While Grinder was a "better" challenge, no-one had enough time to enter.
Meanwhile, the omission of the breakage penalty made Slider a trivial challenge, yet it has had more entries than many recent challenges, and didn't need five days to solve. Yet I suspect some entries only came in because it had five days.
Perhaps we should be moving to 5 to 7 days for easy / hard, instead of 3 to 5 days.....?
My thanks to those who also had a go at the Heath Robinson challenge - Slider as it was intended to be. The astonishing difference in solution methods makes me really wish for what Slider should have been........
So, to Business:
All of the breakage solutions were virtually identical, but some found slightly better ways than others.
Paolof had the most economical breakage method (very clever, me like!) but Votart Silak had an amazingly timed catcher solution to just snatch the win.
Overall:
1st 1918 Votart Silak Congratulations!
2nd 1912 Paolof
3rd 1908 KuzyaHG
I think any of these 3 could have won, had the catchers been as economical as Votart's.
AndrewandTim's entry was also not far off. It came in early, so I borrowed KuzyaHG's breaker to tweak it to 1916, and 1920 was probably possible with enough tweaking time. But in the end, ALL of the four breakage entries were virtually the same. It just shows how trivial this challenge was when breakage was allowed.
Meanwhile, the Heath Robinson award for the Best Solution as Slider was Supposed to be Solved goes to Dec10. A lovely, flowing solution that really surprised me.
At 1622, this would easily beat the breakers, if the $500 penalty rule was applied.
My POC2 was more economical at 1664, but not as elegant.
KuzyaHG's non-breaker wasn't cheap at 1202, but shows a very imaginative, dynamic way to solve the intended puzzle. Awesome!
Dec10 also found a "legal cheat" that I had hoped someone would try (I had deliberately planned it when the level was reworked).
I also had an "accident" with POC3 (a breakage) which allowed a further novel answer.
I sooooo wish I had remembered to include the penalty rule in the posting. Many thanks for the clever and entertaining solutions.
PS I'm having to use a weird zipping option - please let me know if the attached zip file doesn't work....
