These are the famous pins that we stick in the spreadsheet to denote a slected comp. The spreadsheet is about three feet long.

OK, here’s a game for you that will give you an idea of what is involved in allocating the charts. I’ve done this myself and it is pretty similar.
Have a look at this grid:

As you can see, across the top you have 4 categories, Junior Ballroom, Junior Latin, Amateur Ballroom and Amateur Latin. Down the side you have 8 weekends. All you have to do is give each category two comps in the North, two in the Midlands, and two in the South to give a good geographic spread.

Some ground rules for this puzzle:

• You can only place 3 comps in any one weekend.
• You can separate the Amateurs from the Juniors, so you can award a Jun Latin in the South and an Am Ballroom in the North , that’s OK,
• Don’t split the age group up, so you can't have a Jun Balroom in the Midlands at the same time as a Jun Latin in the North. OK?

Off you go…..

Oh - have a look to make sure you spread the comps out evenly as you can, so don't have all the Junior comps in the North in the first two weeks for example, or the weekends off next to each other for one group if you can help it.

Don't read any more until you've come up with a solution - no cheating . That would be .. er... cheating.

Done that?

Really? - Not cheating are we?

OK, Well done!
Have a look at the individual columns, are the events spread evenly? If not go back and fix.

If they're OK - Great!


Oh, slight problem.

Have a look at the second competition awarded to the South (any category). Unfortunately that event has been cancelled. All the other events are happy, so now re-allocate that comp, (all the comps in the South that day) to somewhere else. By the way, all the “doubles” have confirmed. So try not to alter them.

Also, while your at it, look at the event you've given the Amateurs in week 7, reports are just in that it was rubbish last time. - Go fix.

Congratulations you have just allocated 24 chart competitions. The charts comittee has to allocate 125. It has more weekends to choose from, but this puzzle allows you to arbitrarily say there is a comp in any region in any weekend. EADA can't pluck competitions out of this air, it can only go on the comps that have requested a CRE.

For the puzzle you are only allowed three events in any weekend, for the "real thing" the committee attempts to limit each competition that applies to a maximum of three chart events, but thats not always possible (but no using that excuse in the puzzle!) .

Again, in the real selection, we have to make sure that we don't clash comps, so the rule saying you can't split Junior events was pretty accurate, only add to that the 10 dance group, and those who may do more than one age group.

Competitions cancelling or returning the chart event are common. This could be because the organiser doesn’t book the hall until he knows that he has the chart event, and once awarded finds that the Model Railway Enthusiasts have steamed in there to book the venue that day. Or, last year we had some returned because we insisted they stay within our rules and they found they couldn't.

From the committee meeting in 2007, 25% of the competitions selected were changed by the time the final list was published.

I hope this gives an insight into the difficulties of the selection process, and goes some way to explain the seemingly long delay between the chart comittee meeting and the announcement of next year's calendar.

OK, back to the chart guide!