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Google-Sponsored 2004 US Puzzle Championship

Posted by simoniker on from the very-puzzling dept.

kublai kahn writes "On the NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle segment this past weekend, Will Shortz mentioned the 2004 US Puzzle Championship, sponsored by Google. Registration closes on Thursday 17 June, and the competition is conducted online on Saturday 19 June. "The top two US contestants will be selected to join the US Team at the World Puzzle Championship in Opatija, Croatia. Prizes will be awards to the top US contestants." (This was mentioned on Slashdot last year as well.) I'll be away from my internet connection over the weekend, but perhaps others from the Slashdot crowd can compete. Check the practice test to see if it's your cup of tea."

3 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder... by manduwok · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Suppose you were elected to the finals. Do they pay any flight/room costs? (Due to the recent Slashdotting, I can't RTFA and answer my own question.)

  2. Hmmm by merlin_jim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I used to try doing this kind of thing, back when I thought that MENSA was a good organization to try to belong to.

    Looking at the practice test, I realize that I don't really like word puzzles. It's that last criss cross puzzle that got me. There's no general solution to word puzzles; you just arbitrarily try answers till you get it. And the final solution doesn't have any beauty.

    Take the rotator puzzle. This is an interesting puzzle, and the algorithm to find the final solution may be very interesting indeed, even applicable in video processing and the like...

    But don't include NP complete problems in your puzzle. I don't like them. The algorithm and method of solving isn't interesting or insightful, it's just boring and tedious.

    --
    I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
  3. Re:Hmmm by iabervon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Many problems which are, in general, NP complete are solvable in polynomial time with some extra information (by definition, all of them are with some sort of information); given some of the helpful information, the problem can be interesting and reasonable.

    For that matter, many classes of NP complete problems have good heuristics which will solve many of the cases (but not the cases built from other NP-complete problems). You can get a good rate of success on random or common problems with an algorithm which terminates in polynomial time, having found the correct solution 75% of the time and given up the other 25%, while never either running long or giving an incorrect answer.