Prelude :
Indian Sudoku Championship (ISC) and Sudoku Mahabharat(SM) finals
happened on 18th Aug 2018 at the Utpal Shanghvi Global School in
Mumbai.
I travelled along with Pranav and reached Mumbai via Spice Jet on the
morning of 18th. After a quick breakfast at the food
court near the airport, we caught an Ola auto and reached the venue around 9:00
AM. Before the event commenced, I was sure that the top 3 will be Rohan,
Prasanna and Rishi in some order with fight for the 4th place between
myself and Pranav.
I also had the confidence that I would edge out Pranav which
was based on my performance vis-a-vis his in GPs and other online contests. How
wrong I was …….
Now on to the event !
Round 1 : Classics (350 points /35
mins)
This round had 10 classics to be solved in 35mins.I scored 249 in ISC
2017 which had 12 classics worth 400 points to be solved in 35 mins and I
finished the classic round in Asian Sudoku Championship 2018 in February with 8
mins to spare. So, I wasn’t absolutely sure how this round would go for me. As
things panned out, I started from the last classic (60 points) and made quick
work of it with the timer reading 30:10 (4:50 to solve it).Confident with my
start, I moved on to the 9th classic (50 Points) which spoiled the entire
round somewhat for me.
I got stuck in that failing to spot some crucial hidden pairs in boxes 4
and 5 without which you can bang your head without going anywhere. I went for a
bifurcation, got stuck again, bifurcated again and reached a contradiction
towards the very end of the solve with the timer reading 21 (something).I
decided to drop it and move on to the rest of the classics which I did complete.
I scored 300/350. Pranav and Prasanna finished the round with 3 mins
bonus scoring a solid 380.Rohan just finishing the round getting 350 points and
Rishi ended up making 305.
Round 2 : Usual Suspects(750
Points/75 mins)
There was an interesting mix of variants in this round with 750 points
on offer at a duration of 75 mins. I sticked to my approach of starting from
the higher pointers (Little killer 130 points was the highest) finished it in
12 mins and started completing one by one in order. I was doing this round
cautiously in order to avoid making any errors and that must have affected my
speed.
When I approached the Slot machine (100 pointer), I remembered the
comment by Aashay Patil in the corner of my mind that slot machine is something
which he wouldn’t attempt. That biased me somehow and I started doing other lower
pointers and finished with a decent score of 605/750. Later, I got to know that
there were no demons in slot machine and a 100 could have been scored in that.
Anyways, Rohan topped this round finishing with 3 min bonus for a
whopping 780 points. Pranav continued on his good run to finish with 620. Prasanna
apparently broke a lot of sudokus to finish with a somewhat lacklustre 540 and
Rishi scored 570.
Round 3 : Battling the Samurai (400
points/40 min)
This round turned out
to be the disaster of the day for me. It had 2 samurai sudokus (Classic samurai
and a Variant samurai).I started great finishing the classic samurai in just
over a 15 mins and proceeded to the variant samurai .The kropki in the variant
samurai had a black dot missing between 3 and 6. Apparently, this part does not
affect your solve if you solve it using classic rules. But being the guy I am,
I use the vice versa rule of variants a lot and kept breaking this. I checked
repeatedly to make use that I wasn’t making any errors.
To compound to this conundrum, Rohan, Rishi, Prasanna and Pranav (yes
all of them !) submitted before me. So, I got convinced that the fault was on
my part and kept solving and kept ending with 3 and 6 edge adjacent without a
black dot. I became desperate and for a fleeting moment, I thought that I won’t
make it to the A-team. I would equate this round to my experience in WSC 2015
Round 4 (which had a totally puzzle based Sudoku (dumb if you ask me) with
people shouting finish all over the place and me ending with zero eventually after
which I escaped the competition hall and hid myself from my team somewhere in
the lobby disgusted and angry with my performance). But, somehow, I gained
composure and went on to solve the rest of the variants feeling unsure of my skills,
finished them and came on to kropki, forced myself to ignore the 3 and 6 , solved
and submitted it with 2 mins left. (Doing that wasn’t easy at all. I am telling
you).All my close competitors mentioned above had all submitted 10-15 mins ahead
of me which translates to a 100-150 point lead.
After the round, I got a look at the solution booklet through Ramesh (one
of the main organizers) and guess what?! I found a printing error .There wasn’t
a black dot between 3 and 6.What kicked me in the gut was that none of Rohan,
Pranav, Prasanna and apparently Rishi spotted this error or get affected by
this .I literally felt like choking those guys to death (yeah you read that
right!) for not spotting that error and leaving me in the lurch which made me
ask the question : oh god why ONLY me???? I have to add here that Rishi might
have actually spotted the error during the solve but he ended up submitting atleast
10 mins ahead of me anyway.
Eventually after much discussion, the organizers decided to scrap the
round.
Round 4 : Centrally Linked (600
Points, 60 mins)
This
round had 9 sudokus (3 with identical 5th row, 3 with identical 5th
column and 3 with identical 5th box) which was upto solvers to
determine and complete. With my focus and my confidence completely shattered from
the previous round (note that I wasn’t aware at this point that R3 would be
scrapped eventually) I started slowly and even more cautiously to avoid errors.
I ended up finishing with 11 min bonus and got 710 points owing to my slow
speed and depleted confidence. Rohan nailed it with 28 min bonus getting 880,
Prasanna 800, Pranav achieving partial bonus for a single cell error getting
692, and Rishi scoring a 5 min bonus making 660.
