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Country : India | |
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Administrator
Country : India | LMI announces Puzzle Marathon 2015 - March Puzzle test
Dates : 06 th Mar — 15 th Mar
Instructions Booklet and Submission : here
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Yajendra
Posts: 18
Country : India | What if we post any solution after 1 hour? or even 2 hours or 3 hours? Do we stil get 50 Points? or, 1 hour is the maximum time we can take for one puzzle? |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | Yajendra - 2015-03-03 1:08 PM
What if we post any solution after 1 hour? or even 2 hours or 3 hours? Do we stil get 50 Points? or, 1 hour is the maximum time we can take for one puzzle?
You always get "at least" 50 points if you submit correctly. If you start on 6th and submit on 15th, you still get 50 points. But bonus points are given only if you submit correctly in less than 1 hour. |
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kishy72
Posts: 417
Country : India | kishy72 posted @ 2015-03-05 3:45 AM Ashish Kumar Regional Coded Snake
Denis Auroux Regional Battleships
Fred Coughlin Turning Fences
James McGowan Summon
Ko Okamoto Hidoku
Matej Uher Nurikabe
Prasanna Seshadri Statue Park
Riad Khanmagomedov Scrabble with Loop
Robert Vollmert Meandering Numbers
Swaroop Guggilam Fillomino
Now,how many did I get right ?! :-p |
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greenhorn
Posts: 164
Country : Slovakia | kishy72 - 2015-03-05 3:45 AM
Ashish Kumar Regional Coded Snake
Denis Auroux Regional Battleships
Fred Coughlin Turning Fences
James McGowan Summon
Ko Okamoto Hidoku
Matej Uher Nurikabe
Prasanna Seshadri Statue Park
Riad Khanmagomedov Scrabble with Loop
Robert Vollmert Meandering Numbers
Swaroop Guggilam Fillomino
Now,how many did I get right ?! :-p
Three? I assume that you guessed right Denis, Prasanna and Riad.
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | greenhorn - 2015-03-05 4:56 AM
kishy72 - 2015-03-05 3:45 AM
Ashish Kumar Regional Coded Snake
Denis Auroux Regional Battleships
Fred Coughlin Turning Fences
James McGowan Summon
Ko Okamoto Hidoku
Matej Uher Nurikabe
Prasanna Seshadri Statue Park
Riad Khanmagomedov Scrabble with Loop
Robert Vollmert Meandering Numbers
Swaroop Guggilam Fillomino
Now,how many did I get right ?! :-p
Three? I assume that you guessed right Denis, Prasanna and Riad.
You got 4/10, one better than last year.
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kishy72
Posts: 417
Country : India | kishy72 posted @ 2015-03-05 3:04 PM
You got 4/10, one better than last year.
Thank you!.That's precisely the target I had in mind (to better my previous's year guess score ).Looking forward to the event this year.Already tuned myself into the marathon mood by having a go at this puzzle
http://www.gmpuzzles.com/blog/2015/03/birthday-loop-prasanna-seshad...
and battling with it for close to 7 hrs!!!though I have to admit that I failed to solve it in the end and called it quits........
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kiwijam
Posts: 183
Country : New Zealand | kiwijam posted @ 2015-03-05 8:40 PM The first Marathon in 2012 just added all the times together.
Then in 2013 and 2014 we had a better bonus system, where a rank bonus and a time bonus were added to try to normalize the puzzles more.
It didn't seem to work as well as it should though, so I plotted the bonuses on a chart to say what scores the top 100 solvers got for each puzzle. As you can see, each puzzle has a mostly straight line, and the gradient depends only on how many people solved it within an hour (which was between 33 and 212 ).
If a solver is roughly 10th in every puzzle, they will discard their Heyawake and Turning Fences times.
If a solver is roughly 100th in every puzzle, they will also discard their Heyawake and Turning Fences times.
But we want to score all these puzzles similarly, so that the worst 2 performances are discarded, not just the hardest two. Which needs the lines to look roughly similar.
The points available for the easiest puzzles are so much higher than for the harder puzzles. As an example, I was pleased to finish 17th for the Heyawake, and made many mistakes in the 4x4 Sudoku to finish 75th, but still my Heyawake bonus was lower and so was discarded.
If anything, this is the reverse to what we'd expect. If only a few people can solve a hard puzzle within an hour, perhaps they should get more bonus than people that solve an easy one? All of the other LMI tests offer more points for solving harder puzzles...
One starting suggestion is to remove the 'how many people finished within an hour' variable from the formula. Make it the same for each puzzle, e.g. 100, or 200, or the max solvers over all puzzles? It doesn't matter if there's now a small jump between a 59 minute score and a 61 minute score, everyone knows 60 minutes is the target.
(this also removes a paradox where I know that I shouldn't finish a hard puzzle at 59 minutes, I should delay submission until after 60 because I'll be boosting the other solvers time bonus and rank bonus, and I'll just be discarding my own score later anyway )
I understand it is late for this year's Marathon, but I think this needs to be discussed at some point.
Edited by kiwijam 2015-03-04 2:34 PM
 (Marathon2014Bonuses.png)Attachments ----------------  Marathon2014Bonuses.png (50KB - 3 downloads) |
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muhorka
Posts: 13
Country : Slovakia | muhorka posted @ 2015-03-05 8:40 PM I agree with you kiwijam. Now it seems, that it´s better to solve easier puzzles than harder one, because this puzzles should be more probably discarded. Your suggestion is fine, but it´s hard to predict number of solvers.
And the other problem is, that players doesn´t solve some puzzles in real time. They only print them and solve "how they can". For example, if I do not like scrabble puzzles, then I only print it and solve for a day (not because, i´m not able o do it faster, but only because I know, that I will solve it longer than 1 hour). So my time is not around two hours (as I solve it), but around 24 hours. And if you want to use formulas, where same number of solver appear, my 2 hour time should change the amount of points, if I should solve in real time. So the trouble is with people, whose do not solve "in real time".
What about faktors for every puzzle, to be used to multiplying the result? For example the hardest puzzle should have factor 2 and easiest puzzle should have factor 1. Or anything similar to that. But faktors should reduce the differences between puzzles at least for some players. |
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kiwijam
Posts: 183
Country : New Zealand | kiwijam posted @ 2015-03-05 8:40 PM muhorka - 2015-03-05 3:35 AM
Your suggestion is fine, but it´s hard to predict number of solvers.
You don't need to predict the number of solvers. For example, after last year we could use n=212 for all ten puzzles. Then the rank bonus is the same amount for each puzzle.
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | Based on the inputs in this thread, we found that the hardest puzzle indeed gets eliminated for a majority. In effect, it is true that the hardest puzzle has minimal say in the rankings, especially near the top of the standings. So we are coming up with a revised structure for points table as below. Do share your thoughts on this. This uses the easiest puzzle as a reference. We'll review post-marathon if this addresses the problem or not. (Changes are in red)
2015 Points StructureCompared to 2014,
Similarity :
1) Fixed points (50) if the puzzle is solved.
2) Variable Bonus points if the puzzle is solved within 60 minutes.
3) The bonus point is normalized (so the bonus point has a maximum limit)
4) A player's bonus is dependent on his Rank and on his solving time.
Difference :
1) The number of "bonus-getters" in the easiest puzzle will be used as the basis for all ten puzzles, for variable bonus.
DETAILS
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There are 3 score components if a puzzle is solved correctly.
1) Fixed: 50 points (the player will get this even if you start it on 6th and finish on 15th)
2) Rank Bonus:
The top ranked player for the particular puzzle gets 25 points.
Every other player who has solved the puzzle within 60 minutes, gets 25 * (N + 1 - player's rank) / N
where N is total number of players who have solved the easiest puzzle within 60 minutes.
3) Solving Time Bonus:
The best player for the particular puzzle gets 25 points.
Lets say, Number of players who solved a puzzle in less than 60 minutes is C.
Case 1: C <= N/2: (Harder puzzles)
- A linear distribution between 25 and 25 * (1 - C/N) will be used between the fastest solver and the last player with bonus, based on solving time.
- Highest bonus =25
- Lowest bonus = 25 * (1 - C/N)
Case 2: C > N/2: (Easier puzzles)
- A linear distribution between 25 and 12.5 between the fastest solver and the (N/2) th player, based on solving time.
- And, a linear distribution between 12.5 and 25 * (1 - C/N) between the (N/2) th player and the last player with bonus, based on solving time.
