Thanks for having answered me, despite the fact that you should be quite busy with next WSPC organization.
Just a few words (EDIT: finally it's not so short).
First on the guidebook: I fully agree with you that it should not be a restriction tool. I see nothing in my propositions that are restrictive and would curb the creativity of the organizers. I'm not a fan of rule which set a maximal percentage of innovations, for example. Lot of things can still be done in another way that it has been done before.
But I think the guidebook should give the foundations of what are WPC and WSC. Once we know what it is about, it's easier to innovate without having the fear to be out of context. In my opinion, it's not satisfying to say that the competition has to end up with play offs without saying for which purpose it is and without clarifying what it should be (this can be done without fixing the play offs system, so that organizers have still room to make it the way they want).
I don't understand your point about uniformity. You speak about layout for example, it's just done in a way that it's comfortable for players. You need a minimal size so players can write notes in cells (I remember a hard rossini sudoku in WSC 2011 which was too small to play it in a convenient way in my opinion), and if it's too big it's also not convenient (round 1 of WSC 2012 had perhaps too big grids). I hope you don't think that putting illisible font is a fun way to make a puzzle harder. About uniformity of rounds length: While most of the rounds in WSC 2013 and 2014 were timed between 45-60 minutes, I don't agree with you: we had also short rounds 20-30 minutes and long rounds 80-90 minutes. But finally it's up to organizers to propose a balanced schedule, knowing that some players don't like too short rounds (especially those which contain only one puzzle) and others don't like too long rounds. I don't think guidebook should fix rounds length.
About classic sudokus: WSC is born thanks to sudoku boom in 2004. (As a player, I'm also a kid of the sudoku boom and I think I would never have heard about WPF without it). While the puzzle world and the WPC model provided great things to WSC (top-quality handmade sudokus, WPC model with rounds being timed and each sudoku being tested and assigned with points, etc..), and helped the WSC to be a perennial (I hope) competition, we shouldn't forget what are the origins of WSC and we should not fear that the WSC can be slightly different from WPC. That's why I think the guidebook should define what should be the role of classic sudoku in WSC. I could imagine a WSC without classic sudoku: I surely would have fun, but I think it would not really be a World Sudoku Championship. In my opinion, the World Champion must have 2 skills, that are related but still are a bit different: He has to be one of the fastest classic sudoku solver in the world and he must have skills to solve (fast) all the type of sudoku variants. Thus, even if the nowadays champions have both skills and without having classic sudoku rounds the ranking would probably not change that much, I think both aspects of the competition must be present in a WSC.
Matus wrote:Trying to define the border between Sudoku and Not Sudoku types is not a pleasant topic.
I personally feel that we are taking a way on which it'll soon be essential. Some authors consciously create sudoku variants that integrated puzzle things that are not related to sudoku. The reason is perhaps they like puzzle competitions and want to treat sudoku competitions the same way? Then sometimes the result (to my inexperienced puzzle player's eyes) is a puzzle tournament on the theme of sudoku and not a sudoku tournament. I think about some tournaments on LMI. They are probably great tournaments and I've no problem with that, I only regret that nobody have the courage to classify them as puzzle tournaments and not sudoku tournaments.
Matus wrote:I respect your opinion on magic squares and puzzlish sudoku variants. However, are these issues essential or just resulting from your frustration?
I would say no pun that my frustration comes from the fact that I consider these issues to be essential. I can ensure you that I can make a difference between my frustrations that are due to my poor performances (and I was in no way speaking about that here), and my frustrations of seeing inappropriate puzzles while discovering instruction booklets.
Matus wrote:Yes, in Sofia, there were at least two sudokus that definitely omitted one of the basic Sudoku rules but I am not sure whether their caused the main problems of the championship.
Without speaking about organizations issues that could have been pointed out during this championship, I think the 2 main problems of this WSC were the cancelled team round and puzzles that were not sudoku. Other competition aspects were nice and fair: The quality of sudokus was globally good, the point distribution for each sudoku was globally fair and rounds were nearly well timed.
I understand that lot of players that are experienced puzzle players don't bother that much about puzzles not being sudoku. But I would have more trouble to hear from an organizer that having non-sudoku puzzles in his sudoku competition isn't an important issue. I also think it can give a poor image of the discipline at the outside.
Yes, 4th round had unreasonable point distribution. For me it's an issue that is far less important that the fact that it's questionable to be a sudoku (and for me it's clearly not a sudoku).
Matus wrote:Of course, we will not force you to solve dozens inappropriate puzzles that are trying to look like sudoku.
I'm only half reassured, because I'm not sure we understand the word inappropriate in the same way. On your blog, you made an announcement of next WSC/WPC: http://www.slovaksudoku.com/en/blog/201 ... -2016.html.
(I'm not sure it will really be useful to practise the archive of your blogs as mentionned, because the championship will surely not be "great parade of sudokus reminding your blog collection", but that's not the important point).
You mentionned the online competitions you organized in the past, and that's where I begin to fear because I found that some of these sudoku competitions contained a few non-sudoku puzzles (for example, I'll never consider a puzzle where I've to draw a closed fence as being appropriate in a WSC).
Sometimes I feel a bit like a stranger as a sudoku player in the puzzle community, perhaps all these stuffs are my own problems and I'm just not in the right place.
Fred