Brain Warmup Department: Unequal

For those of you who used to like the puzzles I printed in the old bulletins, here is a link to an online version: one of the puzzles that I used to feature in the old paper Bulletins, but it is easy to play on a computer as well. Not so easy on a tablet or phone, since most of the puzzles require right-clicks, not easily done in a tablet or phone environment. Unequal is another Sudoku-variant based on Latin Squares (grids of numbers from 1 to grid-size with no repeated numbers in rows or columns), but the only clues here are a very few free numbers and some greater-than (>) or less-than (<) signs between some adjacent cells.  Click on the puzzle you want to try at the right (or the caption below) to go to the page with all the instructions you'll need. These puzzles come from Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection and there are links there to apps for most devices. You can make puzzles of any size and difficulty level!

Easy puzzle (McBruce's time: 1min 40sec)

Medium puzzle (McBruce's time: 4min 46sec)

Tricky puzzle (McBruce's time: 4min)

Masterpoints for all players are updated nightly here first, with everyone's current red and gold point total listed alphabetically below the leaders, before a shorter leaderboard is added to this page.

Tuesday Open Pairs

Winners: Dudley Brown, Herman Xiao

Just like the Gold Rush winners, Open Pairs winners Dudley Brown and Herman Xiao brought a two and a half board lead into the second session, which was the final margin, but there was a spot in the middle where they had dropped to second before recovering into a smooth strong finish. The temporary leaders were the B winners, Alan and Yen Karro, who began the final pairs session of the tournament in fourth overall and second in B, but halved both of those ranks by the end. under-1500 winners Linda Ball and Laurie Bell led the C strat for most of the second half except for a few rounds in which they were ever so slightly behind; they did move from 8th overall to a strong 4th.

Two-session pairs event, scored in matchpoints.  Strat limits (by pair average): A: 3000+ / B: 1500 - 3000 / C: 0 - 1500.  
Average masterpoints for players in this event: 2540

Tuesday Gold Rush 0-750 Pairs

Winners: Margaret Pattison, Paul Pattison

69% in the morning session made for a two and a half board lead for event winners Margaret and Paul Pattison; however, they dropped to second overall midway through the afternoon, before restoring the lead by the end to the same two and a half boards. A similar thing happened to under-400 winners Vicki and Greg Sensiba, who had a big lead at the break, but dropped temporarily to third in the middle of the afternoon session before recovering.

Two-session pairs event, scored in matchpoints.  Strat limits (by pair average): 7: 400 - 750 / 4: 200 - 400 / 2: 0 - 200.  No player over 750 was eligible.
Average masterpoints for players in this event: 382

Monday-Tuesday Bracketed Knockout Teams, Bracket 1

Winners: Jacob, Martignago, Luo

The Hideous Hog (In Training)'s legal team negotiated with Daily Bulletin headquarters during the pandemic to come up with a very generous 10-point system for grading the Hog's predictions. In three knockouts with a total of 10 brackets and therefore 100 possible points, HHIT scored 41. (This is one of his better results.)

Bracketed Knockout Teams event, with 2 rounds of 24-board matches.  Teams are grouped by team masterpoints into team brackets, with three-way matches where neccessary in the first and second rounds to reduce to four teams.  

Tuesday Bracketed Round Robin Teams

Winners: Hurdle, Reitsma

In Bracket One, Hurdle lost only their fifth match by a single IMP, and quickly recovered in the final round with a 20 VP win. In the nine-team Bracket Two, Reitsma began the final pair of 3-way matches 8 VPs behind leaders Edwards, but emerged on top of three teams with 104, 103 and 102 VPs!

Bracketed Swiss Teams scored in Victory Points. Teams played all or most of the teams in their bracket in short matches.

Morning Side Game Series Overalls

Winners: Marilyn Olson, Karen Rise

The Side Games crashed like the markets in 1929 on Tuesday, resulting in pairs moving up to the Open and Gold Rush, and two tables playing 18 boards for fun as I type this.

Overall awards in the Early Bird Side Game Series, after 5 completed sessions.  Scores are based on the sum (in percent) of an individuals two best games, even if played with different partners.  Side Game overall awards are in gold points and replace the points you won in individual games in the series.  But if you played several games and got masterpoints, that sum may be higher than your overall award, and you would get the overall award in gold points and the rest of your sum in red points.

Afternoon Side Game Series Overalls

Winners: Don Guichon

Overall awards in the Going Hiking Afternoon Side Game Series, after 4 completed sessions.  Scores are based on the sum (in percent) of an individuals two best games, even if played with different partners.  Side Game overall awards are in gold points and replace the points you won in individual games in the series.  But if you played several games and got masterpoints, that sum may be higher than your overall award, and you would get the overall award in gold points and the rest of your sum in red points.

Evening Side Game Series Overalls

Winners: Marv Norden, Paul Reitsma

Overall awards in the Evening Semi-Fast Side Game Series, after 3 completed sessions.  Scores are based on the sum (in percent) of an individuals two best games, even if played with different partners.  Side Game overall awards are in gold points and replace the points you won in individual games in the series.  But if you played several games and got masterpoints, that sum may be higher than your overall award, and you would get the overall award in gold points and the rest of your sum in red points.