2nd Puzzle Meet Up @ Bangalore 14th June, 2015

1st Puzzle Meet-up in Bangalore happened on 31st May 2015. We planned to have Bangalore meetings once a month and it was nice to have 2nd meeting yesterday 14th June 2015. Lots of things were planned for this meeting along with the bonus of playing board games. However, people who wanted to play board games has to come early @ 2 pm even though the puzzle meeting start time was 3 pm. This meeting was attended by 12 participants Amit Sowani, Prasanna Seshadri, Rohan Rao, Harmeet Singh, Rajesh Kumar, Gaurav Kumar Jain, Deepika Moningi, Zalak Ghetia, Sai Karthik Burra, Jayant Ameta, Aditi Seshadri and Kunal Verma. So Rishi and Deb were missing this time and Deepika, Zalak, Jayant, and Kunal were added as compared to the last meeting. 

This meeting started with Board Games for those who came early. In board games very interesting game Coloretto was played. I did not attend this part, so will not be writing much about it. 

There were lots of things planned for this meeting like Individual Doubt Solving, Team rounds, Discussion, and application of a difficult Sudoku technique, Creating a Sudoku variant, Sudoku Group solving, and Introduction to a puzzle type. In fact schedule of this meeting was published in advance in the Logic Masters India discussion thread. The puzzle meeting started with Individual Doubt Solving where experienced players helped other players to proceed with the tough puzzles. After the Doubt Solving we started with a Discussion and application of the difficult Sudoku Technique. This month's technique was X-wing and we were given 4 tough Sudoku puzzles which can be solved using the X-wing technique. Everyone enjoyed solving and learning new techniques of Sudoku. Most of the people were able to solve 3 Sudoku in the given time and they kept 4th one to be solved at home. 

Now we moved to the next round which was Team Round. In this team round, we have to solve eight Sudoku. In these Sudoku four puzzles were have the same answer as the other four. However, we were not knowing which Sudoku types will match and this was part of Team solving to find it out. Here we were four players Prasanna, Rohan, Amit, and myself who solved (or tried to solve) this round during one of the World Sudoku championships. So 3 teams were formed with Prasanna and Rohan leading one team each and Amit & myself clubbed together to form another team. So every 3 teams were having 4 players each. The team round was the most enjoyable part of the meeting. Our team was able to finish this round at least 10 mins before the second team led by Prasanna solved it. 

Once the Team round was over, we moved to the next round which was Sudoku Group solving where everyone was given tough Sudoku and we discussed many different techniques to solve it. I learned to apply Y Wing to solve the classic Sudoku. It was interesting to find a great pattern in Skyscrapers Sudoku which helped to solve this Sudoku quite fast. Rest of the puzzles we kept it for home with Prasanna promising to help anyone over e-mail in case of any doubts in solving. 

Before we could move to the next round we were interrupted by the management of   RMZ Infinity and told that we need to pack up as only employees working in RMZ Infinity are allowed to sit for a long time there. So now we were not having much time. So we move quickly to the next round which was Introduction to a puzzle type and this month's puzzle type was Nurikabe. Prasanna quickly explained the rules of Nurikabe and we all were given many easy to medium-level Nurikabe puzzles with Prasanna helping each of us in solving these puzzles. However, we could not spend much time on this as we have to move out and in fact time now was around 6:30pm.

Overall it was again a very enjoyable event with lots of learning. Some of the points that can be useful for the next meeting is as below

1. Format for this meeting is quite enjoyable, which we can continue for the next meetings and even the same can be used by other city puzzle meetups.

2. We need to look out for another Venue where we can sit without any interruption. Any new ideas about Venue are welcome. 

3. Board Games are a very good idea. In fact, it helps to prepare for Team Rounds of the World Puzzle Championships. So Board Games can be played before/after the meeting. 

I tried to put as many details as possible for this meeting. Do let me know if I missed any information regarding this meeting and please do give your comments about this meeting. Also if someone is having photographs of the meeting, please send them to me, so that I can update these photographs here.