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Country : India | |
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Administrator
Country : India | Logic Masters India announces October Puzzle Test #2 — 20/10 Puzzle Decathlon
Author : Thomas Snyder
Date : 16th and 17th October
Puzzle Types : 10 Selected puzzle types - an Easy, a Hard and a Mutant from each type
Length : 120 minutes
IB and Submission Link : http://logicmastersindia.com/M201010P2
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | In the IB pdf, the solution of the first battleship needs to be corrected. |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | I think the second number skeleton can have another solution. Or, maybe, I am missing some constraint.
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-11 12:43 PM Rakesh,
Thanks for catching these errors (we've been very mindful to check the puzzles out, but I didn't double check the IB figures and you've found two obvious mistakes).
On the first battleships example, the sub in R6C4 should be in R4C4, and the answer entry for the first part is 000001.
On the second number skeleton, you have found another valid solution as the example is under-constrained. Change the 8778 to 8877.
Edited by motris 2010-10-11 12:46 PM
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debmohanty
Country : India | Very interesting Bonus system - Everyone stands to get bonus points. This is a better twist than what I had in EG2.
While top solvers will target to get all 450 bonus points, others have to think of strategy to maximize their points including the bonus.
Given that I can't finish all 30 in 2 hours, I would probably finish all easy ones (securing 150 bonus) and then solve both hard and mutant ones I'm more comfortable with (read : favorite).
I like that fact that full 150 points will be given even if 9 were correct. That is a nice consideration.
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debmohanty
Country : India | About the Mutants : While most of the mutants look interesting, the Masyu mutant look best to me.
While the example is too small to reveal much, I invite others to create bigger size puzzles and share here. |
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amitsowani
Posts: 349
Country : India | In Calcudoku is it necessary for subtraction and division to only apply to regions with two numbers? |
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Minfang Lin
Posts: 40
Country : China | |
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debmohanty
Country : India | amitsowani - 2010-10-11 3:50 PM
In Calcudoku is it necessary for subtraction and division to only apply to regions with two numbers? The puzzle rule does not demand that. And some of the puzzles from Thomas's blog http://motris.livejournal.com/101573.html have - and / spreading over more than two cells.
But it is probably best to have Thomas say the final word on this. |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-11 8:41 PM For calcudoku I prefer a rule-set where multicell subtraction and division are possible (1- = 4-2-1 for example ), and this is what I use consistently when writing this style. However on the test puzzles, this situation won't arise. People who want more examples of my calcudoku puzzles can find them linked here.
For the Total Masyu mutant, I have some earlier examples that did not use the gray circle gimmick here. You can at least learn some of the ideas from those puzzles. The competition puzzle, like the example, however uses only gray circles so knowing what are white and black circles will be an extra part of that puzzle. Edited by motris 2010-10-11 8:43 PM
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DreamRose311
Posts: 24
Country : United States | I'm not sure if this is a question you should answer before the test, but I was wondering about the layout for the test PDF, whether it would be laid out in groups of puzzle type or in groups of easy/hard/mutant type (which would be less paper shuffling for achieving bonuses).
Very much looking forward to the test. Looks like a lot of fun, and the bonus system is a really cool idea... Definitely have a lot of thoughts in my head on how I should strategize solving order...
Also, Thanks so much to LMI for having lots of puzzle competitions!! It is soooo much better than having to wait for yearly puzzle/sudoku championships to roll around. |
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StGeorge
Posts: 11
Country : Bulgaria | I am very much looking forward to this - I'm sure the puzzles will be top-notch and some of the mutants seem really intriguing. Also, the bonus system looks like a lot of fun, it would definitely encourage solvers to try out puzzle types that they would have otherwise avoided during the time limit.
Thomas, I am curious as to how many points you think the winner will have earned. Assuming that it's unlikely that someone solves everything. |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-12 1:00 AM The test booklet has 20 puzzle pages (+ 1 cover page). Each type has a single page with the Easy and Hard (labeled as such and with 15/30 on it). There is also a single page with the Mutant puzzle, formatted in a way it will be obvious you are looking at the "mutant" and not the "normal" page, particularly for a type like say tents where the grid itself won't look different between the two types aside from tree density.
There is a 3x10 grid on the title page that may help you track progress.
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-12 1:13 AM StGeorge - 2010-10-12 12:03 AM
I am very much looking forward to this - I'm sure the puzzles will be top-notch and some of the mutants seem really intriguing. Also, the bonus system looks like a lot of fun, it would definitely encourage solvers to try out puzzle types that they would have otherwise avoided during the time limit.
Thomas, I am curious as to how many points you think the winner will have earned. Assuming that it's unlikely that someone solves everything.