- Highest bonus =25
- Lowest bonus = 25 * (1 - C/N)
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Yajendra
Posts: 18
Country : India | I am not able to understand the difference between:
1. The top ranked player for the particular puzzle; and
2. The best player for the particular puzzle |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | Yajendra - 2015-03-05 3:58 PM
I am not able to understand the difference between:
1. The top ranked player for the particular puzzle; and
2. The best player for the particular puzzle No difference. They are the same. |
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Yajendra
Posts: 18
Country : India | That means 100 is the maximum score a person gets (by the person who solves fastest correctly) : 50+25+25. Am I getting it right? |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | Yajendra - 2015-03-05 4:07 PM
That means 100 is the maximum score a person gets (by the person who solves fastest correctly) : 50+25+25. Am I getting it right?
Absolutely. |
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Administrator
Country : India | Answer KeysIf any row/column/cell has a double or triple digit answer key, only the unit (right-most digit) digit
should be entered. (This rule is applicable to all puzzles except Statue Park and Summon).
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kiwijam
Posts: 183
Country : New Zealand | kiwijam posted @ 2015-03-06 5:21 AM rakesh_rai - 2015-03-06 3:40 AM
So we are coming up with a revised structure for points table as below. Do share your thoughts on this.
It looks much improved, Rakesh, thank you.
Good luck everyone, have fun! |
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Administrator
Country : India | Puzzle Marathon 2015 has startedPuzzle Marathon has started. 7 puzzles are available now.
Submission page has details about each puzzle (size / relative difficulty / author ).
The puzzles are sorted based on relative difficulty (i.e. easiest puzzles at top & most difficult puzzles at the bottom ).
As it happens in many cases, difficulty is a matter of perception and preference. So your experience may differ.
The remaining 3 puzzles will be uploaded soon.
Good Luck all !!
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natapi
Posts: 2
Country : Thailand | natapi posted @ 2015-03-06 5:41 AM Where is the puzzle? I can't find it |
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Administrator
Country : India | natapi - 2015-03-06 5:41 AM
Where is the puzzle? I can't find it
Click on  on each puzzle to download the pdf.
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kishy72
Posts: 417
Country : India | kishy72 posted @ 2015-03-06 2:45 PM I took my printout of Fillomino and there are absolutely no grid lines in between except on the borders....Now I need to draw lines with a scale in between |
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Administrator
Country : India | Fillomino pdf
A 2-page puzzle pdf has been uploaded for Fillomino - one page with dotted lines and the other with solid lines.
You can use any of them for solving as per your convenience.
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kishy72
Posts: 417
Country : India | kishy72 posted @ 2015-03-06 3:24 PM Administrator - 2015-03-06 3:10 PM
Fillomino pdf
A 2-page puzzle pdf has been uploaded for Fillomino - one page with dotted lines and the other with solid lines.
You can use any of them for solving as per your convenience.
I would advise the LMIans to prefer the one with the solid lines as my printer had a problem with the former and completely missed printing the dotted lines in between.I would stop myself short here by saying that the Fillomino puzzle by itself is absolutely delightful and perfect!!!Good luck to all! |
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term
Posts: 8
Country : Greece | term posted @ 2015-03-06 7:24 PM Fillomino seems to suffer the slightest ambiguity at the very end, and not affecting the key (unless I somehow messed up): R13C2 and R13C3 contain some permutation of 20,1. |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | term - 2015-03-06 7:24 PM
Fillomino seems to suffer the slightest ambiguity at the very end, and not affecting the key (unless I somehow messed up): R13C2 and R13C3 contain some permutation of 20,1.
R13C2 and R13C3 have no ambiguity. |
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brecher92
Posts: 30
Country : United States | Why is Hidoku listed with 4 players when it hasn't been uploaded yet?
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bob
Posts: 59
Country : United States | bob posted @ 2015-03-07 3:22 AM Is there anyway to give up on a puzzle once started? I am finding the Nurikabe impossible to solve logically (certainly not "easy") and trial and error is not much fun. |
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bob
Posts: 59
Country : United States | bob posted @ 2015-03-07 4:24 AM Finally got it after a lot of erasing. I guess I'm used to Nikoli nurikabes that never seemed that hard. Need to figure out new theorems or guess better. |
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Administrator
Country : India | brecher92 - 2015-03-07 2:28 AM
Why is Hidoku listed with 4 players when it hasn't been uploaded yet?
Just our internal testing
bob - 2015-03-07 3:22 AM
Is there anyway to give up on a puzzle once started? After 1 hour is over, you click on "Refresh Status" on the submission page or refresh the whole browser. You should be able to start new one.
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Administrator
Country : India | All puzzles availableHidoku, Summon and Scrabble Loop are also available to solve now.
Good Luck all !!
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Nola
Posts: 18
Country : Germany | Nola posted @ 2015-03-08 3:45 AM So far (3 solved, no bonus points ;-) ) very nice experience!!! |
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Puzlifouk
Posts: 62
Country : France | It's half-time for me (5 puzzles solved). This contest is always so interesting.
A question about the results : because of the calculation, it is not possible to have the complete score, with bonus, before the competition ends, but we could see the problems solved, the time used... Is this "the results that will be available soon ?" |
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY | I can't see the results, do I have a problem or is it the same for all?
Edited by forcolin 2015-03-08 6:52 AM
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Administrator
Country : India | Puzlifouk - 2015-03-08 6:45 AM
It's half-time for me (5 puzzles solved). This contest is always so interesting.
A question about the results : because of the calculation, it is not possible to have the complete score, with bonus, before the competition ends, but we could see the problems solved, the time used... Is this "the results that will be available soon ?"
forcolin - 2015-03-08 6:50 AM
I can't see the results, do I have a problem or is it the same for all?
Score page is now available. Please note, the bonus computation is not corrected (updated as per this year's rule ) yet. It will be corrected some time soon.
Link, as usual, http://logicmastersindia.com/2015/03P/score.asp . You can only view the scores of puzzles that you have solved. |
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Administrator
Country : India | Congratulations to Rubben and Nikola for completing all 10 puzzles. |
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Rubben
Posts: 20
Country : Romania | Rubben posted @ 2015-03-08 12:00 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Meandering Numbers | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Nurikabe | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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Nikola
Posts: 103
Country : Serbia | Nikola posted @ 2015-03-08 2:40 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
Is it possible somewhere on the score page to display the number of incorrect submissions? I'm so happy I do not have any. |
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bskbri
Posts: 34
Country : Turkey | bskbri posted @ 2015-03-08 5:16 PM It would have been much better to present the words in a monospaced font (courier) for the scrabble loop puzzle. |
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chaotic_iak
Posts: 241
Country : Indonesia | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
First, I'm not done yet; I broke Summon whee. Also, not particularly good scores; I think I shouldn't solve these when I'm sick. Among the other nine puzzles, Hidoku (or Hidato ) strikes me as the most impressive, requiring pretty much no bifurcation or long what-ifs, and of course the long tail is impressive. Regional Coded Snake follows next with how the global-level logic goes, and Fillomino with how the big minoes interact midway during solving. I'm not sure Summon gets into the top three even though I haven't fully solved it. Of course, each puzzle has its own spark, but those that linger with me the most are those three. Excellent marathon; I'll pick up Summon again later, then wait for the next Marathon. |
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dave8mcrae
Posts: 2
Country : United States | The instructions state: Each puzzle can be started, solved and submitted independent of others, and in any order, anytime during the week.
This is clearly false. It is not possible to start two puzzles at the same time. |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-10 1:13 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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AndreyBogdanov
Posts: 44
Country : Russia | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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swaroop2011
Posts: 668
Country : India | bob - 2015-03-07 3:22 AM
Is there anyway to give up on a puzzle once started? I am finding the Nurikabe impossible to solve logically (certainly not "easy") and trial and error is not much fun.
Sorry that you had troubles, but surely no trial and error was intended.
At the same time certainly it was supposed to be in Medium category and not easy.
But none the less it had few new starts and tricks, for e.g. each corner was unique in itself and then setting the path for "23" clue. The tricky part is finding the isolated 3*2 region in the center of the grid which helps to solve the "23". And of course the ending at the center was tricky again with 8,5,4 interaction.
I am sure it would be fun if you wan't to give it a try again to go logically and ask if stuck somewhere.
