Puzzles, poker and pain

[chris]

1. Tomorrow sees the US Puzzle Championship, used as the qualifying test to select the national teams for the World Puzzle Championships in the countries of most, though certainly not all, of the people reading this. Theoretically I think you were meant to have registered by yesterday - whoops - but I registered yesterday and was still directed to the puzzles. (But perhaps I'll be disqualified for late registration! Who knows?) This year's puzzles look really good; I haven't tried the qualifier for several years, but this year's look fun. They also look accessible; I don't know how many I'll be able to finish, but I feel like I have a shot at most of them. (The last few, which will go completely over my head, look really inspired.) Threepeating US champ motris comments, as does test compiler Nick Baxter.

I'll be going in to the puzzles tomorrow "cold", but this test looks like it has a lot more to offer to more modest solvers - like me! - than previous years' tests do. If you've ever been attracted to the thought of taking part, this year looks like a really good one to try, even if it's your first one. Let Really Smart Guys, a lovely near-live blog written at the 2008 World Puzzle Championship, inspire you! Conversely, if you're frustrated by the annual puzzle championship schedule for national-class solvers apparently being one event long, the monthly-ish Oguz Atay Puzzle Contest is similarly very fine; I enjoyed stinking the place up in its fourth edition.

2. The World Series of Poker is in progress at the moment; in fact, it's about half-way through. Numbers are similar to those from last year; some tournaments are attracting more players than last year, some slightly fewer. My gut feeling is that it bodes well for the main event; while I haven't seen anyone quote an over/under for entrance figures and I'm not sure how the online qualifier numbers compare to last year's, I'd guess at about 7,000 - a little more than last year's 6,844 but below 2006's 8,773. The big story so far is that Phil Ivey has won two tournaments in the first half of the event; Brock Parker won two short-handed ("6-max") tournaments in quick succession and Ville Wahlbeck has impressed by so far taking first, second and third places in three of the five $10,000-buyin events he has so far entered.

3. Many people have observed the phonetic similarity of the name Johnny Marr, who plays guitar (for the Smiths, as it happens), to the French phrase "j'en ai marre", often translated "I'm fed up". However, "j'en ai marre" is just a sentence fragment; you would use it in the context "j'en ai marre de ((quelque chose))", or "I'm fed up with ((something))". There is a lovely bit of British English slang, "mardy", which could be translated as "fed up" in a similar way. (A BBC h2g2 author has more.) Accordingly, it's got me wondering whether the phonetically similar "marre de" and "mardy" might have some sort of linguistic link. Etymology or coincidence? (Or, alternately, perhaps someone doesn't like Tuesdays...)

4. Here is an Excel question. Suppose I have a table like so:

Day	Rain	Temp
Mon	14	8
Tue	19	10
Wed	12	10
Thu	22	13
Fri	11	12

and I'm looking to try to find the average Temp on days when there was more than 13 units of Rain. How would you do this? My approach, which doesn't seem to work (in Excel 2000 on a PC), is to create another column at the right-hand end where the cell is empty if there was no more than 13 units of Rain or contains the Temp value if there were more than 13 units of rain, like so:

Day	Rain	Temp	AltTemp
Mon	14	8	8
Tue	19	10	10
Wed	12	10	(empty cell)
Thu	22	13	13
Fri	11	12	(empty cell)

...whereby taking an average of the new right-hand column will give me the answer I need. Furthermore, should the rain value on Tuesday turn out to have been 9 instead of 19, changing the 19 to 9 should change the AltTemp from 10 to (empty cell), and so the average AltTemp should change from being calculated based on three figures to being based on only two.

Trouble is, I can't come up with a function I want to get this. I have tried something like =IF(B2>13,C2,#N/A) or =IF(B2>13,C2,#NULL!) - and so on for the remaining rows - but the average of a series which includes some numbers and some #N/As (or some #NULL!s) is #N/A, where I just want to skip over the cells with the #N/As in when performing the average. Can't help feeling this is going to be a really easy question for someone who knows better than me, but I've been working on this on the night shifts so haven't had anyone to ask and I haven't been able to work it out from the help. Accordingly, is it clear what I want - and, if so, how do I do it, please?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

And of course the singer, Marre Aussi, though it's allegedly ex post facto and not a thing on purpose at all. What I'd do, because I'm lazy, is make a second copy of the entire table, sort it by the rain column, crop the ones above 13 off, and then do an average on that. Of course that's substantially less useful if your table is updating daily than if it's a static data set!

jdcxxx

did someone say Excel?

[althea_valara]

Assuming your table is in A1:C6... if I do =AVERAGE(B2,B3,B5) I get 18.33. So that's the number we need to get. The formula that will do the trick is this:

=SUMIF(B2:B6,">13")/COUNTIF(B2:B6,">13")

That gives you 18.33 as well. :)

I'm looking forward to the puzzles tomorrow! I might practice some tonight, but knowing me, probably not.

[oldbloke]

I see you've already been alerted to the glory of SUMIF and COUNTIF, so I shall say no more on that.

Re the poker, though, Vicky Coren's latest Grauniad article points out that enough millions of people play the game that it really ought to get more coverage in the sports sections, and goes on to do a 'which Brits medalled' thing. We have a decent tally so far!

Yes, I verbed 'medal': blame Mario Kart. Please somebody tell me the trick to getting medals for the Banana Cup. I can win all 4 races and still not even get a bronze! Like, WTF???

[anatsuno]

Um, no, J'en ai marre can very easily be used on its own too. This is usually the sentence reserved for semi-explosive 'I can't take it anymore!' type situations, with either a precise or a vague, englobing 'it'. (note that it is familiar but not vulgar language - contains no swear word'. So, I could just suddenly kick the machine that was vexing me and cry out "J'en ai MARRE!" :D

[ringbark]

Well, in col D, we put =IF(B1>13,C1,"NO")
and then at the bottom, it's =AVERAGE(D1:D5)
The key is that text is ignored, but errors are not.

[althea_valara]

Tried: Wolves & Sheeps in Fences, Magic Puzzle'Rs, Sudoku (the first one), and Missing Operation Ken-Ken

Completed: Battleships, Switch Cheese, Writer's Block, and at the very last minute, 2-3 Maze.

So, 45 points. That seems to be my level, because I always get around 50 points.

I need to get faster at Battleships. It's an easy puzzle, but I am slow at it. I missed the word search this year--it's a favorite and I'm good at it. Wish I would have had time for Fences, because that's one of my favorite puzzles (though I haven't done them in years). I had a lot of fun with the 2-3 maze.

I always wish I could beat previous year's scores, but I kind of knew I wouldn't this year, so I just decided to have fun with it. Which I did. :) Magic Puzzle'Rs looks really fun, so I think I'll try to finish that one.

[malachan]

Just sort by the rain column, then do an average of the temperature column selecting just the cells 13 and over in the rain column!