Set Up For Extra Matches
As you play shipwrightery, you'll begin to recognize many of the patterns that you see. While I don't have all of them memorized, I know quite a few. If you want to see them all, look at the YPPedia entry, here. Knowing the patterns is important because you're working on a 25 piece board and, at top level, your patterns will take up 24 pieces. That means, in order to get every pattern in your tray set up and ready to go, you're going to need perfectly matching pieces and a board with just the right number of each type of piece. In other words, it takes a lot of luck and very, very rarely happens.
One difference between a good shipwrightery player and a great one is what they do with those "extra pieces". Extra pieces are those pieces that are left over after you've set up as many pattern matches as you can. Like I said, unless you're very lucky, you're going to have some.
Worry about getting your combo of patterns set up first. Then, with whatever leftover time you have left, consider trying to create "parts" of other patterns with the extra pieces you have. Perhaps you can create a part of one of the patterns you already have in your tray, or perhaps you can create a pattern that isn't currently on your tray.
Let me steal this image from my previous article:
Notice the five "extra" pieces I have near the top-right corner. If you look at what I did with the two whites and a brown, you may recognize this as one of the 3-piece patterns, the Batten. Granted, the Batten isn't in my tray, but I have set up to clear the Halyard and the Cleat and that will give me two new 3-piece patterns. What are the odds of me actually getting the Batten? Not very good - only 2 in 16. However, a 12% chance of getting an extra match is better than the 0% chance I'd have had if I hadn't arranged these pieces in this way.
If you can't make a complete pattern, try to create part of a pattern, particularly if it's a pattern that's already in your tray and you can't fit into your combo. Have a Ballast (4 blacks) in your tray but only three extra blacks on your board? Set up the three blacks around a match that you've got set up so that, when you clear that match, if a black appears in the right place, you get a free match. What are the odds of getting the right piece? A little better than 25% (don't forget about the gold pieces). Again, not great odds, but far better than 0%.
Taking care with your extra pieces can really help you extend your combos and squeeze out some additional points.
Understand the Scoring System
Probably the biggest leap that took me from Legendary to Ultimate was gaining a better understanding of the scoring system behind Shipwrightery. Once you know the scoring system, you can actually put a value behind a puzzle attempt, and you can determine if one attempt was better or worse than another.
While the scoring systems for any of these puzzles are never revealed to the public, testing leads us to get pretty good approximations of the scoring systems. This forum thread that I started some time ago goes into a lot of great detail for the scoring system. Probably the most important bit of that thread is this table:
Step Combo 3-Piece 4-Piece 5-Piece
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1 N/A Fair Good Great
2 Double Good Great Excellent
3 Triple Great Excellent Admirable
4 Bingo Great Excellent Superior
5 Donkey Great Admirable Magnificent
6 Vegas Excellent Superior Artisan
7 Vegas^2 Excellent Superior Artisan
8 Vegas^3 Excellent Magnificent Paragon
9 Vegas^4 Admirable Artisan Paragon
10 Vegas^5 Admirable Artisan Master
11 Vegas^6 Admirable Artisan Master
12 Vegas^7 Superior ??? Master
13 Vegas^8 Superior ??? Master
14 Vegas^9 Superior ??? Master
From this, you can start to see how well various combos will score. Always keep in mind that the score of a combo is the average of the scores of the individual matches of that combo.
For my own benefit, I assigned a point value to each score, like this:
Fair 1
Good 2
Great 3
Excellent 4
Admirable 5
Superior 6
Magnificent 7
Artisan 8
Paragon 9
Master 10
So, if I wanted to score a combo, I'd take the scores for each match in that combo and average them. For example, a 3-4-5-5 combo would score Fair-Great-Admirable-Superior or 1-3-5-6 for an average score of 3.75. When I last tested, you needed to be able to score about a 4 (Excellent) to reach Ultimate on Midnight. That may have changed since, but I'm guessing it's probably still pretty close.
This scoring system is probably oversimplified in the fact that it assumes all matches with the same descriptive word are worth the same amount (i.e. All 3-piece matches that score "Great" are considered equal, regardless of whether that move was a triple, a bingo, or a donkey). My guess is that those scores are actually a bit different, but my approximation seems to work pretty well.
To help me see just how well I was doing, I created an Excel spreadsheet in which I had boxes for each score. As I was playing, I'd make a match and put a tally into the corresponding cell in my spreadsheet. Those cells would automatically tally up my average score and tell me how I was doing. That way, when all was said and done, I knew just how well I was doing.
While this may not make you a vastly better puzzler by itself, it will help you see how you're improving.
Gaming the System
As of the time I write this, there is no penalty for dismissing a shipwrightery puzzle attempt. At any point. That means that you can play all the way through the puzzle and, if things aren't going the way you want them to, you can dismiss the puzzle right before the end and suffer no penalty.
I'm not going to get into the ethical debate over whether or not this is a good practice, or not. I have my own opinion and I'll keep it to myself. If you want to debate it, the forums are a great place to do so. What I will say is that you absolutely *do not* have to use this "feature" to make Ultimate on Midnight. It's quite do-able without using this technique.
You see, the problem is that, in general, you're not going to consistently get more than 3-4-4-5-5 combos (often, these aren't even possible). Those combos score about 4.2, using my system. That's good enough to get you to Ultimate, but probably not good enough to get you to #1. However, the only way to get above that score is through pure luck - you need additional matches to "appear" and lengthen your combos. Sure, you can use the techniques I described above to give yourself better odds of having these things happen, but it still comes down to luck. If the right pieces/patterns appear, you score better, but you have no control over what actually appears.
So how do you increase your score? You play the puzzles in which luck is on your side and you score exceptionally well and you dismiss when the luck of the draw doesn't go your way.
Like I said, I won't go into my personal feelings about whether this is an ethical way to play, or not, but I will point out that distilling used to exhibit this same behavior and now no longer does. Now, when you play distilling, once you've started playing the puzzle, if you dismiss, you damage your score - severely.
I'll just reiterate that you do not need to use this technique to reach Ultimate, but you may very well find the #1 spot very difficult to reach.
Conclusion
As with all crafting puzzles, there's no inherent benefit to reach the Ultimate level of play. Once you've reach Renowned standing, there's no need to advance further. Those that do advance beyond Renowned do it for pride or a love of the puzzle, or both. Given that, not everyone will need the tips listed here. But, if you're looking for a goal to shoot for an Ultimate shipwrightery is that goal, I hope this article helps you along your way.
Happy puzzling!