Good luck with Remaining Marathon Puzzles : )
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achan1058
Posts: 80
Country : Canada | I have a w1 on my Summons and I don't know why. I presume that means I submitted wrong once. However, I have only submitted once in total. |
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debmohanty
Country : India | achan1058 - 2015-03-10 5:48 AM
I have a w1 on my Summons and I don't know why. I presume that means I submitted wrong once. However, I have only submitted once in total.
w1 = worst (1 )
w2 = worst (2 )
It has got nothing to do with wrong submissions. |
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achan1058
Posts: 80
Country : Canada | Nevermind then. Thanks for the clarification. |
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achan1058
Posts: 80
Country : Canada | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Bit unfair | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-10 1:51 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Turning Fences | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-10 10:03 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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TiiT
Posts: 139
Country : Estonia | TiiT posted @ 2015-03-11 1:13 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Average | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Bit unfair | |
I put puzzles in order about how I liked them and add my comment to explain why so:
1. Regional Battleships - There was beautiful logical solution. It was possible to solve it fast and fly over the grid. On the same time there were plenty of places where needed to think a bit longer but still found a nice logical path. It was just excellent and with nice outlook.
2. Statue park - Same thing as previous, very nice and logical path for me. I really liked the end part how last pieces combined together. The outlook wasn't so nice, than in battleships, but in a wider view it made sense.
3. Regional Coded Snake - It was a hard puzzle and I even might say that too hard, because if you give 60 minutes and even many top solvers aren't able to solve it within that time limit, then I think it's too hard. Still I found it enjoyable and I liked how finding the code came out to be an important thing in the middle of the solving. After that it was pure enjoyment.
4. Scrabble with loop - It's rank rised firstly because there was my name in there and secondly because despite of being very bad at word puzzles I was able to solve it logically. Yes, it took some time, but I enjoyed it. Ironic is the fact, that I messed up once and I figured out that I had messed up exactly when I used "Kota". Thanks to Kota I figured out that I must go 3-4 steps back and do it differently. And on the same gray square where Kota started at the first place, my name went through it : ) Riad, excellent puzzle.
5. Meandering numbers - I think I made my best performance in that puzzle. It really went smoothly most of the time and I really like number puzzles, but I had to guess in one place. I really didn't find a logical solution there and that ruined the thing a bit. But the puzzle was nice.
6. Turning Fences - It was much about knowing the tricks Bram teached us last year. That's the thing with that puzzle. that's why it feels that part of the puzzle is solved by someone else and during the whole time you must use the same tricks. It's not very sexy puzzle type, especially with large grid.
7. Nurikabe - The problem with nurikabe is that you need intuition to solve it fast. You need some experience and it's very important to see where the large areas reach. And that's what I don't have. It's my cumblestone and it's not the first time. It just didn't feel enjoyable to solve it although it might be a good puzzle. Maybe I would appreciate it more If my time was without searching half an hour where I did wrong.
8. Fillomino - It was just a fillomino.
9. Summon - I think it's a great puzzle type, but it was too hard. The times of best solvers are showing that too. Maybe it was intended, I don't know, but it's really annoying to do a math with small numbers in a really large grid. It just isn't suitable type with large grid.
10. Hidoku - same thing. It's really annoying to do that counting. It drives a solver crazy. I think it would actually have been even cool if it was easier. But what's the point of doing large hidoku to make solvers do that mononotous counting from 1 to 400 and then you make it hard too. I felt really tired after solving it, but maybe that's what a marathon should be. Edited by TiiT 2015-03-11 1:23 AM
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swaroop2011
Posts: 668
Country : India | @Tiit - Thanks for your valuable feedback. It will surely help in future creations.
Thank you. |
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Jacoblance
Posts: 9
Country : United States | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Meandering Numbers | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
Some of the puzzles were way too hard - Yes summon I am looking at you - and didn't really make it possible for those to affect scores much for many players. I think the "1 hour" time limit may need to be different for the easy puzzles vs. the hard puzzles. Really enjoyable puzzles nonetheless. |
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ghirsch
Posts: 102
Country : United States | ghirsch posted @ 2015-03-11 11:36 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-11 9:03 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Turning Fences | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Meandering Numbers | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | A bit skewed | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Bit unfair | |
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elinman
Posts: 1
Country : Estonia | elinman posted @ 2015-03-11 9:13 PM Hi!
I have question about the Summon and 1000. Could somebody please explain the rules a little more?
Thank you in advance! |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-12 1:31 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Turning Fences | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-12 5:54 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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MrLiang
Posts: 44
Country : Thailand | MrLiang posted @ 2015-03-12 3:48 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Nurikabe | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY | Very nice set of puzzles, very challenging and of excellent quality, thanks to all the authors (particularly to Riad for using my name)
In reply to other earlier comments: I do not find anything wrong in the puzzle being hard. It's a marathon. The balance of the difficulty level is excellent.
What can be improved is the bonus mechanism. It is unfair that for at least 4 cases the 20th fastest solver has no bonus (in the case of summon even the SECOND fastest solver has no bonus!). I know that in the past there have been long discussions about the bonus mechanism. IMHO the rank bonus should not have any connection with the time bonus. also, in this case, perhaps setting a time bonus level different for different difficulty level of the puzzles (for example: 45' for the easy puzzles, 1 hour for the intermediate, 90' for the hard ones) could have been better.
Edited by forcolin 2015-03-12 5:21 PM
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY | elinman - 2015-03-11 9:13 PM
Hi!
I have question about the Summon and 1000. Could somebody please explain the rules a little more?
Thank you in advance!
the sum of all the numbers formed in that particular row should be =1000 Edited by forcolin 2015-03-12 5:25 PM
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-12 7:28 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Turning Fences | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-12 10:23 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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kishy72
Posts: 417
Country : India | kishy72 posted @ 2015-03-13 3:02 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
At last,the Puzzle marathon has come to an end.I am relieved that I managed to complete the contest as I seriously doubted whether that would happen after experiencing the difficulty of some of the puzzles in between the test.The mental energy that I had to put into some of the puzzles to get them to completion was so tremendous.Also,I opine that the contest overall was skewed towards the harder side in difficulty.Some of the puzzles were so difficult.... It may be the marathon.I agree with that but personally, I feel that in a marathon, I should be intimated by the size of the puzzle rather than by it's difficulty.If the size of the puzzle is one thing that stands between the solvers and their quest for completion, the difficulty quotient in this test made that task doubly difficult. I wonder what might have forced Nurikabe to be graded an 'easier puzzle'.Of course there is the standard argument which goes: puzzles are ordered based on difficulty and personal experiences may differ.Despite accomodating that statement,I would still have thought that it should end up in the hard category even if I were to say at the least.I found it extremely difficult to find continuous strings of logic in that puzzle.The logical continuation from a particular stage of the puzzle to the next seemed incredibly far fetched.I felt that the puzzle could have been more easier with additional givens to work with particularly given the fact that it was in the easier category.... On a positive note ,I was completely fascinated by the design of some of the puzzles especially of that of Regional Battleships.To be candid,right after solving the Fillomino, I decided that I would include it as my most favourite puzzle of the marathon but Battleships just totally took it away.The solve path in Regional Battleships was highly pleasing and the theme (5 all over the place! and the LMI design ) and the aesthetics is just too good to describe in words!!Amazing puzzle!!.I plan to solve it again just to relish the piece of quality logic hidden intricately in the puzzle.I enjoyed solving the Fillomino too which I had described in an earlier post in the forum.The puzzle was enjoyable with the logic completely free flowing and should not pose much of a difficulty to solvers familiar with Fillomino.I had great fun solving the statue park puzzle too.The way in which the puzzle worked out in the beginning and at the very end when it came to placing the last 4 pentominoes was just a treat. I enjoyed the marathon a lot although I felt that some of the puzzles were just unreasonably hard (atleast to me ) and could have been easier or should I say not that much laborious. Finally,a mighty thanks and sincere felicitations to the authors for creating some quality puzzles and making this marathon 2015 a great contest!! |
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY | What happens? All of a sudden, all the scores have changed. is there a problem with the server? |
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chaotic_iak
Posts: 241
Country : Indonesia | The scores were using 2014 scoring earlier; perhaps it has changed to 2015 scoring. |
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY | All of a sudden, all the scores have changed. I notice there is a new set of instruction for the calculation of the bonus.
I strongly disagree with this change for two reasons:
1) In my opinion, it is never a good idea to change the rules of the game during the play;
2) the "new" structure is much more skewed and by far more unfair than the previous one. Instead of fixing what can be considered a potential unfair score on the summon, unfair scores are introduced for practically every puzzle. For example, lets consider the score of the snake. The fastest solver (with 35'44") gets 100 points; the 12th fastest solver (with 59'48", so 24 minutes slower), gets 97.3 points; the 13th fastest solver, with 60'02", gets 50 points. The fastest solver only gains 2.7 points advantage over the 12th for an advantage of 24 minutes; the gap between the 12th and the 13th of 14" is worth 47.3 points. Crazy. And the same applies to practically all the other puzzles, except of course fillomino, and in lower extent to statue park.
