Tapa Variations Contests

[gulce]

Our first online contest of the new year will be the "Tapa Variations" contest series. The contests will last four weeks, one small contest each week, in February 2010. Contests will be held on saturdays as usual, on OAPC site, and will last 75 minutes. There will be winners of every week, and at the end of the month there will be a Tapa variations winner, determined with the sum of points earned in all four weeks.

We would be pleased to receive any ideas on possible Tapa variations, so far we have about 10 different variants from different puzzlemakers. If you have such ideas, please inform us so we can prepare puzzles of those types as well.

Serkan Yurekli: yureklis(at)gmail.com
Gulce Ozkutuk: gulceozkutuk(at)gmail.com

[Realshaggy]

Did you see Luigis last variation on the portal? I don't know if it's too far away from Tapa to be interesting for you, but it's a very nice idea.

It's also very nice that you continue with providing contests, and I'm really looking forward to it. However, I think that it puts a lot of pressure on the puzzlers, to have a fixed time contest for four consecutive saturdays in a row, if they want to participate in the "main contest". Maybe something like "best 3 out of 4" is a bit better to determine who is really the best, and don't knock somebody out, just because he had something other to do on one of the saturdays?

[pin7guin]

Is there a possibility to choose the starting time by myself?
E.g. like the Logic Masters-Qualification. It starts at about 08.00 or 12.00 and lasts until 23.59.
That would be great.

Berni programmed it in the contest engine. I think you can ask him if you have questions about this.

I am looking forward to nice Tapas
Claudia

[yureklis]

Did you see Luigis last variation on the portal? I don't know if it's too far away from Tapa to be interesting for you, but it's a very nice idea.

Yes, i saw. I'll consider all of them which were made for Puzzle Portal and also as we said in the announcement, we hope receiving some tapa variations from different puzzlemakers.

However, I think that it puts a lot of pressure on the puzzlers, to have a fixed time contest for four consecutive saturdays in a row, if they want to participate in the "main contest". Maybe something like "best 3 out of 4" is a bit better to determine who is really the best, and don't knock somebody out, just because he had something other to do on one of the saturdays?

We couldnt set exact rules of contest series, but "not counted worst one"(3/4) sound like a good idea.

[yureklis]

Is there a possibility to choose the starting time by myself?
E.g. like the Logic Masters-Qualification. It starts at about 08.00 or 12.00 and lasts until 23.59.
That would be great.

I think this is not possible because of web page design.

[Pyrrhon]

I have no time to make tapa variations, but in principle the most things that go with minesweeper variations should also work with tapa, for example

1) As Easy As Tapa: letters are placed instead of black cells, additional information about the first letter visible in rows or columns.
2) Tapa Battleships: Battleships are placed with tapa information
3) Magic Tapa: Place figures (squares, circles, triangles and moons) in the diagram so that every row and column contain exactly one square, one circle, one triangle and one moon, the tapa information is about the figures in the neighbouring cells (independent of there kind).
4) Hexagonal Tapa
5) Tapa Loop: The tapa information is about the neighboring cells with the loop.
6) Tapa Snake: The tapa information is about the neighboring cells with a snake.
7) There are numbers to place in some cells, the tapa information is about the sum of the number groups

Moreover something like Tapa Hitori and crossovers between Tapa and some Coloring puzzle formats should work. The last one is with the tapa information is about the number of cells with the same color.

Of course these are only ideas, to make puzzle with these constraints is another thing. Lets eat some tapas, antipasti or mezze before making puzzles of this kind.

Pyrrhon

[CHalb]

The domain Wpc2009.org seems do be not active any more. Is that sometimes normal? Maybe it is OK tomorrow again? Does anyone know another way to the contest-site?

[pin7guin]

Ich habe den Contest gefunden unter: http://www.wpc2009.org/oapc/

Allerdings fehlen die versprochenen instructions (noch).

Leider kann ich am Samstag auch nicht live dabeisein. Aber vielleicht gibt es die Rätsel ja hinterher auch noch?!

Liebe Grüße
Claudia

[yureklis]

The instruction file is now published on OAPC website. The contest will be held on 6 Feb 2010, 15:30 GMT. The page has a synch problem with the clock, the countdown will be adjusted to the real time.

[yureklis]

Tapa ? : In the example, all question marks are replaced with 1. This is just a coincidence and is not the rule of the puzzle. Question marks can become different digits.