The test was written with the range of LMI solvers in mind (everyone from world champion uvo to new competitors who may have never done a competition or who may be most familiar with sudoku ). I expect that there will be a few solvers that can finish everything, in accord with our play-test results, but that the majority of solvers will be in a situation where they are picking which puzzles in a type to solve either to finish out an intermediate bonus. Starting with the harder examples will be worth more points in general, and then as time runs short solvers can turn to "easy" reliably to finish out a group, or people can start by clearing everything at "easy" and then choosing between "hard" or "mutant" for the second. Knowing strengths/weaknesses and budgeting time accordingly will be important for most since finishing the test will not be possible for everyone.
The bonus system was inspired by WPC Brazil which tried to achieve a similar goal (diverse solving ) but in what I felt was a less effective way. Basically, each round there was split into 3/4 sections and the first puzzle solved in a section was worth more than the second which was worth more than the third and so on. The problem was that the first puzzle was often worth 30 points, the fourth puzzle worth 3 points, and score bunching happened so the overall scores were dominated by rounds where solvers earned placement/time bonuses, often worth 100x the amount of the "last puzzle" solved. Instead of being logarithmic in score, here there are exponential increases in score based on completing some number of goals. It also gives good goals for solvers at all levels. Earning even the first 150 point bonus is a great achievement for many solvers, and is something to aim for by trying some new styles instead of just doing, say, the Battleships. |
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jrivet
Posts: 1
Country : United States | jrivet posted @ 2010-10-12 2:53 AM According to the example for Big Tent Party, the numbers outside the grid are the number of cells covered by tents, not the number of tents as stated in the rules. |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-12 3:29 AM jrivet - 2010-10-12 2:53 AM
According to the example for Big Tent Party, the numbers outside the grid are the number of cells covered by tents, not the number of tents as stated in the rules.
Your observation is correct, and the abbreviated instructions for the variation have not corrected for the difference. All cases should be read as "number of cells covered by tents" which happens to equal the number of tents in the normal form but does not in the mutant. The example images for both types use numbers in the intended way, as does the answer entry.
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purifire
Posts: 460
Country : India | though Im not a great fan ( read solver ) of puzzles, this is one test I am definitely going to attempt .... not everyday we get a chance to attempt puzzles by Thomas 
Rishi |
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amitsowani
Posts: 349
Country : India | In Simple Loop Mutant :
Rule says : All cells need not be visited.
and the answer key says : Starting from "A"..........
Can we assume that the cell with "A" in it will definitely be visited? |
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detuned
Posts: 152
Country : United Kingdom | detuned posted @ 2010-10-12 8:06 PM purifire - 2010-10-12 8:17 AM
though Im not a great fan ( read solver ) of puzzles, this is one test I am definitely going to attempt .... not everyday we get a chance to attempt puzzles by Thomas
Rishi
Perhaps not every day, but certainly every week : )
I must say I'm looking forward to this one and have no doubts at all this will make up for the failings of the last test! Especially the Numberlink. Although I'm a little disappointed to see that 0 is definitely out of the set for the mutant "TomTom" ; ) |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-12 9:04 PM amitsowani - 2010-10-12 5:59 PM
In Simple Loop Mutant :
Rule says : All cells need not be visited.
and the answer key says : Starting from "A"..........
Can we assume that the cell with "A" in it will definitely be visited?
This is a safe assumption, but you'll realize when you see the puzzle that knowing A is visited is not really a benefit over a version of the puzzle with no letters inside. |
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StGeorge
Posts: 11
Country : Bulgaria | Here's a question about the mutant nurikabe.
Quote from the IB: Each shape represents exactly one white area in the grid and each white area is represented by exactly one shape outside the grid"
Does this mean that there will be no more than 1 "1" / 1 "2" / 2 "3"s / 5 "4"s / etc in the puzzle, due to the limited number of possible n-ominoes? |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-12 9:33 PM StGeorge - 2010-10-12 9:23 PM
Here's a question about the mutant nurikabe.
Quote from the IB: Each shape represents exactly one white area in the grid and each white area is represented by exactly one shape outside the grid"
Does this mean that there will be no more than 1 "1" / 1 "2" / 2 "3"s / 5 "4"s / etc in the puzzle, due to the limited number of possible n-ominoes?
There will be no repeated shapes outside the grid in this puzzle, so your "limits" are correct for what you might expect. Note that just like the example each island still maintains its correct number so if there is just 1 "3" island outside, say the bent one, then you know the 3 in the grid must adopt the bent shape and not the linear shape, which would not be the case in the regular puzzle. |
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figonometry
Posts: 30
Country : Canada |
About the Mutants : While most of the mutants look interesting, the Masyu mutant look best to me.
