Coming up this weekend: the UK Puzzle Championship

The eighth annual UK Puzzle Championship takes place this weekend. It’s an online contest with no charge for participation. You have two and a half hours to solve the language-neutral culture-free logic puzzles in the test. This year there are 36 puzzles in the test; 9 styles of puzzle appear twice with different levels of difficulty, the other 18 puzzles appear once each. There are some number puzzles and others are styles you might recognise from some newspapers. Others still might be new to you unless you’ve gone looking for puzzles on the Internet already, or taken part in previous competitions; a few may well still be new to you even if this is far from your first such puzzle contest. The instruction booklet is already available from the official competition page – and, if there were any clarifications, they’d be on the discussion thread on the forum.

It’s a pleasant development that newspapers seem to be including more interesting puzzles these days; you may well recognise some of the puzzle styles in the championship from newspapers. If you know that you enjoy those, there’s a good chance that you’ll enjoy the less familiar ones. There are plenty of places to find examples of most of the puzzle styles to practice beforehand, though you’ll need to do some digging, and sometimes let automatic translators take the strain. Start your search at the janko.at puzzle site, or at Croco-Puzzle. You can play a variety of logic puzzles using Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle Collection, which is available on many major operating systems for both computers and phones. The “Logic Games – Time Killers” app is available for iOS and Android as well.

If you finish in the top two places (excluding those who have qualified already at the live event earlier in the year…) among UK solvers then you become eligible to represent the country as part of the national team in the 27th World Puzzle Championship. This year it’ll be taking place in early November in Prague, along with the World Sudoku Championship. The UK team finished a superb fifth out of 19 official national teams in the World Puzzle Championship last year and sixth out of 23 in the World Sudoku Championship, so you’ll need to be extremely strong to compete on a global stage.

You can start the two and a half hours that you have to take on the puzzles whenever you like after midday (UK time) on Friday 22nd June, but you must get your responses in by 2:25am on Tuesday 26th – so Monday evening is the latest time that you can start. You’ll need to register for an account at the UK Puzzle Association site, and download a file with an encrypted version of the puzzles from the contest page. You’ll get the password to open the puzzle file when you choose to start your clock.

This contest traditionally aims to cater not just for world-class solvers but for ones of much more modest ability as well, with the inclusion of relatively accessible puzzles as well as tougher examples of the same types meaning that there’s something for many different puzzles. Only the very best in the world will be able to solve all the puzzles within the time limit and not too many will come close, but there’s plenty to get your teeth into even if you only manage to crack a handful of puzzles in the time allowed. Several UK-based escape room enthusiasts have taken part in the past and enjoyed it. Whatever your level, if this sounds like your sort of fun in theory, it comes highly recommended in practice!

UK Puzzle Championship 2015: the stats

Latest UK Puzzle Association logoFour weeks ago, this site previewed the UK Puzzle Championship taking place that weekend. The results have been published and this site congratulates everyone who is happy with their result.

The biggest congratulations of all go to James McGowan, the 2015 (and, overall, four-time!) UK champion; the UK podium exactly matched the one from the previous year, with all three performances proving extremely competitive in global terms. The number of UK participants on the scoreboard was a little down, from 20, 22, 23 and 25 in recent years to 20 this year. Good to see four first-timers taking part this year; the slight drop in numbers might be attributed to some of the regulars having to miss a year. (We’re down to six ever-presents now…)

In fact, we can continue to update a year-on-year chart of UKPC performances, in the style of Tim Peeters’ charts:

 201120122013 20142015BestTimes
James McGowan1121115
Neil Zussman 212214
David McNeill23   22
Tom Collyer8643335
Steve Barge3 35 33
Michael Collins9469745
Emma McCaughan610811445
Thomas Powell 1257444
Adam Dewbery 13 4 42
Ronald4    41
Roderick Grafton1251010955
Paul Redman5    51
Nick Gardner 106  62
Adam Bissett  136 62
Saul Glasman    661
Nick Deller107 151174
Eva Myers147 161274
Mark Goodliffe7 13131574
AJ Moore  971973
Ben Neumann    881
Chris M. Dickson1018192217105
Paul Slater   1310102
Gareth Moore16 11 13112
Chris Nash  11  111
Heather Golding   12 121
tom123513    131
Anthea McMillan  151714143
Liane Robinson1514   142
Timothy Luffingham 14   141
Kenneth Wilshire18201621 164
Robin Walters 1718 16163
Sam Boden 161719 163
Abigial See17    171
Alison Scott   18 181
Chris Harrison    18181
blueingreen19    191
quixote 19   191
Andrew Brown20 21  202
Laurence May 20   201
United Kingdom  20  201
David Cook   20 201
Jonathan Wilson    20201
Eilidh McKemmie 22   221
Gary Male  22  221
River Edis-Smith  23  231
Daniel Cohen   23 231
Abdul Hadi Khan   24 241
shirehorse1   25 251

Errors and omissions excepted and corrections are welcome; note that this site declines to split places between players on equal scores on the “time left” tie-breaker. Many thanks to everyone who has been involved with setting the puzzles or organising the contest over the years, especially serial compiler Liane Robinson.

