I’m back to the league this week and I hope that I’ll be back regularly now. Anyway, Search 9 Sudoku for today.
Remember that you can solve the puzzles from the League online on the Sudokucup Guest League page with a 24h delay.
Rules – Follow regular Sudoku rules. Additionally, each arrow points to the 9 in the respective row or column. The number in the cell with the arrow is the distance from the cell to the 9 in this row or column.
Enjoy!
P504
Hello dear readers,
I’ve not been that active on this blog this year. Aside from a few League posts, an ex-contest post here and there, and the 500th puzzle special, this blog hasn’t had much activity. So, in an effort to make amends, I’ll just list all the places you can see my puzzles from the year 2014, along with a few other thoughts.
The first notable change this year was obviously my inclusion as a Guest Contributor on GM Puzzles. We started out with a Countdown to the year 2014 and after a Tapa with a unique theme, we asked a question about the author, before the reveal. You can find all my contributions to the GM Puzzles Blog here. In addition to this, if you are a GM Puzzles patron, odds are, some of the rewards will contain my puzzles. Other than this, you can also visit the GM Puzzles bookstore for a direct purchase of some of the e-books, which also contain my puzzles. Currently, there’s a series of posts on GM Puzzles highlighting the best puzzles of 2014. I am really pleased to see two of my puzzles already showing in an entry.
Another place you can find my puzzles related to GM Puzzles is in Sudoku Spectacular by Penny Dell Puzzles. Thomas Snyder, Wei-Hwa Huang, Serkan Yürekli and me have contributed a good number of variants to the title, including Tight Fit, Consecutive, Thermo, Arrow, Isodoku, etc. We have also contributed more Sudoku variants in a ‘Will Shortz’s Sudoku’ title by the same publications, set to be released soon, as mentioned here. So watch that space.
I also still had many projects with Logic Masters India. One of them was to start a Patron page of our own, and most of the Mini Packs and Main Packs available here contain my puzzles, along with a few puzzles by other Indian authors like Deb Mohanty, Ravi Kumar Macherla, Swaroop Guggilam and Ashish Kumar.
I also authored/organized/co-authored multiple contests on LMI this year. Here’s a list:
Parallel Universe: An LMI Monthly Sudoku test for the month of April, based on a unique concept.
Parallel Universe II: An LMI Monthly Puzzle test for the month of April, based on the same concept with slight differences.
Indian Puzzle Championship 2014: I organized this tournament with the help of some other top quality authors, and wrote some puzzles for the competition too.
Indian Sudoku Championship 2014: My contribution here was the same as with IPC above.
World Practice Championship Day 1 & World Practice Championship Day 2: Rohan Rao’s idea to have an LMI Test featuring one of the WPC rounds snowballed spectacularly into a contest featuring all 100+ puzzle types appearing in the World Puzzle Championship 2014, where I contributed quite a few puzzles.
Beginners’ Contest August 2014: Based on a patron request, I authored this Beginners’ Contest exploring the puzzle genres Cave and Yajilin.
I also authored contests outside LMI, most notably the Indian round of the WPF Sudoku Grand Prix 2014 which had a nice little ‘7’ based theme through the entire round which I was particularly happy with.
There are some other places which featured my puzzles in 2014 too, but other than my continued contribution to Akil Oyunlari magazines they are local ones like the ICT Evolve magazine (Pg 36) where it is likely to become a regular section, or college contests like the Saarang Sudoku Championship.
Apart from this, I’ve also participated in many competitions this year, so I’ll list the notable ones.
World Sudoku Grand Prix – 18th. Started strong, had a horrible few rounds in between, and was pretty much out of the reckoning for top 10 from Round 4.
World Puzzle Grand Prix – 17th. Started horribly, and it is really surprising that I finished at a better ranking than I did in the Sudoku GP, considering that the individual rankings read much better for the Sudoku GP.
Times Sudoku Championship – 1st. This was just my day, and I probably won’t have such a dominant day for a long time (even though I hope I do!). I won all of the four rounds against two great solvers in Rohan Rao and Rishi Puri. That’s… not usual.
World Sudoku Championship – 21st. I really really really need to stop my streak of horrible math rounds. It continued here, and Day 2 wasn’t long enough to mount a comeback like last year.
World Puzzle Championship – 23rd. At the start of the WPC, Rohan (team captain and all) told me that he gives me 23 choices to top last year’s rank of 24th, and I’d better get one of them. It is so typical that I chose the 23rd choice. Should’ve been more restrictive, Rohan. Either way, this is still a new record for an Indian at a WPC.
The World Championships’ results can be found here. One notable statistic here which I didn’t mention above is India’s team rank in the WSC. We finished at 6th, which is India’s best performance at a WSC. So, yay us. Also, yay French team for making a mistake and helping us make history.
So what else is new?
Puzzle Toketa: The Japan team, in collaboration with Serkan Yürekli, have been selling volumes 1 and 2 of this book at the last two WPCs (2013 & 2014). I’ve purchased it both times, and highly recommend it to puzzlers looking for a varied list of puzzle styles, both old and new, with varying ranges of difficulty.
Meraklisina Akil Oyunlari: The Turkish Puzzlers have started an online content circulation page with patron pledges. Unfortunately, I’m looking at saving up some money right now, so I haven’t been able to enjoy these puzzles, but considering the authors involved, and knowing Akil Oyunlari’s general quality, I’d recommend subscription.
So come 2015, I’m hoping to be a bit more active here. Doing what, I’m not sure. It is clear above that there are other avenues for which I need to contribute puzzles. But I’ll think of something, hopefully. One thing I’ll definitely make an effort with: being more active in the Daily League. I’ve definitely fallen behind on that front.
Other than that, there are already plans lined up for 2015. some projects with GM Puzzles, LMI, the WPF. You can already see a Sudoku Mahabharat Round scheduled for Jan where I’m the author, and I’ll also be involved in the Indian Sudoku GP 2015. Here’s to a great 2015.
Happy New Year everybody!
PS's puzzles + 