While the example is too small to reveal much, I invite others to create bigger size puzzles and share here
How about this? (Answer is here: Figonometry)
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debmohanty
Country : India | figonometry - 2010-10-14 4:56 AM
How about this? (Answer is here: Figonometry)
Thanks so much. Very interesting use of white cells. |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-14 7:29 AM Very nice puzzle figonometry
I post (at least ) one puzzle on my blog every week, and this week's Friday Puzzle will be an example of one of the mutants I've made for the test. I'm running a poll on my blog for the next day to determine what that example will be, so please make your opinion heard. I'll link to the puzzle here when it is posted, around 8 AM GMT on Friday. Edited by motris 2010-10-14 7:37 AM
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debmohanty
Country : India | motris - 2010-10-14 7:29 AM
I post (at least ) one puzzle on my blog every week, and this week's Friday Puzzle will be an example of one of the mutants I've made for the test. I'm running a poll on my blog for the next day to determine what that example will be, so please make your opinion heard. I'll link to the puzzle here when it is posted, around 8 AM GMT on Friday. Please consider posting top 2 or 3 most voted puzzles |
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Administrator
Country : India | If anyone is in Bangalore and want to take this test offline with some of us, please read here. Sorry about hijacking this thread. |
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Administrator
Country : India | The password protected puzzle booklet is uploaded. motris has already explained the layout of the pdf is already explained here.
Also, the cover page has a points table that can also be used to keep track of solved puzzles. |
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Administrator
Country : India | Like every other test, we'll be displaying the results as soon as a player finishes the test. So please stick to the answer format.
The submission site is designed such that it will warn when an answer is typed in an unexpected format.
For example see image below,
[ In the top box commas are unexpected. In the bottom box, 6 is unexpected. ]
Before submitting, please make sure that you don't have any warnings in red color.
However, even if you have warnings, your submission will be successful, your answer will be recorded without any issues.
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Administrator
Country : India | About submission time recording -
Please note that there is only one "Submit Answers" button for all 30 puzzles.
When you click on "Submit Answers", all the modified answers will be submitted. ('modified' meaning 'modified since you last submitted')
So individual submission time for each puzzle is stored in our database.
You can submit as many times as you want, before you time ends.
At any point in time, you can look at the message below "Submit Answers" button and see how many submissions are recorded.
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-15 9:22 AM Many of you voted, and I wrote a Shape Nurikabe example to introduce one of the new mutants. Here is a Shape Nurikabe that follows the rules outlined in the IB; a similarly sized puzzle willl be in the Decathlon.
Find the answer here: Shape Nurikabe Answer.
Best of luck and skill to all the competitors this weekend! |
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DreamRose311
Posts: 24
Country : United States | Fun! You say similarly sized, will it also be similar difficulty level? |
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thesubro
Posts: 23
Country : United States | The Instructions for the Big Tent say:
1. The numbers outside the grid indicate the number of tents in
that row or column.
2. ... each (Big) tent occupies two adjacent squares instead of just
one square.
In the Big Tent example, there is one row and one column that denote the number 3 (meaning 3 tents), but there are only 2 tents in each taking up 3 cells. Therefore, on the Big Tent puzzle, the numbers outside the grid are actually supposed to indicate the number of cells that have tents in that row or column.
I have not done the test yet, but I feel that this instruction and example discrepancy should be clarified or corrected. I see that you have addressed it in the forum, but many will not have read the forum and will struggle unnecessarily with the mutant, so you should probably update the .pdf.
Thanks.
Ken Levine
"TheSubro" |
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debmohanty
Country : India | Hi Ken, as you mentioned, from the example image in the Big Tents Party it is pretty clear that the numbers represent the number of cells.
motris has already fixed these in his local copy, but we don't plan to upload the latest version in the server. Lot of players have already downloaded the IB, they won't download again unless we make an announcement. Making an announcement is always confusing, and we would like to avoid it since it is only an obvious mistake in the IB. |
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DreamRose311
Posts: 24
Country : United States | The test was sooo much fun, Thanks Thomas Snyder!! The bad thing though, is I've had my first submission error... forgot a line on a skyscrapers... Oh well, thanks again!! |
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Gareth
Posts: 17
Country : United Kingdom | Gareth posted @ 2010-10-16 8:11 AM If you are stupid and enter the Tents Mutant solution into the Tents Hard box, is there any chance of getting credit anyway? :) (which, erm, I did... oops) |
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debmohanty
Country : India | Gareth - 2010-10-16 8:11 AM
If you are stupid and enter the Tents Mutant solution into the Tents Hard box, is there any chance of getting credit anyway? :) (which, erm, I did... oops)
Marked the tent as correct. Please check your score again. |
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SrikanthB
Posts: 5
Country : India | Really nice puzzles!! (though i scored bad) Had real fun!! Thank you so much Thomas and LMI!! |
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mathgrant
Posts: 15
Country : United States | Well, I decided to make my grand Logic Masters India debut, and try one of these test things for fun. The puzzles, as was to be expected given the author, were very very high quality, and I got a real rush every time I managed to finish a puzzle within the time limit.
