WPC 2017/Round 15

The namesake of this round is Loop pooL by Prasanna Seshadri (India), held in March 2016.

Duration: 50 minutes. Total point value: 2500 points. Round winner: USA-A (Palmer Mebane, Walker Anderson, Thomas Snyder, Will Blatt), GER-A (Ulrich Voigt, Philipp Weiß, Martin Merker, Robert Vollmert), SVK-A (Matej Uher, Matúš Demiger, Štefan Gašpár, Pavol Kollár) and unofficially JPN-B (Hideaki Jo, Yuki Kawabe, Ryusuke Nishiyama, Takuma Kitamura), 1575 points.

Puzzles

All puzzles in this round were instructionless puzzles. This round was in the Weakest Link format.

Round note: This round will have no written instructions. There will be four individual puzzle types, all of them following the same base rule: Draw a loop that passes through all cells. For each puzzle type, there is an example and solution next to it, that must be used to deduce the rules of the given puzzle type. When the round starts, individual players of each team start on separate individual tables and each of them will get one of the four types. Each ‘type’ includes a solved example and a set of four puzzles.

There are two puzzles at the team table, which use all four individual puzzle rules combined. The solvers can submit their puzzle sheet along with solved example at any point in time and proceed to the team table, but the sheets must be submitted before moving to the team table, and participants cannot return to the individual table or review the instructions at any point of time after moving. They must then use their quarter of the rules to collaborate with the rest of the team to solve the team puzzles.

At the team table, there will be four envelopes. Each of these envelopes contains the same solved example for Sets A, B, C and D from the individual tables. Teams may use these envelopes to check the rules, but opening envelopes reduces the team’s tally for the team table puzzles by 15% per each envelope, and foregoes the chance at a bonus for finishing early. The individual puzzles will be provided on an A3 sheet each, with the solved example at the centre of the sheet. The team table puzzles will also be on one A3 sheet, there will be one 10x10 puzzle and one 20x20 puzzle. Sizes for individual puzzles will not be specified.

Puzzle sets were:

• Individual Set A by Rohan Rao (A1) and Ashish Kumar (A2-A4), 25+70+140+35 points
• Individual Set B by Swaroop Guggilam (B1) and Ashish Kumar (B2-B4), 60+85+45+75 points
• Individual Set C by Rohan Rao (C2) and Ashish Kumar (C1, C3-C4), 140+50+135+155 points
• Individual Set D by Prasanna Seshadri (D4) and Rohan Rao (D1-D3), 20+20+55+90 points
• Team Table by Rohan Rao (T1-T2), 375+925 points