpuzzle.org/content/official-results-wpf-gp-puzzle-7

Please try to take a look if everything is ok and share this status (that the results are available)
:)

I'm sorry that it took me so long, but I was not able to publish it from poor internet connection on my vacation...

Thanks for understanding,
Karel

Thanks for posting the results! Hope you had a nice vacation.