I made a very n00bish mistake by waiting until 22 minutes were left before submitting any answers; that may have cost me a ton of time bonus points. I guess I wasn't sure whether I could submit more than once or not, so I waited a bit, to be safe. :[ |
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TroyS
Posts: 6
Country : United States | TroyS posted @ 2010-10-16 10:38 AM Great Test. Thanks. Any chance of points on an easy battleship for entering 1's and 0's instead of n's and o's? |
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thesubro
Posts: 23
Country : United States | Best test I have done on LMI yet. Nice pace and great puzzles. On the Hard Nurikabe, I had a brain lapse and did my 0s and 1s correct for Column A and then reversed them on Column. Any relief would be appreciated. Sorry to beg, but I feel compelled. Thanks for everything about this competition and website. Thanks.
Ken Levine
"TheSubro"
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debmohanty
Country : India | mathgrant - 2010-10-16 9:36 AM
Well, I decided to make my grand Logic Masters India debut, and try one of these test things for fun. The puzzles, as was to be expected given the author, were very very high quality, and I got a real rush every time I managed to finish a puzzle within the time limit.
I made a very n00bish mistake by waiting until 22 minutes were left before submitting any answers; that may have cost me a ton of time bonus points. I guess I wasn't sure whether I could submit more than once or not, so I waited a bit, to be safe. :[
Grand LMI debut! That was nice.
You could submit as many times as you want. We just explained this few posts back (in this thread itself )
Also, you can check your score immediately after you complete the test. |
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vopani
Posts: 739
Country : India | vopani posted @ 2010-10-16 4:52 PM Amazing set of high quality puzzles Thomas. It definitely is one of the best tests at LMI so far.
Detailed feedback about puzzles on Monday :-) |
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neerajmehrotra
Posts: 329
Country : India | Awesome set of puzzles ................ really enjoyed...
I agree with Rohan..........one of the best so far..........
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-16 7:47 PM thesubro - 2010-10-16 12:12 PM
Best test I have done on LMI yet. Nice pace and great puzzles. On the Hard Nurikabe, I had a brain lapse and did my 0s and 1s correct for Column A and then reversed them on Column. Any relief would be appreciated. Sorry to beg, but I feel compelled. Thanks for everything about this competition and website. Thanks.
Ken Levine
"TheSubro"
My goal on grading is to be lenient in cases where it's clear that a solver has an answer and simply made a mistake on the answer entry. This means mistakes like reversing 1's and 0's in the Nurikabe or putting the Mutant answer in the Hard spot will likely get credit, but I'm waiting until more solvers have answered to see what are the common entry mistakes to deal with. |
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gramar
Posts: 9
Country : United Kingdom | gramar posted @ 2010-10-16 8:11 PM Really enjoyed this, thank you Thomas - it was great to have a set of puzzles which was accessible to the enthsiastic amateur like myself as well as expert puzzlers! I just managed the easy ones but obtained some satisfaction in getting all 10 puzzle types correct.
Speaking of entry mistakes however, I did just get 9 marked correctly because I made a stupid error (only myself to blame) in copying out the numbers in the top row of the easy tomtom puzzle instead of the numbers for the row marked A!
Thanks again for the puzzles - just need to work on the harder ones now. |
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StGeorge
Posts: 11
Country : Bulgaria | motris - 2010-10-16 4:47 PM
thesubro - 2010-10-16 12:12 PM
Best test I have done on LMI yet. Nice pace and great puzzles. On the Hard Nurikabe, I had a brain lapse and did my 0s and 1s correct for Column A and then reversed them on Column. Any relief would be appreciated. Sorry to beg, but I feel compelled. Thanks for everything about this competition and website. Thanks.
Ken Levine
"TheSubro"
My goal on grading is to be lenient in cases where it's clear that a solver has an answer and simply made a mistake on the answer entry. This means mistakes like reversing 1's and 0's in the Nurikabe or putting the Mutant answer in the Hard spot will likely get credit, but I'm waiting until more solvers have answered to see what are the common entry mistakes to deal with.
Well I made the exact same error on the Mutant Nurikabe - I inverted the code for Column A. Also I switched the answers for the Easy and Hard Masyu. I'd be happy if you decide to count them as correct.
Too bad I also made a solving mistake on one of the minesweepers =\ |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-16 8:52 PM StGeorge - 2010-10-16 8:44 PM
Well I made the exact same error on the Mutant Nurikabe - I inverted the code for Column A. Also I switched the answers for the Easy and Hard Masyu. I'd be happy if you decide to count them as correct.
Too bad I also made a solving mistake on one of the minesweepers =\
You should now see credit for this entry. |
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StGeorge
Posts: 11
Country : Bulgaria | motris - 2010-10-16 5:52 PM
You should now see credit for this entry.
Cool, thanks : ) |
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mathgrant
Posts: 15
Country : United States | I very nearly made a solving mistake in the Hard Minesweeper; however, I took the time to add up the numbers, and realized it wasn't the same as the number of mines listed beside the grid. Turns out I had two unsolved cells, one of which was a mine, and I fixed it easily.
