Last year, we had regular Bangalore puzzle meets. There are a few meetings for which I have written earlier, and one can read about these meetings here.
The August 2016 Bangalore Puzzle Meet took place on 28th August at Science in Box. The following were the participants who joined this meeting.
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| Left to Right: Vishal, Evanthe, Rajesh Kumar, Karthik Sai Burra, Amit, Prasanna, Gaurav, Shaheer Rahman, and Tharun |
The agenda of the meeting was Introduction to one Sudoku type and Introduction to one puzzle type, along with playing the Team round. Board games was also part of agenda which we planned that we will be starting it before the puzzle meet.
Around 2pm, most of the participants reached the venue. It means that everyone was interested in playing board games. However, Amit got delayed for the meeting, and we started with the Introduction of the Sudoku-type round. Anti Knight Sudoku was this meeting's Sudoku type. Puzzles given for this type were very tough, and each one of us was taking a lot of time to put even a single digit. First four puzzles, most of us were able to solve, but at the end, everyone got stuck at the very hard Sudoku by Rishi Puri. This particular Sudoku required advanced Sudoku solving techniques. I was able to put few digits and then took the help of Amit to proceed a little bit further on this puzzle. However, after that, we both were stuck for a long time and could not proceed. Then Gaurav helped us to complete this puzzle with very innovative Sudoku solving techniques, which required a lot of chaining and pairing of numbers. There was a lot of learning from this exercise. I helped Shaheer solve one of the Anti Knight Sudoku puzzles. At the end, everyone learned from this. Inspired by this, I have later even created two Anti Knight Sudoku puzzles, which I will be publishing on this blog soon.
Next on the agenda was Introduction to Puzzle Type, and this puzzle type was Masyu. There were many newcomers in the meeting. Prasanna explained the rules for this puzzle type and helped newcomers understand this puzzle type. Most of the puzzles given for Masyu were easy, and everyone completed many of the puzzles from the given set.
Next was the Team round, which was a very good team-building exercise. Two teams get formed. Team 1 contained Prasanna, Gaurav, Shaheer, and Vishal. Team 2 contained Rajesh, Amit, Tharun and Karthik, and Evanthe, who is 11 years old, and took a break from solving as it was getting very tough for her. It was a team round of five Sudoku puzzles, which were interlinked. This interlinking of puzzles was done with common alphabets among these different Sudoku puzzles. It means that many puzzles contain some letters in the cells, and these letters will represent the same number across different Sudoku puzzles. I will not mention the Sudoku types here, as this puzzle was part of one of the World Sudoku Championships. This was a very good learning experience as everyone had to interact with each other while solving their own assigned Sudoku. At the end, Team 1, led by Prasanna, could complete all the puzzles, and our team messed up with one of the Sudoku puzzles; hence, another interlinked puzzle could not be completed. Everyone enjoyed working as a team and learned a lot from this Team round.
Next on the Agenda was Board Games, which could not be executed as it was already 6pm and a lot of us had to travel back home.
Some of the points to ponder after this meeting are as below
1. Team rounds are very enjoyable and should always be included in the next meetings.
2. Anti-Knight Sudoku puzzles were very tough. It will be great if an easy puzzle could also be included for the newcomers at the meeting.
3. Group solving a very tough puzzle helps a lot to learn many new techniques.
4. Many of us were very interested in playing board games. Maybe in the next meeting we can start with the board games.
5. Venue for the meeting looks good. However, for people who are coming first time, it looks tough to locate the venue.
Please do give us feedback in the comments section on how we can improve these meetings.
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