Brain Warmup Department: Galaxies

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. Galaxies gives you a grid of cells with some white dots. Your job is to partition the grid into areas so that each area contains one dot, the shape of each area is symmetrical (spinning it 180° results in the same shape), with the white dot at the exact centre of the shape. You click on the borders between cells to create the boundaries that form the symmetric shapes. When you create a shape that fits the constraints it will by highlighted automatically as a legal area, even if it is not part of the overall solution. Give the easy one a try and you will quickly see that the idea is difficult to explain but quite intuitive once you dive in. 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: 32sec)

Medium puzzle (McBruce's time: 1min 59sec)

Tricky puzzle (McBruce's time: 1min 57sec)

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. 

Wednesday Top Flight Swiss Teams

Winners: Jacob (A), Bates (B), Fuhrman (C)

The Jacob team didn't lose a single match, but didn't take the lead until the final round was complete, finishing 8VP ahead of Bart, their penultimate round opponent. Under-5000 winners Bates scored 38/40 VPs in the final round-robin to vault into the lead until the final match was posted. Four wins in six matches was enough for under-3000 winners Fuhrman to take strat Y with half of the available victory points on the day.

Swiss Teams event with 6 matches of 8 boards, scored in Victory Points (maximum 20 per match.  Strat limits (by team average): A: 5000+ / X: 3000 - 5000 / Y: 0 - 3000.  
Average masterpoints for players in this event: 4906

Wednesday 0-2500 Round Robin Teams

Winners: Carr (B), Abbott (C, D)

The Bracketed Round Robin Teams turned into a stratified round robin team event with only nine teams in one bracket. Not often the event winner has a four-match losing streak, but Carr won 65 of their 95 VPs in the first and fourth round robin, losing thrice by 7 and once by 2 in the round-robins before and after the break. 95 VPs was just enough, one VP more than strat C and D winners Abbott, who led at the break and at the three-quarter pole.

Swiss Teams event with 8 matches of 6 boards, scored in Victory Points (maximum 20 per match.  Strat limits (by team average): B: 1250 - 2500 / C: 750 - 1250 / D: 0 - 750.  No player over 2500 was eligible.
Average masterpoints for players in this event: 784