Too bad I didn't do the same for the Mutant Tents; the sum of the numbers in my entry was an odd number, which for this particular Mutant would have been an immediate red flag that I had goofed. I also had one other wrong entry; neither of these, I believe, is worthy of the same grace that entering the Mutant answer in the Hard space would be. :) |
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ostroffj
Posts: 10
Country : United States | Whew. That was a blast. Had a very frantic five minutes at the end entering answers, finishing with 19 seconds to spare. Thankfully no entry mistakes, it seems. |
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yureklis
Posts: 183
Country : Turkey | I took the test. My first impression the contest is suitable for every puzzle solver. I made some mistakes, and wrong bonus strategy, i lost some points. But everyone lost something:)
Thank you very much Thomas for this smooth puzzle set. I didnt understand how pass the time. I love Battleships(mutant), ABC Connection(M), Tents(M) and Simple Loop(M).
Thank you very much for organizers.
Serkan |
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ostroffj
Posts: 10
Country : United States | Hmmm, seems I completely forgot about time bonuses. If I'm reading the rules correctly, they only matter once you've solved more than 20 puzzles, right? |
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standupcanada
Posts: 11
Country : Canada | Great puzzles and loved the format. Nearly hit my target. (I hope you'll go gently on the grading - 130 points lost in transposing would be a good lesson for me though.) More to add later. |
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY | it was a great contest, as expected given the author.
as usual I spent the last minutes trying in vain to solve a hard mutant, just to discover after the end that there were other simpler mutants which could have given me maybe 30 more points...
I like the bonus structure and I got a satisfactory bonus - for the first time I even managed to get some (few) time bonus points!!!
Great stuff !!!
Stefano
Edited by forcolin 2010-10-17 5:40 AM
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figonometry
Posts: 30
Country : Canada | I had one badly verified guess, and one stupid 'greater than' error, but three time bonus points! Woot!
In any case, awesome test again. Thanks a bunch! |
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debmohanty
Country : India | ostroffj - 2010-10-17 1:02 AM
Hmmm, seems I completely forgot about time bonuses. If I'm reading the rules correctly, they only matter once you've solved more than 20 puzzles, right? that is correct. More than 20 solved (and submitted ) correctly |
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drsteve
Posts: 12
Country : United Kingdom | drsteve posted @ 2010-10-17 5:57 PM Wasted a lot of time on the hard minesweeper (and got it wrong) and messed up the solution to easy battleships, easy skyscraper (typed in the adjacent column, but solved the puzzle correctly), mutant nurikabe - typed a 1 instead of a 0 at one point. Finished the hard nurikabe with 17 seconds to spare though, so that made up for it a bit...
Wonderful test - loads of fun. |
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pafcio123
Posts: 4
Country : Poland | hello, great puzzles. I have question about Smiple loop - mutant. I do not know why my answer is incorect?
regards
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pafcio123
Posts: 4
Country : Poland | ok, sorry. I missed a letter in the answer
regards |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-17 8:57 PM drsteve - 2010-10-17 5:57 PM
Wasted a lot of time on the hard minesweeper (and got it wrong) and messed up the solution to easy battleships, easy skyscraper (typed in the adjacent column, but solved the puzzle correctly), mutant nurikabe - typed a 1 instead of a 0 at one point. Finished the hard nurikabe with 17 seconds to spare though, so that made up for it a bit...
Wonderful test - loads of fun.
We've given you credit on the skyscrapers as you've entered a valid other column; a few others have made column swap changes too, so where it's clear it was an entry mistake while looking at a finished puzzle we've given points. |
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tabascq
Posts: 2
Country : United States | tabascq posted @ 2010-10-17 9:10 PM I can't get past the first 'unplanned' puzzle - namely, where should I be looking to see the 'Document Open Password'? Am I just dense, or is my browser not displaying it properly? I understand you can't just print it here, but some kind of direction would be helpful. |
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tabascq
Posts: 2
Country : United States | tabascq posted @ 2010-10-17 9:15 PM Ahem. It appeared to me that logging in actually constituted a start of the test, and the subsequent Start button didn't look enough like a button to get my attention. Perhaps I should just stay in bed today. :-) |
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Administrator
Country : India | tabascq - 2010-10-17 9:15 PM
Ahem. It appeared to me that logging in actually constituted a start of the test, and the subsequent Start button didn't look enough like a button to get my attention. Perhaps I should just stay in bed today. :-)
I agree that "Start 20/10 Puzzle Decathlon" button is little small, and not that easy to locate.
We'll make it bigger in subsequent tests.
However note that your timer starts only after you click on that button. So, no one really loses time because of this problem. |
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gramar
Posts: 9
Country : United Kingdom | gramar posted @ 2010-10-18 2:18 AM Just noticed I've been credited with the points for the easy tomtom puzzle following my submission error. Much appreciated!! |
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zhergan
Posts: 32
Country : Turkey | zhergan posted @ 2010-10-18 3:12 AM Really great set of puzzles  It was very enjoyable 
Most of the puzzles were designed very well and my top three
were the mutants of Battleships, Number Skeleton
and TomTom (with mystery number set, nice idea  ).