I believe that this contests should finish with the same score structure with which it started; if there are some defects which need rectifying (and there are) there should be a discussion immediately after the end of the contest to discuss the changes to be introduced in the NEXT marathon (perhaps a poll between various options discussed). This discussion should take place immediately while we still remember what was good and what was not. If we wait until next year we will have forgotten everything.
stefano
Edited by forcolin 2015-03-13 7:54 AM
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debmohanty
Country : India | My mistake. The score page got changed without announcing. It is now showing as per rules in 2014. |
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David McNeill
Posts: 63
Country : United Kingdom | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Bit unfair | |
In my opinion, too many of the puzzles weren't solvable within one hour for average solvers. Unless the puzzles are made easier, I think it would be a good idea for the bonus period to be extended to 120 minutes per puzzle. This would ensure that the rankings are more accurate for average solvers. |
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Jacoblance
Posts: 9
Country : United States | I do not understand why EKBM, deu, and willwc do not have score equal to 400 plus their bonus. The rest of the top 20 have bonus+400 as their score and I can't find what separates those three. In fact, it looks like they are the only three people for which their score and their bonus do not differ by a multiple of 50. |
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debmohanty
Country : India | Jacoblance - 2015-03-13 6:06 PM
I do not understand why EKBM, deu, and willwc do not have score equal to 400 plus their bonus. The rest of the top 20 have bonus+400 as their score and I can't find what separates those three. In fact, it looks like they are the only three people for which their score and their bonus do not differ by a multiple of 50. The "Bonus" field is the total bonus in 10 puzzles, without discarding the two worst. As of now, these are the only three players who have got bonus in 9 or 10 puzzles. So "Points" is not equal to bonus+400 for them. |
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debmohanty
Country : India | forcolin - 2015-03-12 5:20 PM
Very nice set of puzzles, very challenging and of excellent quality, thanks to all the authors (particularly to Riad for using my name)
In reply to other earlier comments: I do not find anything wrong in the puzzle being hard. It's a marathon. The balance of the difficulty level is excellent.
What can be improved is the bonus mechanism. It is unfair that for at least 4 cases the 20th fastest solver has no bonus (in the case of summon even the SECOND fastest solver has no bonus!). I know that in the past there have been long discussions about the bonus mechanism. IMHO the rank bonus should not have any connection with the time bonus. also, in this case, perhaps setting a time bonus level different for different difficulty level of the puzzles (for example: 45' for the easy puzzles, 1 hour for the intermediate, 90' for the hard ones) could have been better.
The scoring system has been more or less same since the very first year, with minor tweaks. Every year, when we start planning marathon, we start with the intention that the puzzles will be of roughly similar difficulty, with enough players solving under 60 minutes. But this has never become a reality, and the relative difficulty of the puzzles has very wide range.
I am starting to like the idea proposed by Stefano (and many others ) that each puzzle should have different time targets for bonus. 45 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes sound good too, just that we (as organizers ) have to be extra careful while categorizing the puzzles (e.g. Nurikabe shouldn't have been in easy category ). But within each puzzle, do we continue with the bonus system of the past?
The other approach I was thinking is that, lets say, in each puzzle we give bonus to top 50 solvers. 50 for the top player, 49 for the next, so on. This has an indirect implication that a player won't know how much time to spend before "giving up" on a puzzle. That is certainly not a nice situation to be in, but it simplifies the scoring system a lot. It also means we can't allow very hard puzzles where the 50th best time might run more then 2 hours.
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-13 8:42 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | A bit skewed | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Average | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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Puzlifouk
Posts: 62
Country : France | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Turning Fences | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-14 10:07 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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rob
Posts: 170
Country : Germany | rob posted @ 2015-03-14 3:42 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | |
Lots of fun as usual, thanks to the other authors and the organizers. After a poor start on the Turning Fences, I'm a somewhat surprised at how well I got through. Even some of the "easy" puzzles were hard enough that I felt I was solving a bit beyond my level, which usually leads to breaking a puzzle or two. As for individual puzzles, apart from the lovely Hidoku, it's hard to rank them. They were uniformly excellent. (I chose "fairly balanced" for the puzzle types due to the lack of Sudoku or other latin square puzzles. ) Regarding my contribution, I'm a bit unhappy that it turned out to be clearly too hard. By the time we figured this out, it was too late to fix. I feel like the solve is both a bit too hard in terms of individual steps, as well as too linear. Add to that it's a type that does not seem to lend itself to guessing, and it's not particularly well known. I'm most worried this will turn people off the type, if this is the first puzzle they see. Do try some easier ones, I think it's a very elegant and rich puzzle type. On that note, I'm quite sure that it is in fact suitable to large grids; it should be quite straightforward to construct a puzzle of half the difficulty. |
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UllaE
Posts: 9
Country : Finland | UllaE posted @ 2015-03-14 3:51 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Turning Fences | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
Thank you all who participated in creating this contest! My special thanks will go to Riad Khanmagomedov for creating the Scrabble with Loop; personally I don't like crosswords etc., but this individual puzzle had quite many names of my friends from WPC/WSC and, thus, it brought in to my mind many happy memories : ) |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-14 5:22 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Meandering Numbers | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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macko
Posts: 2
Country : Slovakia | macko posted @ 2015-03-14 5:45 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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Para
Posts: 315
Country : The Netherlands | Para posted @ 2015-03-14 5:53 PM My ranking is better than I expected. It all felt a bit slow today, but I guess that still matched what others did. I still felt a bit overwhelmed by the size of some puzzles, which is why I don't generally like really large puzzles. But I still enjoy competing in this.
As for the puzzles.
Statue Park: I had a bit of a slow start, missing an opening in the left top corner for a bit. Once I got over that step it was a smooth solve. I enjoyed it.
Fillomino: This one didn't go that well. I got stuck near the end, because I made a small error. I spent about 5 minuted fixing it. When I found my error I felt like an idiot.
Nurikabe: I didn't find a nice logical path for this one. I kind of just ended up trying to pack in the 6's in the bottom till it worked. I might have missed something. I knew this wasn't going to be my puzzle, too many people with experience solving large nurikabes
Meandering Numbers: I enjoyed this puzzle. I never really got stuck, but it's sometimes hard to find the right region in these puzzles.
Turning Fences: I hoped I had a chance to get first time on this one. But some small mistakes made me lose a few minutes. The lack of 0s and 4s, probably made it a harder puzzle.
Regional Battleships: I wasn't sure what kind of puzzle this was going to be, but it turned out to be a kind of Star Battle type. The construction was pretty well done. One of my favourite solves in the set.
Regional Coded Snake: I took ages to get started. I thought the opening wasn't very straight forward, but maybe I missed something. Then I broke it at the end. So I restarted. Halfway trough the solve I realised how to fix my old solution. That's why I missed out on the hour mark. I thought the combination of the regions, Snake clues and Coded clues was a bit much for a competition. I don't mind combining a lot, but not that much a fan in competition. Still a nice solve when I don't mess up.
Scrabble with Loop: I think was a fun puzzle. I think throwing in a Loop into a Scrabble makes me solve it a bit faster than normal. Word puzzles aren't my thing, loop puzzles are. I had fun with all the names of puzzlers.
Hidoku: I had fun solving this puzzle. I have written a few of these puzzles and know to just treat it as a path puzzle and just use the numbers as guides. In this size it's sometimes a bit hard to find the right places to makes progress, but got here in the end. I liked the long unclued path. I figured it was somewhere given the largest clued number.
Summon: This was a monster. It took me about 50 minutes to find the right opening. I thought I had found something, but that in the end gave me nothing. Then when I found the right opening I still made a few mistakes, usually involving not realising a number was already in a larger area. And after that I also ignored one clue, which finally got me to the end. It was really well constructed, but maybe a bit too hard for this purpose. Over 2 hours is a bit much.
Thanks to all the writers. I again enjoyed myself. |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-14 6:44 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Nurikabe | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Turning Fences | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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-.ferchx.-
Posts: 12
Country : Spain | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Turning Fences | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Bit unfair | |
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greenhorn
Posts: 164
Country : Slovakia | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Turning Fences | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | |
All the puzzles were very really nice, but most of them was too difficult. After solving all of them within 30 hours I am frustrated more than ever before. |
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terroneamilano
Posts: 6
Country : ITALY | I had problems in submission of Battleship. As you can see I submitted several times in few seconds the answer. I understood only later how to send it. If it is possible, please don't consider it as a wrong submission. |
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Nola
Posts: 18
Country : Germany | Nola posted @ 2015-03-15 12:31 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
Maybe the difficult puzzles should get more points than the easier ones instead of 50 points each. Yes, the opinion about difficulty is different, but the overall order was quiet correct and maybe the number of solvers can be an additional hint. |
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bob
Posts: 59
Country : United States | bob posted @ 2015-03-15 4:21 AM Three favorites--scrabble with loop, meandering numbers, summon. The summon puzzle was quite hard, but it had a satisfying learning curve for me. This was a new puzzle type for me.
