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That's Why They Call Him . . .
For me, a lot of this weekend was logic puzzles.
The United States Puzzle Championship was last weekend, and a lot of my friends participated. I usually don't, for a lot of reasons. The biggest, of course, is that I am generally working during the time of the test. The other reason is that some of my friends (like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
motris and thedan) are the top solvers, so I am very aware of how far away from that level of competition I am.
Butmotris makes these competitions seem so enticing. I headed over to Logic Masters India, which regularly runs logic-puzzle competitions, to print out some of their past sets. Then I decided to take part in this month's Sprint Test.
I came in at 114th out of 211 submitted solutions. Which is about par for me. I've also been playing more or less daily at Croco-Puzzle, a German site that offers two timed puzzles per day, tied into a robust rating system (described bymotris in this post). Your rating system runs from 0 to 3000, with 1500 representing the median solving time. After building up my ranking slowly over the course of the year, I'm starting to level off. I struggled for about a month to get a ranking above 250th, and I worked all summer to get from a rating of 1300 to 1400. My goal is to inch myself over that median.
This is, thus far, the post I planned to write. The title of this post was going to be "That's Why They Call Me the Middle of the Pack," because that's pretty solidly where I am on these puzzle competitions. It's still a pretty good showing, considering that the folks who take the time to participate in these competitions self-select to the pretty hardcore anyway.
But then, this happened:
Yup, that's me at number 1! Withmotris down at 17th place as "mars," and USPC and Sprint Test winner MellowMelon at 12! And that's a thirteen-second lead on #2!
It's just for today. And there's still thirteen hours for people things to change. But still, for now, I'm the leader of the pack.
The United States Puzzle Championship was last weekend, and a lot of my friends participated. I usually don't, for a lot of reasons. The biggest, of course, is that I am generally working during the time of the test. The other reason is that some of my friends (like
motris and thedan) are the top solvers, so I am very aware of how far away from that level of competition I am.But
motris makes these competitions seem so enticing. I headed over to Logic Masters India, which regularly runs logic-puzzle competitions, to print out some of their past sets. Then I decided to take part in this month's Sprint Test.I came in at 114th out of 211 submitted solutions. Which is about par for me. I've also been playing more or less daily at Croco-Puzzle, a German site that offers two timed puzzles per day, tied into a robust rating system (described by
motris in this post). Your rating system runs from 0 to 3000, with 1500 representing the median solving time. After building up my ranking slowly over the course of the year, I'm starting to level off. I struggled for about a month to get a ranking above 250th, and I worked all summer to get from a rating of 1300 to 1400. My goal is to inch myself over that median.This is, thus far, the post I planned to write. The title of this post was going to be "That's Why They Call Me the Middle of the Pack," because that's pretty solidly where I am on these puzzle competitions. It's still a pretty good showing, considering that the folks who take the time to participate in these competitions self-select to the pretty hardcore anyway.
But then, this happened:
Yup, that's me at number 1! With
motris down at 17th place as "mars," and USPC and Sprint Test winner MellowMelon at 12! And that's a thirteen-second lead on #2!It's just for today. And there's still thirteen hours for people things to change. But still, for now, I'm the leader of the pack.
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You probably know that sadly you are now no longer top of the pack, but you're still on the podium. I finished the little Japanese Sums the other day in fourth, globally, at the end of the day; you should do at least that well, and may well end up on the podium for the end of the day.
(Mind you, I quite liked the look of the chart earlier on today; 1 and 2 were UK solvers drsteve and detuned, then uvo, then melon. A mighty fine start as far as I'm concerned!)
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