 Thomas for nice puzzles and LMI for this organization
Zafer |
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detuned
Posts: 152
Country : United Kingdom | detuned posted @ 2010-10-18 3:23 AM motris - 2010-10-17 3:57 PM
drsteve - 2010-10-17 5:57 PM
Wasted a lot of time on the hard minesweeper (and got it wrong) and messed up the solution to easy battleships, easy skyscraper (typed in the adjacent column, but solved the puzzle correctly), mutant nurikabe - typed a 1 instead of a 0 at one point. Finished the hard nurikabe with 17 seconds to spare though, so that made up for it a bit...
Wonderful test - loads of fun.
We've given you credit on the skyscrapers as you've entered a valid other column; a few others have made column swap changes too, so where it's clear it was an entry mistake while looking at a finished puzzle we've given points.
Thomas - I entered the first column rather than the second for the hard nurikabe. Also on the hard minesweeper, I made a rather silly transposition of digits typing in too quickly. The digits are adjacent - which I think is strong evidence in favour of a typing (as opposed to puzzling ) error.
I only mention this as the difference between having these two puzzles marked as right will do wonders (+25% ) for my score : ) |
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detuned
Posts: 152
Country : United Kingdom | detuned posted @ 2010-10-18 3:25 AM I should also mention good job on the puzzles. Nice design on the easy masyu :) |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-18 3:56 AM detuned - 2010-10-18 3:23 AM
Thomas - I entered the first column rather than the second for the hard nurikabe. Also on the hard minesweeper, I made a rather silly transposition of digits typing in too quickly. The digits are adjacent - which I think is strong evidence in favour of a typing (as opposed to puzzling) error.
I only mention this as the difference between having these two puzzles marked as right will do wonders (+25%) for my score :)
Having read the thread on the UK forum saying "hey, we all entered wrong columns", I'm surprised you did too. All four got points back though, so you'll get the Nurikabe points.
No go on minesweeper regrading though. It is easy to imagine an incorrect solution with a mine moved by one spot, so I cannot reward an answer there as wrong answers are a lot like right answers on minesweeper. |
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detuned
Posts: 152
Country : United Kingdom | detuned posted @ 2010-10-18 4:11 AM Ah yeah - I can see exactly what you mean re that "tweak" (naturally I maintain my innocence nevertheless). The pain is in losing so much bonus - especially when I realise I forgot to put in the hard battleships. I don't think there should be too much surprise in my general error-proneness though! |
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Gotroch
Posts: 83
Country : Czech Republic | Gotroch posted @ 2010-10-18 5:52 AM Very nice puzzles
My answer of Mutant Minesweeper puzzle is missing digit for last row (there was no tetromino part in last row and that's why I probably forgot to submit it )
First nine rows in my solution looks correct, is it possible to get points for that puzzle?
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-18 5:56 AM Results for the 20/10 Puzzle Decathlon are now available. Three solvers completed all the puzzles correctly and congratulations go to Hideaki Jo, Ulrich Voigt, and Florian Kirch for earning gold/silver/bronze in this test. I expect to see many of the same top solvers doing well next week at the 19th WPC in Poland.
Thanks to all for participating, and thanks especially to Deb and Logic Masters India for assistance in hosting this puzzle test. |
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debmohanty
Country : India | Thomas, thanks for taking time out to write this test. I'm sure it was helpful practice for everyone with WPC around the corner.
Apart from many top players participating, this was the most successful test at LMI in terms of numbers of players. That is hardly surprising though, given who the author was.
189 players (out of 226) got non-zero scores.
Thank you everyone for participating!
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uvo
Posts: 21
Country : Germany | uvo posted @ 2010-10-18 6:26 AM Now the contest is over I want to mention that the bonus system is seriously flawed: It is easily possible to lose points by solving a puzzle, which is certainly not desirable. For example, it took me about 12 minutes to solve the Number Skeleton mutant: If I hadn't solved it, I would have scored about 19x9=171 instead of the actual 7x10=70 bonus points - plenty to compensate for just one unsolved puzzle (-30 points).
There are two characteristics of your bonus system, which combined lead to this side effect:
1) Both the puzzles and the time bonus have a similar points per minute factor (1200 points / 120 minutes and 10 points per minute, if all puzzles are solved).
2) The decrease in bonus for not having all puzzles solved is very low (factor 9 instead of 10).
Together, this means that one puzzle where you are slower than the average 10 points per minute is worth less, possibly much less than the equivalent bonus score.
Unfortunately, 1) the mentioned Number Skeleton was not my last puzzle and 2) I didn't think about the bonus system in advance. But even if I had, I would have tried to solve all puzzles nevertheless and not cared about my score. (In a WPC, that might be different.)