Overall quality--simply excellent. Beautiful thematic construction and several novel puzzles/variants to me. No website or printing problems whatsoever.
I found the puzzles somewhat unbalanced. In particular, the Regional Coded Snake was utterly impossible for me, far more difficult than summon (the second hardest). Normal snake puzzles are a bit of a slog, trying out various bits and pieces until all of the numbers fit. But, here there is only a code. So it is trial and error and error and error and error and error... I put in over 6 hours over three separate evenings just on this one puzzle, far more than any of the others, and far beyond when it stopped being fun. I gave up for the first time ever. Just gave up. Ugh do I detest snake puzzles. Every change I tried would break one of the complex rules, usually on the other side of the board. So it was a bit of a wash...the snake puzzle attempts detracted from some of the pleasure from solving the others. Just my opinion...some people seem to have a natural intuition of where snake segments go and where the critical spots are. I most definitely do not. The other puzzles seemed appropriately categorized although the Nurikabe seemed not so easy.
Rules, points, scoring--doesn't really matter. I solve mainly for fun and for the challenge. I do respect those who can fly through these things.
Thank you, authors/constructors. And thanks LMI for setting this up. I do enjoy large, hard puzzles occasionally, and they are hard to find even on the internet. Most puzzles are snacks, these are banquets.
Bob |
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Administrator
Country : India | Puzzle Marathon 2015 ends tonight
Please note that the Puzzle Marathon ends at 3/16/2015 5:29:59 AM IST | 3/15/2015 11:59:59 PM GMT
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PuzzlePanda
Posts: 1
Country : China | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-15 3:56 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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Nilz
Posts: 29
Country : United Kingdom | Nilz posted @ 2015-03-15 8:29 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Turning Fences | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Very skewed | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
This is always one of my favourite contests, so thanks to everyone involved. However, I think I did prefer last year's marathon, overall. This year's puzzles just seemed slightly too difficult- in particular, I found a large jump in difficulty between the easy ones and the medium ones. There was still some nice logic in some of the hard ones though, so I probably would've enjoyed it a lot more without the pressure of the clock! |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-15 8:34 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | |
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Bram28
Posts: 35
Country : The Netherlands | Bram28 posted @ 2015-03-15 10:40 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
Always my favorite annual contest!!! Many thanks to the authors for the beautifully crafted puzzles! I found the puzzles on average harder than in previous marathon contexts though, so for average puzzlers it was hard to stay under an hour for any of the medium/hard puzzles. As a result, the final score and ranking was very much determined by the easy puzzles alone. |
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Administrator
Country : India | ExtensionBased on multiple requests, we are extending this contest by 24 hours. So it now ends at 11:59:59 PM GMT on 16th March.
Timings on submission page shall be updated soon.
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-15 11:45 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Bit unfair | |
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ghirsch
Posts: 102
Country : United States | ghirsch posted @ 2015-03-16 2:28 AM Could someone give some tips on how to start the summon (once the competition is over of course)? I was very lost on that one and basically made no progress on it. |
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PuzzleScott
Posts: 42
Country : United States | There should be no restriction when a puzzle can be started. Currently, when one puzzle is started, other puzzles cannot be started for some time period. The only purpose this serves is to remove options and cause annoyance for people with limited time. |
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ksun48
Posts: 29
Country : Canada | ksun48 posted @ 2015-03-16 3:51 AM Great puzzles! Especially liked the Hidoku, Fillomino, and Statue Park. I'd say the Summon and RC Snake seemed too hard for an LMI contest, but they were fun anyway.P.S. I don't think the score sheet is sorting my 11315:21 on RC Snake correctly :P |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-16 3:54 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Nurikabe | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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ghirsch
Posts: 102
Country : United States | ghirsch posted @ 2015-03-16 4:41 AM One way to fix this issue would be to have incorrect answers add time to the clock instead of just giving a penalty. That way if people really want to skip puzzles they've already started, they could just submit incorrect answers until the timer is over an hour, as opposed to waiting however long. |
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Gotroch
Posts: 83
Country : Czech Republic | Gotroch posted @ 2015-03-16 6:28 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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Administrator
Country : India | PuzzleScott - 2015-03-16 3:25 AM
There should be no restriction when a puzzle can be started. Currently, when one puzzle is started, other puzzles cannot be started for some time period. The only purpose this serves is to remove options and cause annoyance for people with limited time.
There always have been a 1 hour wait period before one could start a new puzzle.
But since it is last 24 hours, the wait period is removed. |
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RALehrer
Posts: 31
Country : United States | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | |
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ashaash11ash
Posts: 55
Country : India | Thanks for your feedback about the regional coded snake. :) i never thought it would be so hard to solve it. being first puzzle contributed in LMI website for a competition, i was excited to make it something different and quite tough, but it went out to be more tough than i expected :) I will see to it that it never happens in upcoming future test. Thanks for all of your feedback :) |
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xevs
Posts: 43
Country : Japan | xevs posted @ 2015-03-16 12:15 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Nurikabe | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-16 12:43 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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flk
Posts: 23
Country : Australia | flk posted @ 2015-03-16 4:22 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Bit unfair | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-16 7:37 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Meandering Numbers | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-17 2:16 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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karzym
Posts: 5
Country : Poland | karzym posted @ 2015-03-17 2:37 AM Nice puzzles. I thought Nurikabe was easier. The most puzzle I like is Summon even if it was hard, the least - Snake, I hate snakes, even more like spiders than those ba******. : ) Can someone post the solution for this? (it can be priv message ) After 2 hours of tortures I've got this http://i.imgur.com/PCQgIXt.jpg and wanted to throw my computer out of the window. Yeah, I know about the mistakes at the bottom and on the top...
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auroux
Posts: 145
Country : France | auroux posted @ 2015-03-17 4:26 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Meandering Numbers | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Bit unfair | |
The puzzles were all quite nice in the abstract, but the difficulties were poorly calibrated. RC Snake was clearly a difficult puzzle, not a medium one, and Summon was just a monster (I broke it 3 times, but even after I understood my mistake it took me about 3 hours to work through it ). I would like to side with those who suggested that, in future years, the cut-off time for difficult puzzles should become longer than 60 minutes, or one should still be able to earn some bonus in some way for performing well. I am reasonably pleased with my time on Hidoku, and to a lesser extent on RC Snake, but rather disappointed that the scoring system doesn't make a difference between solving in 75 minutes and taking many hours. (Of course, if I had done really well, neither of those would have taken an hour and I perhaps wouldn't be complaining as much : ) Also, I know that's a very unfair/specific complaint but, as the author of a puzzle that was more carefully calibrated in terms of difficulty level, I feel very slightly annoyed that I only get to discard my performance on only one of the insanely hard puzzles rather than two of them like almost everyone else. That could create an incentive for authors to create hard marathon puzzles rather than easy ones :- ) just kidding. Denis |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-17 5:05 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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achan1058
Posts: 80
Country : Canada | Upon reflection, I think both the original scoring system, and the revised one for 2015 (is it implemented?) are both pretty bad. If you look at it by rank, I got 32nd place on the summons, and 61st place and 86th place on the Meandering Numbers and Regional Battleships. Yet, the former is being marked as my worst one, and got bonuses on the latter two.
I think we should just use the top ranks to determine the bonuses as suggested by debmohanty. If there is a need for players to know when to give up, set a long cut-off time for no bonus, after say 3 hours, presumably after the top competitors would have solved the problem. |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-17 5:30 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Bit unfair | |
The restriction on starting just one puzzle at a time seriously detracts from the enjoyability of the contest. Participants should be in charge of their choices and times. Anyone who wants to play for bonus time is free do so. A starting restriction forcing everyone to play that strategy is unwelcome. |
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debmohanty
Country : India | achan1058 - 2015-03-17 5:10 AM
Upon reflection, I think both the original scoring system, and the revised one for 2015 (is it implemented?) are both pretty bad. If you look at it by rank, I got 32nd place on the summons, and 61st place and 86th place on the Meandering Numbers and Regional Battleships. Yet, the former is being marked as my worst one, and got bonuses on the latter two.
