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Deckardv 2024 Puzzle Night 1 Recap + Experience

 I participated in a "puzzle night" (i.e. a speed solving competition) on Deckardv's puzzle server! I didn't do that well, but here are some of my experiences.

I placed 25th overall out of around 35 competitors, which was a bit disappointing for me, but not too bad for my first puzzle night.

I felt like I had some fun solving the puzzles. There were only 5, consisting of both familiar and unfamiliar genres.

I won't show the actual puzzles here, but I'll show my thought processes and experiences for them.

Puzzle 1: Word Snakes \ Time: DNF \ Placement: 32nd

Word Snakes is a genre where you have to find words on a grid, similar to a word search. However, the words are all paths instead of just horiz./vert./diag. lines. I got thrown off by a word that wouldn't fit any other words but eventually found the correct solution. Unfortunately, I was a few seconds too late to have my completion time counted.

Puzzle 2: Gerrymandering \ Time: DNF \ Placement: 32nd

Gerrymandering is an area division puzzle similar to real-life gerrymandering. The goal is to divide the grid into regions such that a certain color wins. There may not be a 2x2 area inside of a region. At first, I was a bit stuck with finding the regions, but then a hint was given out. However, I still only managed to find the hinted region, and I wasn't even close to finishing this puzzle.

Puzzle 3: Star Battle \ Time: 10:17 \ Placement: 16th

Next was a 10x10 star battle with 2 stars. I was a little stuck on the break-in, but I did a few trials to progress. There were a few other points where I got stuck, but trial-and-error helped me here.

Puzzle 4: Masyu \ Time: 5:42 \ Placement: 9th

Up next was a Masyu that was slightly above GAPP-level in my opinion. Despite my general weakness in loop puzzles, this was the puzzle that I found to be the easiest of the night, which may explain the lower time and higher placement. There were a few minor choke points, but I used some basic logic to get past them.

Puzzle 5: Fitting In \ Time: 16:12 \ Placement: 23rd

Fitting In is an object placement puzzle where you have to place polyominoes onto a grid such that no two polyominoes touch each other or blocked cells. This puzzle has 6 hexominoes, two of which were identical. I first started with presumably the easiest hexomino to fit, but then thought that placement was wrong because it blocked a potential placement for another of the hexominoes. Ultimately, I realized that my initial placement of what I thought was "the easiest hexomino to fit" was correct. I had a few other choke points, but I managed to get the last non-DNF spot.

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