Many a mickle maks a muckle

Here are the most relevant of the Official results of the first two days of the World Puzzle Championship. I present the top thirteen and selected others among the 90 contestants:

 1. Ulrich Voigt        GER 1034
 2. Michael Ley         GER  930
 3. Zoltan Horvath      HUN  919
 4. Roger Barkan        USA  895
 5. Wei-Hwa Huang       USA  890
 6. Byron Calver        CAN  888
 7. Sebastien Leroy     BEL  817
 8. Stefan Gaspar       SVK  784
 9. Niels Roest         NED  784
10. Pal Madarassy       HUN  771
11. Jun Ito             JAP  764
12. Rick Uppelschuten   NED  745
13. Laszlo Osvalt       UNB  743
--------------------------------
14. Tim Peeters         NED  734
15. Derek Kisman        CAN  732
20. Robert Babilon      CZE  665
30. Andrey Bogdanov     RUS  625
31. David McNeill       GBR  618
43. Nick Deller         GBR  545
47. Nick Gardner        GBR  512
69. Alan O'Donnell      GBR  391
82. Christopher Dickson UNB  281

This means that the quarter-finals are as follows, with seedings in parentheses:

Ley (2) v Gaspar (8) v Uppelschuten (12)
Barkan (4) v Calver (6) v Madarassy (10)
Horvath (3) v Roest (9) v Osvalt (13)
Huang (5) v Keroy (7) v Ito (11)

The semi-finals will be

(Winner 2/8/12 quarter-final) v (winner 4/6/10 quarter-final) v (best second place in quarter-finals)
Voigt (1) v (winner 3/9/13 quarter-final) v (winner 5/7/11 quarter-final)

...with the two semi-final winners and the best semi-final second place going on to the final.

Team results are as follows:

 1 USA 4481
 2 GER 4392
 3 HUN 4303
 4 NED 4099
 5 CAN 4015
 6 JAP 3923
 7 CZE 3884
 8 BEL 3685
 9 ROM 3464
10 CRO 3415
11 FRA 3374
12 GBR 3154
13 POL 3137
14 RUS 3008
15 TUR 3008
16 SVK 2979
17 UNB 2845
18 UNR 2357
19 FIN 2193
20 UNA 2103
21 BIH 1614
22 IND 1506

Updates to follow, direct from the competition room, after the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final.

Ley     (2) v Gaspar (8) v Uppelschuten (12) : Ley     2 v Gaspar 2 v Uppelschuten 1
Barkan  (4) v Calver (6) v Madarassy    (10) : Barkan  2 v Calver 2 v Madarassy    2
Horvath (3) v Roest  (9) v Osvalt       (13) : Horvath 2 v Roest  3 v Osvalt       2 
Huang   (5) v Leroy  (7) v Ito          (11) : Huang   2 v Leroy  3 v Ito          1

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1156: It's the big one, it's for all the marbles and indeed the cliché stops here. Down to the final three after two-and-a-third days of puzzles, with the 13th World Puzzle Championship title up for grabs. Your competitors are Niels Roest, 2002 champion, Ulrich Voigt, 2000/2001/2003 champion, and Roger Barkan, who won the US Qualifying Test this year. All three solved 3/4 in the semi-finals, Niels Roest scored 3/3 in the quarter-final. The final is twice as long as the semi-final: 26 minutes, six puzzles, #1 seed Voigt beating #4 seed Barkan beating #9 seed Roest on ties.

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