I think we should just use the top ranks to determine the bonuses as suggested by debmohanty. If there is a need for players to know when to give up, set a long cut-off time for no bonus, after say 3 hours, presumably after the top competitors would have solved the problem. The 2015 system was implemented ( http://logicmastersindia.com/2015/03P/score2015.asp ), it has definite problems as pointed out by Stefano. |
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brecher92
Posts: 30
Country : United States | karzym - 2015-03-16 4:37 PM
Nice puzzles. I thought Nurikabe was easier. The most puzzle I like is Summon even if it was hard, the least - Snake, I hate snakes, even more like spiders than those ba******. : ) Can someone post the solution for this? (it can be priv message ) After 2 hours of tortures I've got this http://i.imgur.com/PCQgIXt.jpg and wanted to throw my computer out of the window. Yeah, I know about the mistakes at the bottom and on the top...
The key at this point is to realize that that there are thirteen different letters that must cover the numbers 1 through 13. Once you realize which letters have to represent "1" and "2" the rest of the puzzle follows pretty smoothly. |
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daisuke_t
Posts: 2
Country : Japan | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Meandering Numbers | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Bit unfair | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-17 7:29 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Meandering Numbers | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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Administrator
Country : India | Puzzle Marathon 2015 is over now. Overall 393 participants participated and 290 scored points. 84 participants from USA and 52 from India. 93 participants completed all ten puzzles.
Congratulations to Endo Ken (EKBM), Hideaki Jo (deu), Bram de Laat (Para), Robert Vollmert (rob) and William Blatt (willwc) for finishing as the Top 5.
Special mention for deu as the only participant to score bonus in all ten puzzles.
Congratulations to Prasanna (19th), Swaroop, Amit, Ashish, Kishore and Jayant for finishing as the top participants from India.
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Administrator
Country : India |  to our ten authors - Ashish Kumar, Denis Auroux, Fred Couglin, James McGowan, Ko Okamoto, Matej Uher, Prasanna Seshadri, Riad Khanmagomedov, Robert Vollmert and Swaroop Guggilam - for providing the puzzles for this contest. |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | We shall be responding to most of the comments soon, but let us do a summary of the puzzle difficulty first.
We observed that the differentiation between easy, medium and hard puzzles was not too significant, in the last few marathons. This time we planned to have a clearer categorization:
- 3 easy puzzles where top solvers should finish in ~15 minutes
- 4 medium puzzles where top solvers should take ~25 minutes
- 3 hard puzzles where top solvers should take ~35 minutes.
Statue Park and Fillomino were indeed easy and, not surprisingly, both had the maximum bonus submissions. Statue Park is easier than Fillomino but Fillomino is more familiar.
Nurikabe is a medium category puzzle difficulty wise but due to its familiarity it has been kept as the third easy puzzle. Going by the best times, it still fits into the Easy category as the times are lesser than other puzzles. But there were mixed opinions on this and even some top puzzlers stumbled on this puzzle.
Regional Battleships and Meandering Numbers clearly fit the Medium category with the expected level of difficulty.
Turning Fences was a tough puzzle, but it was also present in a previous marathon, so was a familiar puzzle. It proved to be harder than expected. Post event, we can say it was a hard puzzle rather than medium.
Regional Coded Snake proved to be hard too, going by the solving times. It was classified as the 7th toughest but, post event, it proved to be the 8th toughest and should have been placed after Scrabble Loop on the difficulty index.
Hidoku, Scrabble Loop and Summon were intended to be tougher than most of the marathon puzzles so far (all editions included). While Hidoku and Scrabble Loop were as per the planned level of difficulty, Summon, with just three numbers to fill, proved to be too tough. Although there were lot of obvious starting points (six digit numbers, 1000, etc), completing the puzzle in 60 minutes proved to be difficult as there were too many mini steps to solve. Based on the timings, it fits a category 'SuperHard'.
It was the toughest marathon yet. As bob said "Most puzzles are snacks, these are banquets." Hopefully most puzzlers would have enjoyed the banquet setting. |
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Grizix
Posts: 30
Country : France | Grizix posted @ 2015-03-17 2:17 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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Paul
Posts: 2
Country : India | Paul posted @ 2015-03-17 2:23 PM Could not solvce even a single puzzle |
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chaotic_iak
Posts: 241
Country : Indonesia | Bug: Someone that didn't solve all puzzles (me, my Summon broke again) sees incomplete standings. |
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Administrator
Country : India | chaotic_iak - 2015-03-17 3:11 PM
Bug: Someone that didn't solve all puzzles (me, my Summon broke again) sees incomplete standings. Fixed. |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | karzym - 2015-03-17 2:37 AM
Nice puzzles. I thought Nurikabe was easier. The most puzzle I like is Summon even if it was hard, the least - Snake, I hate snakes, even more like spiders than those ba******. : ) Can someone post the solution for this? (it can be priv message ) After 2 hours of tortures I've got this http://i.imgur.com/PCQgIXt.jpg and wanted to throw my computer out of the window. Yeah, I know about the mistakes at the bottom and on the top...
Snake solution has been sent via email. |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | ghirsch - 2015-03-16 2:28 AM
Could someone give some tips on how to start the summon (once the competition is over of course)? I was very lost on that one and basically made no progress on it. Look at the first two rows. The six digit number in the first row and the five digit number in the second row limit a lot of possibilities. You should be able to complete the regions in the top left corner (with a lot of Xs ). Then there is a row with the sum as 1000. Think how can you reach 1000 as the sum. And, keep looking at the sums below for vertical constraints. |
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Realshaggy
Posts: 69
Country : Germany | I liked all the puzzles, even the types I usually don't like (Snake, Nurikabe, Battleships) as they all make good use of the room. I also don't have problems with a contest with a high overall difficult level and very difficult puzzles like the Summon, even if that means it's not suited for beginners. But the scoring system should be revised. By now there should be enough test data from three years. Of course it's difficult with different solving times. If it should feel like a marathon for the top solvers, it's near impossible for me.
No offense to the author, but I think especially Nurikabe is a bad type for a timed contest on a marathon grid. Seems like it's even more favourable to use intuition than a logical approach. |
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Paul
Posts: 2
Country : India | Paul posted @ 2015-03-17 3:52 PM I would love to get starting instructions, on how to solve each type of puzzles. |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-17 4:32 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Turning Fences | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Average | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-17 4:34 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Meandering Numbers | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Nurikabe | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-17 5:27 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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anderson
Posts: 16
Country : United States | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
Every puzzle in this contest was awesome. Thanks to all the authors! I also have to mention that the box in the middle of the hidoku was extremely cute as well as the 360-400 path.
Regarding the scoring system, I like the suggestion of increasing the time limit to, say, 2 hours for the hard puzzles (assuming that future puzzle marathons will have similar difficulty to this one ). I also like the idea of just giving bonuses for your best ranks as suggested by Aaron, probably the only problem with that is the feeling of "I don't know if it's safe to stop working now and take a break". Maybe the 50 points for 1st, 49 points for 2nd, etc. but you only get the bonus in the first place if you solve it in 2 hours/whatever time limit. Edited by anderson 2015-03-17 6:34 PM
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swaroop2011
Posts: 668
Country : India | Thanks to all, for your feedback and support.
Congratulations to the top contestants.
I have made a solution tutorial for Nurikabe and kept, and so sharing with you all.
Hope it helps to get you some idea behind the thinking of that puzzle creation.
Hope everyone enjoyed all the marathon puzzles though difficulty was on bit higher side but after all it was marathon.
Here is link,
http://swaroopg92.blogspot.com/2015/03/tutorial-to-solve-marathon-n...
Paul - 2015-03-17 3:52 PM
I would love to get starting instructions, on how to solve each type of puzzles. Edited by swaroop2011 2015-03-17 7:30 PM
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-17 8:40 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Nurikabe | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | |
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auroux
Posts: 145
Country : France | auroux posted @ 2015-03-18 12:02 AM Note in case anyone is curious: the Regional Battleships puzzle still has a unique solution without the given ship segment in the "M"-shaped region. (The given ship segment at the bottom-left is, on the other hand, necessary as far as I recall). That clue was added in order to make the puzzle difficulty more manageable.
Denis |
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Nilz
Posts: 29
Country : United Kingdom | Nilz posted @ 2015-03-18 2:17 AM rakesh_rai - 2015-03-17 5:13 AM
Summon, with just three numbers to fill, proved to be too tough. Although there were lot of obvious starting points (six digit numbers, 1000, etc), completing the puzzle in 60 minutes proved to be difficult as there were too many mini steps to solve. Based on the timings, it fits a category 'SuperHard'.
