Sunday 26 May 2013


Readers’ Comments

204Tuesday, 14 May 2013 10:19
Quentin
I really enjoyed the puzzles, behind most of which I recognize Vitaly's work about MCR and waits analysis he studied years ago.

It is difficult to judge the difficulty of problems, but some did take me some time to solve.

I especially enjoyed the '32nd of December' and its fourth question.

Thanks to Vitaly for the problems, to Martin for hosting the "venue" and congrats to Sylvain and Scott for their success.
203Wednesday, 08 May 2013 12:32
Sylvain Malbec
Q: "each player melded exactly 12 one-suit tiles"
A: two kongs of the same suit (i.e. 8 one-suit tiles) and a kong of wind

So... winds are now suit tiles?
And they are in every suit?
Wow!
Looks like I've misunderstood the question and it was actually an easy one!
202Monday, 06 May 2013 00:15
Scott D. Miller
I really enjoyed the puzzles, which no doubt improved my mahjong game considerably. They forced me to consider wait situations and patterns which I hadn't given much though to before. Congratulations to Sylvain Malbec! And a great thanks to Vitaly Novikov for conceiving the puzzles, and to Martin Rep and Mahjong News for providing the venue.
201Thursday, 25 April 2013 07:07
Scott Miller
I'm not clear on why the time limit was extended an additional three days.

Was it because I was the only one to answer the question within the allotted time?

Just curious.

Thanks.
200Wednesday, 24 April 2013 02:08
Sylvain Malbec
Fourth deal
At first, it looks like each player had three pure melded kongs, two of them separated by two numbers (e.g. 1 and 4), and that their left-side neighbour is waiting for these two said kongs with a ryanmen (e.g. _23_).
But it turns out there are not enough tiles for that.

So, here's the trick:
Watson had: melded: 1111m 4444m 5555m, concealed: 23s EE.
Lestrade had: melded: 1111s 4444s 5555s, concealed: 23p SS.
Holmes had: melded: 1111p 4444p 5555p, concealed: 78m WW.
Mrs. Hudson had: melded: 6666m 9999m, concealed: RRRR(concealed kong) 23m NN, and erronously melded as flowers: 2223m.

It certainly "cut off all conceivable scenarios".

Welcome to ‘Sherlock Holmes and Mahjong’

alt

Who is Vitaly Novikov, the Russian mahjong player who is fascinated so much by Sherlock Holmes? Let's have him introduced in his own words.

 

Vitaly Novikov: “When I was five years old, my dad introduced to me game of checkers. Since then whole my life is devoted to various intellectual games, especially exotic ones – not even merely playing but also analyzing rules sets and constructing new versions. The other aspect of interest to games is organizing competitions, keeping ratings etc. At the age of 18 I organized an 8-round tournament for 34 players for the Japanese game of Renju. When I was student in mid-1980’s I won the Cup of Moscow in two different games: Renju and Contract Bridge.
“I encounted the game of Mahjong back in 2003, that was riichi rules set. My first games were surely against computer, primarily, because there were no players around. In 2004 I started to play MCR -- very interesting and challenging rules set. In 2005 after compiling some analytical research on mahjong – first one was “Complete One-Suit Draw Analysis” – I have decided to start my site "Analytical Articles on Mah-Jong" (http://www.mahjong-co.narod.ru/).
“When studying bridge, I found the whole world of books and articles covering aspects of the game and written by many authors. The best format of such articles covers theory in a form of problems with touch of humor. Looking at the game of mahjong, I  found total absence of such “problems” genre. Since I am fan of Mr. Sherlock Holmes the solution instantly came to my mind -- short stories with mahjong problems would be featuring Holmes & Co. Welcome to series ‘Sherlock Holmes and Mahjong’!”

Vitaly Novikov

Years of playing mahjong: MCR since 2004, first rules set to read -- riichi back to 2003.
Website: Analytical Articles on Mah-Jong
Spheres of interests: intellectual games in general, statistics & analysis, Rules/competitions regulations
MJ-servers and nick: ComboRus at MahJongTime
Country: Russia
Age: 44 y.o.
Best win: not yet so far, mahjong set at some MJT tournament.

The First Mysteries

And now, try his first Sherlock Holmes and Mahjong Mysteries…

Comments (2)Comments are closed
1Monday, 04 April 2011 10:37
Sushila Singh
Dog is Chow.Could be Pug without the n!(touch of humor)
What fun thanks Mr.V.N.
S.S.
2Thursday, 07 April 2011 07:22
Mark Chizhenok
This guy on the image, with the stick, reminds me the editor of MahjongNews.com... Auto-portrait?)))

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