Classic Sudoku master (event
identical to the recreational one at WSC 2017) :
Frustrated with R3 (at this point it
still wasn’t known what will happen to R3), I decided to skip the event, sat on
a chair in the last row and it was at the last minute due to insistence from my
buddy Varun that I went and occupied my table seconds before the knockout match
started. Eventually, I went on to win the Classic Sudoku master title for the 3rd
consecutive year .I owe it to a large part, the solve on flex boards as the
guys I beat in semi-final (Pranav) and
final (Rohan) can beat me on paper any day and to Varun for making me
participate.
From left to right : After
winning Classic Sudoku master in 2016,2017 & 2018
Conclusion :
I ended 4th on the leader
board with 1703 points making the A-team after a tough race although I am not
sure at the time of writing this report concerning my participation in WSC/WPC.
Rohan killed the contest with 2109 points (I always feel that he does extremely
well in Indian contests but during world championships, on usually 2nd
days, he sub-performs costing him a top 10 spot which may be due to fatigue. Case
in point is WSC 2015 where he was 5th after day 1 but ended up being
14th), Prasanna 2nd at 1819 points, Pranav 3rd
at 1766 points falling behind a
little because of the error in R4 and Rishi fell out of top 4 ending 5th
with 1633 points.
Full results can be viewed here : http://logicmastersindia.com/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=1532&posts=52&mid=25435#M25435
Feedback, opinion and
afterthoughts :
I really enjoyed the event even
though the day was very intense and nerve wracking for me. However, it goes
without saying that the day was marred by the error in Round 3 and the subsequent
scrapping of it. While, I am sure
the organizers and testers would have put in their dedicated effort and made
sure to avoid any errors, it is utmost important to ensure that the event is
free of any broken sudokus no matter what it takes as it is usually things like
these which restore faith in an event.
Kudos to Ramesh and Purvi for running the
event splendidly (from the food to the venue to their amicable nature, everything
was so perfect!) and a big and hearty thanks to Swaroop who rode the chariot
this time behind the scene (arranging the sudokus, puzzles etc.,).Thanks to all
authors (Bram, Nikola, Tawan, Rakesh and Hemant) for constructing absolutely
brilliant and fun sudokus and to
everyone else who volunteered for the event.
So that is it. I am somewhat
satisfied with my 4th position having beaten squarely by Pranav.
It’s never a good feeling, if someone behind you in online contests suddenly
starts to improve, overtake you and beats you convincingly offline, in which
case you start beginning to doubt your own abilities. In this context, I can
somewhat empathise with Rishi as he too got ousted in TSC 2017 as well as ISC
2018 by the same 2 (me and Pranav).But that’s how things are and learning to
fight and adapt each day is very important not only in sudokus but life
too !
If you have reached this point, I l
take it that you found my report interesting and thanks for reading it
patiently ! Thanks Gaurav for letting me publish this report in your blog.
Enjoyed reading the report from expert lens. Written from the heart.
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot Rakesh .You are right indeed.I tried to be as candid as possible.
DeleteThank you. Very nice report. Believe me, 10 top players and testers missing the black spot is not an easy error to spot. Said that,I now have the solution to avoid those errors in the future, so it won't be repeated.
ReplyDeleteI am glad u enjoyed. Congratulations.
Many thanks Swaroop.They might have tested it like how a solver does and not seeing if the vice versa rule is getting satisfied for each and every cell but I am not complaining here really.I am happy that you have seen a way to avoid these errors in future and avoid potential scrapping of rounds.Great work!
DeleteUnfortunate that you didn't finish on the podium, but congrats on making the team!
ReplyDeleteI don't quite agree with you on me beating you on paper. You beat me square in ASC Classics round, which is not a long time ago. Also, I won ISC 2010 on flex, so, I'm not bad at it.
Ya, I need to do better on WSC Day-2s.
Nice read.
Maybe it's Sudokus by me that Kishore is better than you at ;)
DeleteThanks Rohan :) . I certainly think that you are miles ahead of me in Classics.Name one offline contest (TSC,WSC, etc.,)other than the ASC (which I was faster by a mere 2 mins) where I have beaten you in classics.In my humble opinion, you are arguably the best classic solver in the country (although Pranav might want to say a word or 2 to that)as I feel you have mastered the one extreme sudoku strategy known to mankind (Bowman's Bingo) which can short-circuit every other strategy.
ReplyDeleteCongrats Kishore! Very nicely written. Indian Team-A looks very strong. Best of luck for WSC 2018. I am hopeful that you people will make us proud at WSC.
ReplyDeleteThanks Rajesh .Hope to see you next time !
ReplyDeleteI didn't know you also had a bad experience with round 4 of wsc 2015.
ReplyDeleteTo be precise, I would not qualify the puzzle as "puzzle based sudoku". It is not more or less a puzzle than sudoku is a puzzle. This puzzle was a latin square with renban groups. Or in other words a renban group sudoku without regions. This is exactly the same relation between a kropki sudoku and a kropki puzzle or a skyscraper sudoku and a skyscraper puzzle.
Everybody should understand that when you remove regions of sudoku, it is still a latin square, but it is no more a sudoku.
Now I still don't know why a japanese author created such a puzzle for wsc hosted in bulgaria. Perhaps it is national considerations (to give an advantage for japanese players over chinese? Not sure it was the intention, but it is the result we can observe).