Hi folks,
quite some time has passed since my last post, and in fact not much has happened on my end. The Classics Collection is supposed to continue soon, but I have not yet found the time to design a larger number of puzzles again. Somehow I feel like I am experiencing the puzzle equivalent of writer’s block; since I have never been a professional writer, this may be a silly comparison, of course. In any case, no promises as to when the next puzzles will appear on this blog.
I have taken part in two puzzle events lately, namely the next Grand Prix contest and this year’s UKPC. It is not like my solving spirits are all back, but I regard Thomas Snyder (who contributed half the puzzles of this GP round) as one of the best puzzle authors in the world, and I hold several of the British puzzlemakers – including Liane Robinson, who authored the UKPC – in equally high esteem. There is no incentive like quality puzzles, I guess.
Well, the puzzles mostly held what they promised, my favorites being Tom’s TomTom and Liane’s BACA (even though I broke the latter twice during the contest). My results were disappointing, though; I was not in good shape on both days and finished just somewhere down the field. Never mind – neither solving nor designing puzzles is a top priority item for me these days.
I have also been working with a few others on the website of the German puzzle community (the Portal, to be more specific). At last I was able to put my mind on it, and if nothing goes wrong, the first adjustments should be visible in a week or so. I am glad that some of my ideas have the support of the board. The nature of the Portal remains a delicate issue; still, I am optimistic that we can change it for the better.
2 replies on “A puzzler’s life, Part 3”
Thanks for the article, as always.
Just to let you know, Liane was the organizer of the UKPC but the puzzles were actually written by several different authors. There is a post in this thread – http://forum.ukpuzzles.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2497 – showing the puzzle-author correspondences. In particular, the BACA was by Bram.
Thanks Freddie. This was clearly poor research on my part. Let me extend my thanks to Bram; even though I struggled heavily with the BACA during the contest, I liked the puzzle a lot. It used many different solving techniques, and they interacted very nicely with one another.