WPC 2018/Team Playoffs

Result Summary

Team	Easy as ABCDE	Japanese Sums	Coral	Galaxies	Before playoff	Time offset	After playoff
Germany	Sebastian Matschke	Ulrich Voigt	Philipp Weiß	Robert Vollmert	3rd	3:50	1st
USA	Thomas Snyder	Wei-Hwa Huang	Walker Anderson	Palmer Mebane	2nd	1:50	2nd
Hungary	Zoltán Horváth	Zoltán Gyimesi	Viktor Samu	Pál Madarassy	4th	6:00	3rd
Japan	Kota Morinishi	Takuya Sugimoto	Ken Endo	Taro Arimatsu	1st	0:00	4th

Rules

Mostly from IB.

The top 4 teams after the preliminary rounds will qualify for the playoffs. In case of any equality between the points of the top teams, all teams with the same score will compete in the finals. Teams will start the playoff with time offsets based on the preliminary results. The time differences will be calculated proportionally to the team points from preliminary rounds. The difference between the 1st and 4th team will be 6 minutes.

Puzzles

The playoffs were in the Weakest Link format. All puzzles in this round were written by Jiří Hrdina.

Individual Part

There will be 4 different puzzle types: Coral, Japanese Sums, Galaxies and Easy as ABCDE. Four competitors each get two puzzles of a type they selected and three additional grids. Solvers must match two puzzles with two of the given grids. The remaining grid will be used for the team puzzle.

(The three grids, whose information was not disclosed in the IB, contained X marks that signify that the cell does not contain a letter, a number, a coral cell or Galaxies region.)

Each team member will start solving one of the puzzle types, the assignment of the puzzles is part of the team tactics. The competitor cannot leave the table until both puzzles are correctly solved. The puzzles will then be checked over the next minute. If any of the puzzles is incorrect, the judge will return it to the competitor. The competitor can resubmit a returned puzzle at any time, and will again enter the submission period.

If the solution is correct, the competitor will pass the remaining grid to the team table and can continue in two ways: A) Go to the team table and start solving the team puzzle, but then he cannot help any of his teammates with individual puzzles any more; or B) Select one of his teammates and join him at his table.

Additional rules on cooperation: The time when the judge is checking the puzzles may be used for communication with teammates. No more than 2 teammates can work on the individual puzzle type at any time. When working together, both competitors must leave the table at the same time (sending one of the competitors to the team table earlier is not allowed). Each competitor can only help one of his teammates. After a couple of teammates finishes the puzzles, the competitor who has started at the table can go help to another individual table, but the competitor who came to help must go to the team table.

Team Part

The remaining grids from the individual puzzles are to be placed in the four quadrants of the central puzzle. The correct placement of the grids is part of the solving process. After the puzzle is finished, the judge has 1 minute to check the puzzle. The team is finished when all the individual puzzles and the team puzzle are correctly solved.

(The team puzzle, whose information was not disclosed in the IB, was Squared Battleships with a fleet of size 5 (1x1 to 5x5).)