10 minutes to sudoku

Round 1: I finished all the puzzles! That's huge. I'm nervous, I hope I didn't make any mistakes.

Round 2 - finished every puzzle except the most valuable one, but that's just because I ran out of time. I'm pretty sure I could have finished that one if I hadnt done all the others.

Round 3 was... significantly more difficult, lmao. I only solved 6 of the 9 puzzles, and I was somewhat close to a 7th.

Round 4 was about as tough as round 3. Scores are up for round 1, though - I did indeed get all the puzzles correct, with one minute left for some bonus points!

Now it's time for lunch!

If you want to follow along at home as the scores go up, they're being posted online here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/194TmVPya740vZSAep6nZN1Z1_363biKiVfcuZCTKCEQ/edit?usp=sharing

Round 5 done. Did about as well as I did on rounds 3 and 4, and once again, I might have been able to finish one more puzzle if I hadn't stared at a couple others. Oh well.

Round 6 done - and that concludes the individual rounds for day 1. If I were to make a tier list of how well I felt I did:
Superb: 1
Great: 2, 6
Good: 3, 4, 5

Next up: the first team round!

Team round 1 (round 11): done! We finished with like 14 minutes to spare.

Team round 2 (round 12) done - and that wraps up day 1! Scores are still coming in, and dinner + evening activities yet to come. But the contest rounds for the day have concluded.

Scores are rolling in - with the first 4 rounds graded, I'm in 17th place overall, and I've held onto the top spot within the USA teams

Well, I made two small but significant mistakes in round 5, costing me 95 points. Disappointing, tbh.

I think I just gotta be a bit more careful when I get the final steps of a puzzle

Round 6 was graded last night - I made no mistakes. Phew.

Y'know, having slept on it, I'm not too upset that I lost only 95 points to mistakes yesterday, compared to the 2130 points that I actually did score.

Wait. Wait. Holy shit. Tantan and Tiit are TIED at 3470 points after day 1. That's incredible.

Anyway - Day 2 is beginning shortly! Still gonna be careful when I'm finishing puzzles off, since I don't want to lose any *more* points to easily-avoidable errors.

(Also, after round 5 I was 21st officially, after round 6 I'm 20th.)

Round 7 was fine, nothing too special. Got close to finishing an 85-pointer but didn't quite have enough time, oh well. Still finished enough puzzles to score similarly to all the other rounds.

Round 8 was my worst yet. Broke one puzzle twice and spent way too long before finally getting it, and then I only had time for three others.

Round 9 was alright. Thought I broke a puzzle, only realized too late that I didn't. Time to prepare for round 10, I guess. Last individual round, let's make it count.

Round 10 felt good! I think that was my best round of the day. And that's it for the individual rounds of the championship!!

Lunch is done. Time for more team rounds!

Also, round 7 is graded, and I'm still in 21st officially. (I'm 24th overall though, including a few people who aren't in the official individual rankings since they're on B-teams or international teams.)

Round 8 is graded. I am no longer the top-scoring member of Team USA and it's probably gonna stay that way. We'll see. It's not like my ego and my entire self-worth are riding on this particular distinction. (They kinda are. (Not really, that's a big exaggeration.))

Did rounds 13 and 14 (team rounds 3 and 4). Round 14 was fun, we had to solve the puzzles by putting stickers on them, and each of us could only put stickers on our own quarter of the grid - we had to rotate the puzzles between us every 90 seconds.

Oh yeah I think I was 24th after round 8? In any case, I'm 24th officially after round 9, 27th in total.

The playoffs have happened! Tantan Dai is your World Sudoku Champion, with Tiit Vunk taking silver and Kota Morinishi bronze.