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

[chris]

Officially, I think I score 69. Unofficially... well, about an hour through, I had to go and pick up some medicine for Meg. This took 45 minutes as I had to try two different stores. If you're prepared to give me those 45 minutes back at the end, I'm going to claim 111 - 45 extra points' worth of puzzles, minus 3 minutes for overtime. PS This is wrong, see below

Here's the tale.

1. Printed out puzzles. Huh, my printer does print out back to front, not front to back. (Makes sense, considering which page should end up on top.) Didn't think of that; now I see why they do point out the ideal printing order.
2. Got half-way on the Battleships. Skip it.
3. Writer's Block. +10.
4. Dabble at the sudoku... er, no.
5. Missing ops KenKen: saw a couple of ways in, not too many tricks. I am particularly pleased because I don't think I've actually managed to solve more than one or two KenKens in the past. +10.
6. Triangular skyscrapers; not going to happen.
7. Wrote down some grid numbers for the counting puzzle.
8. Maybe a couple of differences. Remembered I wanted to save these until the end.
9. 2-3 maze: started from the end and worked back. Got some of the way but not very far.
10. Intermission for a mission of mercy.
11. 2-3 maze: continued, worked further back, looked promising, worked from the start and the two joined up. +15.
12. Magic Puzzle"R"s. Surprisingly well-behaved; the letters in there gave a strong start. I put in words until I had about four "R"s left to place, then placed the remaining "R"s, then the rest fit in. Phew! +20.
13. Battleships: still didn't work itself out. Bum, I normally really like Battleships.
14. Sum Thing: I liked this, there is a satisfying way in. Logically deduced the first line. Wasn't sure where to go from there, but guessed right first time and it all worked out. +10.
15. Only a couple of minutes left. Spotted a couple more differences, re-entering my answers after each one. +4 with about 15 seconds' server time left to go.
Into extra time:
16. Co-ordinate Pairs. I was thinking about this one last night, and I reckon I've got an idea for a better way to do this puzzle than the version that was actually used. Tried some fairy chess moves of increasing sizes, lots of rubbing-out, found one that worked. +10.
17. Eminent D'OHmain: got about the left-hand third, think it's right, but am not sure. Not sure where this one is going, really.
18. Sweet Sixteen. After getting Sum Thing, I've decided I'm OK at these addition puzzles. I liked this; it splits up into smaller parts nicely. Once you've worked out the target, you can solve the middle, then it's all a bit like trying to do a magic square, except triangular. Extended the general principle and a good guess worked first time. +15.
19. C Notes. Apparently I'm not that good at these addition puzzles. Couldn't really get started.
20. Lucky Sevens. Spent about 20 minutes on this, playing with combinations of infrequently-appearing letters. At about the fourth attempt, I managed to get about a quarter of the grid down, then looked at the clock and realised I had about two minutes left. Thought "Bollocks, all my timing is unofficial anyway" and just tried the rest of it from there. It all fell into place after that. +20 but -3 for overtime on the extra time.

*checks rules* It's 10 points penalty per late minute, not 1 point penalty? Gulp. Er, my unofficial score isn't 111, it's 84!

Of the remaining puzzles:
1) I'll probably get Battleships tomorrow and not remember what the problem was.
2) Sudoku looks nothing special.
3) Eminent D'OHmain... mmm, if I keep going with this then it might fall into place. But it might not.
4) Switch Cheese: I can probably find some more if I try. I decided trying to squeeze out extra points, even thinking the penalty was one point per minute overtime, not ten points.
5) Corral: going to struggle here, not going to try.
6) Triangular Skyscrapers: hum, can't see a way in.
7) Window Pain: I can probably do this but it's not much fun. This would probably have been a good investment of time during the test.
8) Masyu: no chance.
9) C Notes: not my cup of tea.
10) Yaijin: see Masyu. I really don't get on with loop ones, most of the time.
11) Fences: see above, though this looks clever and could be fun.
12) SuDUOku and beyond: these all look way beyond me!