The UK Puzzle Association have published the results to their recent UK Puzzle Championship. Did you take part? Were you happy with your result? If so, congratulations!
James McGowan won to pick up his fifth UK championship, so he gets the biggest congratulations of the lot! Adam Bissett earned second place, only the fourth person ever to make it to the top two in the seven years of the contest, and Tom Collyer finished third for the fourth year in a row, missing out on second place by one point. These best British performances were well up there with those of some very accomplished solvers from around the world. For me, the best news is that this year saw nine first-time UK solvers, to take the number of UK solvers putting points on the board up to 29. The previous best was 25, achieved last year and once previously, so this is quite a step in the right direction. There was quality as well as quantity, too!
As ever, this site continues to update a year-on-year chart of UKPC performances:
2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | Best | Times | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
James McGowan | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 7 |
Neil Zussman | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 5 | ||
Adam Bissett | 13 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 4 | |||
David McNeill | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | |||||
Tom Collyer | 8 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 7 |
Steve Barge | 3 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 6 | 3 | 5 | ||
Michael Collins | 9 | 4 | 6 | 9 | 7 | 10 | 4 | 4 | 7 |
Emma McCaughan | 6 | 10 | 8 | 11 | 4 | 8 | 10 | 4 | 7 |
Thomas Powell | 12 | 5 | 7 | 4 | 7 | 11 | 4 | 6 | |
Adam Dewbery | 13 | 4 | 4 | 2 | |||||
Ronald | 4 | 4 | 1 | ||||||
Roderick Grafton | 12 | 5 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 8 | 5 | 6 | |
Heather Golding | 12 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 3 | ||||
Paul Redman | 5 | 5 | 1 | ||||||
Nick Gardner | 10 | 6 | 6 | 2 | |||||
Saul Glasman | 6 | 6 | 1 | ||||||
Mark Goodliffe | 7 | 13 | 13 | 15 | 12 | 8 | 7 | 6 | |
Nick Deller | 10 | 7 | 15 | 11 | 13 | 18 | 7 | 6 | |
Eva Myers | 14 | 7 | 16 | 12 | 11 | 13 | 7 | 6 | |
AJ Moore | 9 | 7 | 19 | 9 | 14 | 7 | 5 | ||
Ben Neumann | 8 | 16 | 7 | 7 | 3 | ||||
Chris M. Dickson | 10 | 18 | 19 | 22 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 10 | 7 |
Paul Slater | 13 | 10 | 15 | 15 | 10 | 4 | |||
Gareth Moore | 16 | 11 | 13 | 11 | 3 | ||||
Chris Nash | 11 | 11 | 1 | ||||||
Pat Stanford | 12 | 12 | 1 | ||||||
Anthea McMillan | 15 | 17 | 14 | 13 | 15 | 13 | 5 | ||
tom1235 | 13 | 13 | 1 | ||||||
Liane Robinson | 15 | 14 | 14 | 2 | |||||
Timothy Luffingham | 14 | 14 | 1 | ||||||
Robin Walters | 17 | 18 | 16 | 17 | 24 | 16 | 5 | ||
Kenneth Wilshire | 18 | 20 | 16 | 21 | 16 | 4 | |||
Sam Boden | 16 | 17 | 19 | 16 | 3 | ||||
Abigial See | 17 | 17 | 1 | ||||||
Daniel Hunt | 17 | 17 | 1 | ||||||
Alison Scott | 18 | 18 | 1 | ||||||
Chris Harrison | 18 | 18 | 1 | ||||||
blueingreen | 19 | 19 | 1 | ||||||
quixote | 19 | 19 | 1 | ||||||
crayzeejim | 19 | 19 | 1 | ||||||
Andrew Brown | 20 | 21 | 20 | 2 | |||||
Neil Rickards | 20 | 22 | 20 | 2 | |||||
Laurence May | 20 | 20 | 1 | ||||||
United Kingdom | 20 | 20 | 1 | ||||||
David Cook | 20 | 20 | 1 | ||||||
Jonathan Wilson | 20 | 20 | 1 | ||||||
Hector Hirst | 20 | 20 | 1 | ||||||
Matthew White | 20 | 20 | 1 | ||||||
Ken Ferguson | 24 | 21 | 21 | 2 | |||||
Eilidh McKemmie | 22 | 22 | 1 | ||||||
Gary Male | 22 | 22 | 1 | ||||||
Tomaz Cedilnik | 22 | 22 | 1 | ||||||
Fuchsia A | 22 | 22 | 1 | ||||||
River Edis-Smith | 23 | 23 | 1 | ||||||
Daniel Cohen | 23 | 23 | 1 | ||||||
David Collison | 23 | 23 | 1 | ||||||
Abdul Hadi Khan | 24 | 24 | 1 | ||||||
shirehorse1 | 25 | 25 | 1 | ||||||
Mark Greenhalgh | 25 | 25 | 1 | ||||||
Amber Pease | 25 | 25 | 1 | ||||||
remy | 26 | 26 | 1 | ||||||
Chris Green | 27 | 27 | 1 | ||||||
Joanna Drury | 28 | 28 | 1 | ||||||
EmmaHB | 28 | 28 | 1 |
The ordering is hopefully obvious: best position, ties split in favour of most appearances, ties split in favour of second (or subsequent) best position, ties split in favour of oldest better performance. Errors and omissions excepted and corrections are welcome; for cussedness, this chart declines to split places between players on equal scores on the “time left” tie-breaker. Many thanks to everyone who has been involved with setting the puzzles or organising the contest over the years, especially Liane Robinson and Alan O’Donnell, the most frequent contest compiler and administrator. I’m looking forward to finding out who the UK team will be, with invitations going out to top performers both in the in-person UK Open Championship earlier in the year and in the online UK Puzzle Championship just now.
The UK Championship may be over, but the Puzzle Grand Prix rolls on; the sixth round takes place on the weekend of 14th-17th July!