It was the toughest marathon yet. As bob said "Most puzzles are snacks, these are banquets." Hopefully most puzzlers would have enjoyed the banquet setting.
Personally, I don't *love* the really really difficult puzzles, but if there's a nice logical path (as these did, to be fair ), I don't mind solving them. But if there is going to be a competition with bonus points for solving in less than an hour, then it's better if it's actually possible to solve the puzzles in less than an hour (well, a couple of people will tell me that the Summon was possible, but still... ). Perhaps an option would be to label them as 'superhard' and just give 75 points (or another number that is judged to be fair ) to anyone who solves them.
Alternatively, just run a separate marathon for superhard puzzles only. I would guess there would be a few volunteers to create these puzzles, and the creators could have a contest between themselves to see who can create a puzzle solved by the fewest people! |
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY | rakesh_rai - 2015-03-17 9:13 AM
We shall be responding to most of the comments soon, but let us do a summary of the puzzle difficulty first.
We observed that the differentiation between easy, medium and hard puzzles was not too significant, in the last few marathons. This time we planned to have a clearer categorization:
- 3 easy puzzles where top solvers should finish in ~15 minutes
- 4 medium puzzles where top solvers should take ~25 minutes
- 3 hard puzzles where top solvers should take ~35 minutes.
Statue Park and Fillomino were indeed easy and, not surprisingly, both had the maximum bonus submissions. Statue Park is easier than Fillomino but Fillomino is more familiar.
Nurikabe is a medium category puzzle difficulty wise but due to its familiarity it has been kept as the third easy puzzle. Going by the best times, it still fits into the Easy category as the times are lesser than other puzzles. But there were mixed opinions on this and even some top puzzlers stumbled on this puzzle.
Regional Battleships and Meandering Numbers clearly fit the Medium category with the expected level of difficulty.
Turning Fences was a tough puzzle, but it was also present in a previous marathon, so was a familiar puzzle. It proved to be harder than expected. Post event, we can say it was a hard puzzle rather than medium.
Regional Coded Snake proved to be hard too, going by the solving times. It was classified as the 7th toughest but, post event, it proved to be the 8th toughest and should have been placed after Scrabble Loop on the difficulty index.
Hidoku, Scrabble Loop and Summon were intended to be tougher than most of the marathon puzzles so far (all editions included). While Hidoku and Scrabble Loop were as per the planned level of difficulty, Summon, with just three numbers to fill, proved to be too tough. Although there were lot of obvious starting points (six digit numbers, 1000, etc), completing the puzzle in 60 minutes proved to be difficult as there were too many mini steps to solve. Based on the timings, it fits a category 'SuperHard'.
It was the toughest marathon yet. As bob said "Most puzzles are snacks, these are banquets." Hopefully most puzzlers would have enjoyed the banquet setting.
Enjoyed a lot, thank you. and to all the authors too.
in summary we had 2 easy, 3 medium, 4 hard, 1 superhard puzzles. I like this share but perhaps it is a bit too tough for less experienced solvers. look at how many players had a high number of solutions with 200+ minutes for the majority of the puzzles. This could be frustrating. In my very personal opinion, the ideal mix could be 4/3/2/1 or 3/3/3/1
The bonus mechanism needs improvement. I believe it is nonsense in having two bonus mechanisms awarding bonus points to the same players. If one system is unfair, the other system gives no compensation. In my opinion the time bonus works very well, but the rank bonus should be a pure rank bonus, i.e. to award 25 points to the first, and decreasing linearly until the 50th (or 100th ) fastest solvers. In this case no matter what the bonus threshold is, a player will always be motivated to complete the puzzle, however hard, even beyond the 60' wall, and the 50th fastest solver of the summon still could have earned 12.5 points even with a time of 200+ minutes. And this would be ideal, we have seen many times that only one bonus mechanism leaves the door open for unfair scoring.
stefano
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY | karzym - 2015-03-17 2:37 AM
Nice puzzles. I thought Nurikabe was easier. The most puzzle I like is Summon even if it was hard, the least - Snake, I hate snakes, even more like spiders than those ba******. : ) Can someone post the solution for this? (it can be priv message ) After 2 hours of tortures I've got this http://i.imgur.com/PCQgIXt.jpg and wanted to throw my computer out of the window. Yeah, I know about the mistakes at the bottom and on the top...
don't throw away the computer. you will have no computers left. perhaps you can break in half the pencil it that relaxes you. you will still have the computer and if you sharpen both pieces you will have gained a pencil.
here
http://web.freepass.it/sf2l/PCQgIXt.jpg
is the solution. The fundamental mistake bottom left. Can't go from R16C3 to the head of the snake in 5 cells INTERNALLY- must go EXTERNALLY so L=1 not 3. Edited by forcolin 2015-03-18 5:17 AM
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FoxFireX
Posts: 35
Country : United States | Been a while since I've been able to compete in one of the contests. Amazing how having a second little boy born into your family will do that! When I saw this one was starting, though, I had to set aside time to make it happen. Glad I did. Even though I think I only managed bonus on three of the puzzles, I at least completed nine of them. The only one I didn't was (predictably) Summon, which I decided to pass on after a couple of hours, and then reading the comments here. The puzzles were all very enjoyable across the board, and I thank all the creators for giving us such a lovely variety of large, tough puzzles.
Now, that being said, I wanted to offer a slight counter-balance to some of the comments. Personally, I don't know that I really want to see a scoring system where I feel like I need to keep struggling with a puzzle into a second or third hour. As mentioned, I now have two boys under my roof, so time is a precious commodity. I have to start these puzzles in the evening, after they've gone to bed, and it's purely luck as to whether I'll even get one hour of quiet to work on it. Two puzzles this time were interrupted by wake-ups (fortunately I don't think I was going to bonus either of them). I have a difficult time setting aside TEN one hour blocks during a week+. I simply don't see how I could plan for ten blocks of up to three hours each. That kind of time simply doesn't exist for me during a week. I'd personally rather see the difficulty taken down a notch on those hardest of hard puzzles. I don't expect to get bonus in everything, because I'm not a world-class solver, but I would like to feel like it's at least possible to make it fit in the time I can make for it.
Again thanks to all the creators, and I look forward to next year, whatever the format! |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-18 7:42 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Exteremely unfair | |
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debmohanty
Country : India | forcolin - 2015-03-18 2:32 AM
The bonus mechanism needs improvement. I believe it is nonsense in having two bonus mechanisms awarding bonus points to the same players. If one system is unfair, the other system gives no compensation. In my opinion the time bonus works very well, but the rank bonus should be a pure rank bonus, i.e. to award 25 points to the first, and decreasing linearly until the 50th (or 100th) fastest solvers. In this case no matter what the bonus threshold is, a player will always be motivated to complete the puzzle, however hard, even beyond the 60' wall, and the 50th fastest solver of the summon still could have earned 12.5 points even with a time of 200+ minutes. And this would be ideal, we have seen many times that only one bonus mechanism leaves the door open for unfair scoring.
stefano
I like this idea very much.
1. Solving time bonus if the puzzle is submitted within the bonus period ( The bonus period was 60 for all puzzles in this contest, but as many have suggested it should be varying depending upon the puzzle difficulty )
2. Rank bonus for top 100 (This is independent of bonus period )
Assuming the bonus period is 60 minutes for Statue Park, Fillomino, Nurikabe, 75 minutes for Meand Numbers, Turning Fences, Reg Battleships, and 90 minutes for RC Snake, Scrabble, Hidoku, Summon, here is what the bonus points will look like for top 25. Link to excel file for further analysis.
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ibon
Posts: 4
Country : Spain | ibon posted @ 2015-03-18 3:02 PM Hi,
First of all, thanks to all the authors and organizers for the very nice contest.
Also very interesting the discussion about the score system. I have a proposal to be considered for the following Marathon (at the end, it is a kind of mixture bw. other proposals).
1. Not to limit the time for submission.
a. This will force not to give-up a puzzle after 60 mins and I think still fits very well with a marathon philosophy.
This implies,, of course, a change on the scoring system.
2. Ranking of the Puzzles (from hardest to easiest) would be defined after all submissions are done, considering top1, top 25 and/or top 50 (for example) submission times.
Once the rank is defined, the score for each Puzzle is defined (75,70,65...)