There’s one online puzzle contest taking place this weekend: the eighth and final round of the World Puzzle Federation’s Sudoku Grand Prix. The instruction booklet for the 1½-hour round is available – coincidentally, also set by UK organisers! – and the puzzles will be available to solve until Monday evening.

Your country needs you

Latest UK Puzzle Association logoNext weekend, the UK Puzzle Association will be holding its annual UK Puzzle Championship. This takes place online, it’s free to enter and it’s open to everyone in the world. You should enter.

Clear yourself a 2½ hour window at a time of your choosing between noon on Friday 26th June and 2am on Tuesday 30th June. (Both times are quoted as British Summer Time; you can start at any point up to 11:30pm on Monday 29th June, so you have 3½ days.) During that time, you aim to score as many points as possible by solving the 28 puzzles, submitting your answers on a web form as you go.

The puzzles are a mixture of logic puzzles, arithmetic puzzles and word puzzles. Go to the contest page and download the instruction booklet which tells you what sorts of puzzles that there are on offer this year. Maybe you can find ways to practice some of them, or puzzles like the ones in the contest, but some are original and working out how to solve them is part of the fun.

There are plenty of online puzzle contests in the calendar; however, the UK Puzzle Championship has been my favourite or second favourite of the year for several years running. It’s deliberately accessible, so as many people as possible can enjoy the thrill of proving to themselves that they really can solve puzzles that looked impossible at first. Normally I finish about three or four places from the bottom (which used to be good when there were only half a dozen UK entrants at the start, but these days there are something like two dozen, so it’s rather less good) but even so I have had a great deal of fun along the way – and you can too, no matter how little you rate your own puzzle solving skills.

Why does your country need you? Well, the UK Puzzle Association uses this as a qualifying tournament for its team at the World Puzzle Championship, which this year will be held in Sofia in Bulgaria in mid-October. Last year’s event was in Croydon here in the UK; this site covered the event extensively. Opportunities to represent your country in meaningful global competition come rarely; puzzle fans, there are no better ones!

UK Puzzle Championship: the stats

Latest UK Puzzle Association logoTwo weeks ago, this site previewed the UK Puzzle Championship taking place that weekend, then reviewed UK performances in puzzle contests. The results are published and this site congratulates everyone who is happy with their result.

The biggest congratulations of all go to James McGowan, the 2014 UK champion, who matched Neil Zussman’s achievement in 2013 of being not just the UK champion but also the top global scorer; Neil finished second in the UK this year, with Tom Collyer getting a UKPC personal-best third place. The number of UK participants on the scoreboard also continued its annual increase, with 25 troubling the scorer this year as opposed to 20, 22 and 23 in the previous years.

In fact, we can produce a year-on-year chart of UKPC performances, in the style of Tim Peeters’ charts:

 2011201220132014BestTimes
James McGowan112114
Neil Zussman 21213
David McNeill23  22
Tom Collyer864334
Steve Barge3 3533
Michael Collins946944
Adam Dewbery 13 442
Ronald4   41
Roderick Grafton125101054
furudo.erika 125753
Paul Redman5   51
Emma McCaughan61081164
Nick Gardner 106 62
Adam Bissett  13662
Nick Deller107 1573
Eva Myers147 1673
AJ Moore  9772
Mark Goodliffe7 131373
Chris M. Dickson10181922104
Gareth Moore16 11 112
Chris Nash  11 111
Heather Golding   12121
tom123513   131
Paul Slater   13131
Liane Robinson1514  142
Timothy Luffingham 14  141
Anthea McMillan  1517152
Kenneth Wilshire18201621164
Sam Boden 161719163
Robin Walters 1718 172
Abigial See17   171
Alison Scott   18181
blueingreen19   191
quixote 19  191
Andrew Brown20 21 202
Laurence May 20  201
United Kingdom  20 201
David Cook   20201
Eilidh McKemmie 22  221
Gary Male  22 221
River Edis-Smith  23 231
Daniel Cohen   23231
Abdul Hadi Khan   24241
shirehorse1   25251

Errors and omissions excepted and corrections are welcome; note that I decline to split places between players on equal scores on the “time left” tie-breaker. Many thanks to everyone who has been involved with setting the puzzles or organising the contest over the years!

There’s one online puzzle contest taking place this weekend: the sixth round of the World Puzzle Federation’s Sudoku Grand Prix. The instruction booklet for the 1½-hour Bulgarian round is available and the puzzles will be available to solve until Monday evening.