The puzzles however were excellent (not that I expected anything less). Funnily enough, for the German Championship four years ago I designed a Battleships puzzle very similar to the hard one here, with the same 2-7-2 clues to work with. And I guessed correctly that the mutant Nurikabe would have twelve pentomino islands, but that didn't help much :-) |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-18 6:42 AM uvo - 2010-10-18 6:26 AM
Now the contest is over I want to mention that the bonus system is seriously flawed: It is easily possible to lose points by solving a puzzle, which is certainly not desirable. For example, it took me about 12 minutes to solve the Number Skeleton mutant: If I hadn't solved it, I would have scored about 19x9=171 instead of the actual 7x10=70 bonus points - plenty to compensate for just one unsolved puzzle (-30 points).
There are two characteristics of your bonus system, which combined lead to this side effect:
1) Both the puzzles and the time bonus have a similar points per minute factor (1200 points / 120 minutes and 10 points per minute, if all puzzles are solved).
2) The decrease in bonus for not having all puzzles solved is very low (factor 9 instead of 10).
Together, this means that one puzzle where you are slower than the average 10 points per minute is worth less, possibly much less than the equivalent bonus score.
Unfortunately, 1) the mentioned Number Skeleton was not my last puzzle and 2) I didn't think about the bonus system in advance. But even if I had, I would have tried to solve all puzzles nevertheless and not cared about my score. (In a WPC, that might be different.)
The puzzles however were excellent (not that I expected anything less). Funnily enough, for the German Championship four years ago I designed a Battleships puzzle very similar to the hard one here, with the same 2-7-2 clues to work with. And I guessed correctly that the mutant Nurikabe would have twelve pentomino islands, but that didn't help much :-)
Yes, I thought of this scenario too late after we made the change to 9 of 10 earning bonus points. In the first pass the final puzzle should have been worth ~80 points, so with 9 versus 10 points per minute, you would have to take over 9 minutes to solve it to lose points. With the friendlier bonus system to not penalize entry mistakes, the end result is a puzzle you lose points on if you solve it in more than 3.2 or so minutes. This is certainly less time than the last puzzle a solver is likely to face.
The simplest answer - on a test like this which was pretty well-timed given the test-solvers - is to ignore time bonus and use raw clock time to break ties. That, or a much steeper drop off of the partial value was certainly needed. The partial time bonus was included to address the possibility someone might finish very early, but with an error, as has happened on past tests but that was not really a factor here. Certainly worth more improvements before the next time. Edited by motris 2010-10-18 6:49 AM
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Aerion
Posts: 4
Country : United States | Aerion posted @ 2010-10-18 7:08 AM Ha, I see mathgrant made the same answer entry mistake as I did on the Easy ABC Connect -- accidentally started reading the wrong column halfway down. I felt dumb for not just writing the letters directly in the grid to prevent such a thing, but I feel less dumb knowing I'm in good company. ;)
Thanks for a great set of puzzles! Between this and a new issue of P&A (all while keeping an eye on the baseball), it's been quite the weekend. |
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harmeet
Posts: 87
Country : India | harmeet posted @ 2010-10-18 8:20 AM Gr8 set of puzzles Thomas... it was really fun to solve them...
Deb... I think my minesweeper set of puzzles are not scored... can you please check them? |
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keshava.hs
Posts: 10
Country : India | Hi,Greetings!!Th puzzle set was awesome!!It covered all range of puzzlers. Thanks again.Please find the attached answer for Battleship-Hard, I could not find my mistake.3 Cheers,Keshav
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debmohanty
Country : India | harmeet - 2010-10-18 8:20 AM
Deb... I think my minesweeper set of puzzles are not scored... can you please check them? I think they were incorrect. I've your answer sheets, I'll double check. |
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debmohanty
Country : India | keshava.hs - 2010-10-18 8:21 AM
Hi,Greetings!!Th puzzle set was awesome!!It covered all range of puzzlers. Thanks again.Please find the attached answer for Battleship-Hard, I could not find my mistake.3 Cheers,Keshav Keshav, R5C9 can't be 1x1 submarine. It has to be a part of 3x1 cruiser OR 4x1 battleship. Remember that R5C9 is a square and not a circle. |
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keshava.hs
Posts: 10
Country : India | Hi Deb,
Thanks a lot for lightning response!
Since i didnot had printer so used paint brush for solving, where i have painted every cell, which has mislead me.
Thanks for resolving my doubt.
Best Regards,
Keshav |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | Thanks for the nice set of puzzles.
For me, the best puzzles were (1) ABC Connect Mutant (2) Skyscrapers Hard and (3) Masyu Mutant.
All hard/mutant puzzles were not of same difficulty (but worth 30 each). So, for those solvers who cannot complete the full set in time, there was some luck/skill in choosing which puzzles to solve. For example, a few mutants - Battleship, Minesweeper, Tents and Tom Tom - were very easy. If only I knew this before the test...Mostly I found that the Hard was tougher than the Mutant.
Some comments on specific puzzles-
ABC Connect Mutant: Tough. But I have now managed to solve this somehow. Liked the way the loops have to be stretched sometimes to make the turns count, especially for 8 and 9.
Number Skeleton Mutant: Tough but solvable logically. Have seen such puzzles on USPC mostly.