3. Bonus for TOP 100 of each puzzle (limiting to top-50 will probably desmotivate to some "non-top" participants)
This method will solve the problem of the dispersion for the top10 solver in an easy (a lot of bonus points) and in a hard puzzle (could be 0). With this system the possible trick I read on a previous post is not possible: Not to submit the solution for an easy puzzle to reduce the points for top players will have a negative consequence and not a positive one as it has with current system.
Summarizing, the solver will compite up finishing the puzzle and not only up to the time is finished. The points distribution (fixed points and bonus points (which I think is the weakest point of the current system) will be more representative of the puzzle difficult (as in other kind of puzzle contest). Also important for me is to maintain the motivation for no-top solver giving us the chance to get some bonus points.
Ibon
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | ibon - 2015-03-18 3:02 PM
1. Not to limit the time for submission.
a. This will force not to give-up a puzzle after 60 mins and I think still fits very well with a marathon philosophy.
This implies,, of course, a change on the scoring system.
Thanks for your detailed suggestions.
Regarding point no 1, ideally yes. But practically (more from a solver's perspective ) we cannot have an indefinite bonus timeframe. There has to be a limit - it can be different for different puzzles. We have had suggestions earlier that this upper limit can be 45/60/75/90/120. Edited by rakesh_rai 2015-03-18 3:31 PM
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auroux
Posts: 145
Country : France | auroux posted @ 2015-03-18 8:39 PM A practical reason for having a bonus timeframe limit, even if it's something very long like 3 hours on the very hard puzzles, is that many of us are not available 24 hours a day for puzzles. With the current marathon system with a 60 minute limit, when I have a chunk of time for puzzles I will start as long as I have at least 45 minutes ahead of me for a puzzle rated "easy" and 60 for other puzzles. After that I may have a meeting with a colleague or a student and can't keep my office door shut, or I may need to go pick up my daughter at her daycare, also not a negotiable thing. So: it is important to know in advance how long to allocate from the time we start a puzzle to finish it competitively. (To give an example: Summon took me over 24 hours because after breaking it multiple times in the evening that I started, I really had to get some sleep ahead of an important presentation, give the presentation, meet with colleagues, and then go catch a flight back home. I finished the puzzle halfway through the flight and still had to wait a few more hours to input the solution once I was back on the ground with internet access. Okay, perhaps I could have not slept as much if it had really mattered, but that would have been really unpleasant.).
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kousek-nebe
Posts: 20
Country : Czech Republic | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | anderson - 2015-03-17 6:14 PM
...I also have to mention that the box in the middle of the hidoku was extremely cute as well as the 360-400 path...
Yes. The box was indeed quite interesting in terms of the logic to decide what numbers go inside.
Paul - 2015-03-17 3:52 PM
I would love to get starting instructions, on how to solve each type of puzzles.
Paul: The above is one of the starting points for Hidoku. Apart from this, you also get to fill numbers fast in
- the bottom-right corner
- top left corner
- around the number 1
- you also get 400 easily (a cell to which only one cell can be connected )
- even in the bottom left corner lot of numbers can be placed
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY | rakesh_rai - 2015-03-18 3:30 PM
Regarding point no 1, ideally yes. But practically (more from a solver's perspective) we cannot have an indefinite bonus timeframe. There has to be a limit - it can be different for different puzzles. We have had suggestions earlier that this upper limit can be 45/60/75/90/120.
I do not think that to lower the bonus threshold for easy puzzles is a good idea. In this edition there have been 6 players which have obtained 400 points for having submitted at least 8 solutions but failed to achieve a single bonus. The reduction to 45' for easy puzzle will increase the number of these players; The other option ( to increase the threshold for difficult puzzles ) is a better idea.
stefano
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY |
Very interesting. Some of the techniques are very useful. I got some of them but had to adopt T&E a few times. Consequently, I broke it twice. |
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swaroop2011
Posts: 668
Country : India | forcolin - 2015-03-19 1:47 AM
Very interesting. Some of the techniques are very useful. I got some of them but had to adopt T&E a few times. Consequently, I broke it twice.
I guess, the bottom right solving of 6's was last step, and if you try to do that first it will lead you to T & E
Though it has unique solution in itself and can be solved earlier but it becomes easy if you keep that for last : ) |
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Administrator
Country : India | |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | Nikola - 2015-03-08 2:40 PM
Is it possible somewhere on the score page to display the number of incorrect submissions? I'm so happy I do not have any.
Among the Top 20, we have six participants with zero incorrect submissions:
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | bskbri - 2015-03-08 5:16 PM
It would have been much better to present the words in a monospaced font (courier) for the scrabble loop puzzle. Yes. Counting the word length would have been easier with Courier. This suggestion will be adopted for similar puzzles in future. |
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Zormac
Posts: 15
Country : Hungary | Zormac posted @ 2015-03-19 3:50 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | A bit skewed | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
The reason I put "A bit skewed" is that I consider Fillomino and Nurikabe as classic types and all the other puzzles as variations / mixtures / novelties (to me at least ). Therefore I believe the set was a bit skewed against classics - with the large grids in play, I would prefer a larger portion of classic puzzles. |
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chaotic_iak
Posts: 241
Country : Indonesia | I believe Statue Park is now represented well in the community that it's considered a classic as well (just like Tapa). Hidato (here Hidoku) is also actually a classic, although not commonly found in the puzzle community for some reason.
However, yes, the easy puzzles are all classics and the difficult puzzles are mostly non-classics. |
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tamz29
Posts: 225
Country : Thailand | tamz29 posted @ 2015-03-20 1:39 AM What made this year's marathon a let-down is because after 3 good previous editions, we'd love to think that we have everything sorted out by now.
The puzzle selection is not the problem but the difficulty is. We have 2 people finishing Summon and less than 20 finishing Snake and Hidato (okay, hidoku).
There have been suggestions about extending the time limit to 90, 120 etc. but personally I am not looking forward to this at all.
It is a tall order for any single puzzle lasting 100+ minutes to still be within the fun-zone. Imagine having to stare at the same tedious puzzle for 2 hours, no thank you.
Back to the difficulty level; this year seemed like it was a race for the authors to see who could come up with the hardest puzzle.
I prefer marathon puzzles to be like ones from Nikoli where the idea of "marathon" is slowly and steadily dismantling a big puzzle consisting of easy-medium logical steps.
I understand that not all puzzle types work like this, especially ones that require more global than local relationships.
Hidoku and Summon would still qualify as a marathon puzzle in this regard but their solving paths were way too narrow for the one hour limit.
However, both puzzles were beautiful and logically solvable enough to discourage trial and error. I would have enjoyed both Hidoku and Summon anywhere else than in a competition.
Then we have RC-Snake where I honestly don't see any logical way into the puzzle apart from bifurcating and bifurcating.
Scrabble was another guess-y type, but only because Scrabbles are generally intuitive>logic anyway.
Ok. Last thing I promise.
I don't agree with familiarity = easy (or easier).
So I find sentences like..." [this puzzle] was meant to be easier than [that puzzle] because it is more familiar" rather invalid.
Serkan can provide Tapas from childishly-easy to unreasonably-difficult any day, so I think we should consider each puzzle as a stand-alone when
categorizing them as a whole set.
Edited by tamz29 2015-03-20 1:41 AM
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-20 9:49 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY | tamz29 - 2015-03-20 1:39 AM
Then we have RC-Snake where I honestly don't see any logical way into the puzzle apart from bifurcating and bifurcating.
bob - 2015-03-15 4:21 AM
In particular, the Regional Coded Snake was utterly impossible for me, far more difficult than summon (the second hardest). Normal snake puzzles are a bit of a slog, trying out various bits and pieces until all of the numbers fit. But, here there is only a code. So it is trial and error and error and error and error and error... I put in over 6 hours over three separate evenings just on this one puzzle, far more than any of the others, and far beyond when it stopped being fun. I gave up for the first time ever. Just gave up. Ugh do I detest snake puzzles. Every change I tried would break one of the complex rules, usually on the other side of the board.
Bob
I found the regoinal snake very beautiful and logical. I have prepared a walkthrough
It' s possible to download it from http://web.freepass.it/sf2l/snake walkthrough.pdf
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bob
Posts: 59
Country : United States | bob posted @ 2015-03-23 4:19 AM Thank you stefano for the walkthrough. I came to many of the same conclusions and the overall contour of my snake was similar. My critical error was a false assumption that "E" was the only letter that could represent "2". In all of my trials "A" had to be "3" or higher. And my solutions came close but obviously could not be fixed. But the excellent walkthrough describes the thinking required. Thanks again. Perhaps I will rescind my current lifetime boycott of snake puzzles and risk getting frustrated again. It's the only way to get better.
bob |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-04-04 10:56 AM | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Fair | |
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