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Puzzle GP 2020 Round 2 - instruction booklet?

Round 2 of the Puzzle GP is starting in four days, yet there is no sign of an instruction booklet coming. Can we expect it to be published soon?

At the very least, since I don't remember an instruction booklet ever coming out on time at any point since at least the start of last year's tournaments, please update the following pages so that they give an accurate timescale rather than claiming that the IB will be available one week before the start of the tournament:

https://gp.worldpuzzle.org/content/instructions-solving-0
https://gp.worldpuzzle.org/content/instructions-solving

I see the link below also refers to Sudoku GP. This may change and occasionally I want you to know that the instruction booklet for sudoku rounds has been ready every time so far (and the next round will be the 27th online under my care) without a single day delay. The day for sending materials is always Tuesday or Wednesday, 10 or 9 days before the start of contest. I'm not justifying anyone, please try to understand that administrator is sometimes busy, on the road or for some other reason is unable to publish instructions on time.

I don't want to lay the blame at anyone's feet. I'm grateful for all of the work that goes into ensuring we always have good quality puzzles on the GP competitions. I know that the contest materials are often ready far before the deadline - you and I both know that Sudoku GP2 was ready nearly 2 months in advance! Nonetheless, that round still didn't have an IB on the website until 5 days before the contest, not a full week. I'm afraid the late appearance of IBs seems habitual rather than circumstantial.

And then there are other issues with the (puzzle) GP - no points in the IB, incorrect points in the IB, no response to queries about the IB, no response to protests about results... Taken all together, it makes a very bad look for the WPF.

I just loved to organize the swiss quali for WSC on the contest engine of Logic Masters Deutschland: https://logic-masters.de/Wettbewerbe/
As organizer, I never needed to ask anything to an administrator, everything can be implemented by the person who organize the tournament.
One nice thing you can do is to chose the date of publication of IB (and PB, too), thus you can upload the file anytime you want before the choosen date.
There is 2 advantages: one manipulation less (the director could upload himself the file, instead of sending it to administrator so that the latter upload it to the website), and the file can be uploaded when it is ready. So that delay would happen only if the file is not ready at the publication date.

I don't know if it is possible to do such things on this website, but to make a connection with another subject discussed on WPF forum, I don't think that to spend a bit of WPF money for GP website improvement would be a bad thing. Since 2014, I don't think the GP website has been much improved.

Tom, director of sudoku GP 2016 put the subject on the table on multiple occasions, I don't know if WPF board really consider this request in the past.

Fred

Just as a parenthetical, since I know that contest engine a bit. Yes, it works quite nicely, but also it's unmaintained and quite tied to the whole website to an extent that if I were tasked with setting up something like the GP website, I would probably choose to build it fresh rather than reuse that engine. (Guided, naturally, by the features that work well there.)

Basically what Rob said.

The UKPA engine has been up and running since 2010, with a few tweaks here and there along the way. By far the best feature, since the beginning, is the ability for a contest organiser to manage the contest (points, time, uploads, passwords, results, etc) without the need for a third party administrator.

Maybe there are no plans to look at the GP website, although certainly it would be good to hear that it's at least under review. I'm not sure it's fair to say I put the subject on the table multiple times, but certainly I found managing the GP to be more work than managing the UKSC. It was a (small) contributing factor in my decision to resign.

mstang's picture

Well, now there is a link to an instruction booklet but it leads nowhere....

The instructions have been posted now.

Could you confirm that for Puzzle 7: Spiral Galaxies and Tetrominoes, different tetrominoes *are* allowed to touch by corners? The instructions imply that, but the example doesn't show this (and it's a bit unusual).

Yes. Different tetrominoes are allowed to touch by corners.

Thanks Rakesh for the swift response!