Tents Hard: Had to resort to Trial and Error. If someone can show a logical point to start the solve, that would be useful.
Skyscrapers Hard: Very Tough.
Nurikabe Hard: Nice (not difficult). Initially, I thought the 44 was a printing error. But realized that 44 will actually start the puzzle and travel all over the world to finish the puzzle. It looked like a snake puzzle in some ways, where the length is given. |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | I have a doubt. Didn't we decide earlier that the Last submitted correct answer timestamp would be used as a tiebreaker? But I see same rank given in case of ties. |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-18 10:18 AM rakesh_rai - 2010-10-18 9:16 AM
Tents Hard: Had to resort to Trial and Error. If someone can show a logical point to start the solve, that would be useful.
This tents puzzle actually started with no number clues in the first construction, and makes use of "too crowded if a tent goes this way" logic. The final version got some numbers to steer some of the bottom, and also to distract from the "no numbers" approach. Maybe this image will help you get started.
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debmohanty
Country : India | Very interesting use of too-crowded logic. A quick look at the green tree shows the cell the corresponding tent should be in.
The numbers given in the bottom were definitely distracting, because there were of no use to get the start. |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | motris - 2010-10-18 10:18 AMThis tents puzzle actually started with no number clues in the first construction, and makes use of "too crowded if a tent goes this way" logic. The final version got some numbers to steer some of the bottom, and also to distract from the "no numbers" approach. Maybe this image will help you get started. Thanks motris !! The puzzle solves very smoothly once I use this starting point - and it took hardly 2-3 minutes. Earlier, I was focusing more on the "4" column to get started. Perhaps that was an intended distraction. |
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debmohanty
Country : India | rakesh_rai - 2010-10-18 9:16 AM
Nurikabe Hard: Nice (not difficult). Initially, I thought the 44 was a printing error. But realized that 44 will actually start the puzzle and travel all over the world to finish the puzzle. It looked like a snake puzzle in some ways, where the length is given. In Nurikabe, it was interesting to notice (may be many solvers don't notice during the test ) that the easy puzzle had only 3s, the hard puzzle had only 4s and the mutant, obviously, had only 5s.
The Art of Puzzles? |
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debmohanty
Country : India | rakesh_rai - 2010-10-18 9:25 AM
I have a doubt. Didn't we decide earlier that the Last submitted correct answer timestamp would be used as a tiebreaker? But I see same rank given in case of ties. Yes, we had decided that.
For this test, we wanted to have a different tie breaker (#of mutants solved, then #of Hard solved, then #of Easy solved ). But we had not announced that before the test. So We removed all the tie-breakers and gave same rank for same points. But the table is still sorted by TimeTillLCS in case points are same.
Btw, I noticed that TimeTillLCS is 78 for you, which is way below others' TimeTillLCS in top 100 |
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Nikola
Posts: 103
Country : Serbia | Nikola posted @ 2010-10-18 12:11 PM Great puzzles, thanks Thomas! That's why people love your puzzles.
Pay attention to my time, I think that everything would be different if the test lasted 100 minutes. Mutant number crossword is "worthily" for the rest of the my time.
Nikola Zivanovic |
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shankarsudhir
Posts: 6
Country : India | I noticed that I've submitted the wrong column in the Hard ABC Connect (instead of column A , it's the one next to A to the right). Any chance to verify if that's correct and acceptable ?
Good set of puzzles. (esp the mutant versions)
-Sudhir |
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shankarsudhir
Posts: 6
Country : India | ignore my last post. Even with that, another mistake i made while submitting is with "E" instead of "C". No points for such carelessness :-)
Sudhir |
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vopani
Posts: 739
Country : India | vopani posted @ 2010-10-18 10:11 PM Puzzles were exceptionally good, fun to solve, and in a competitive environment.
I liked Nurikabe (Hard), Tents (Hard), ABC Connect (Mutant), Tents (Mutant) and Minesweeper (Mutants) as the best 5.
I kept going wrong in Number Skeleton (Mutant).
I loved the Hard Nurikabe. It had a nice simple logical solving pattern, but the puzzle was just too cute for me to solve without smiling :-)
Thanks Thomas, for the wonderful weekend :-) |
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MellowMelon
Country : United States | Boy is it a relief to hear how tough everyone found the Mutant Number Skeleton. It took me about twice as long to do as any other puzzle in the set during my testsolve, and I had to do trial and error. When I was told of the intended solution I figured I had just royally messed up, but it looks like I'm not the only one.
I commented to motris that experience solving nikoli puzzles, especially those that they publish online, would confer a substantial advantage for this test. Not surprising to see H.Jo win, with that in mind. |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2010-10-19 4:00 AM MellowMelon - 2010-10-19 1:10 AM
Boy is it a relief to hear how tough everyone found the Mutant Number Skeleton. It took me about twice as long to do as any other puzzle in the set during my testsolve, and I had to do trial and error. When I was told of the intended solution I figured I had just royally messed up, but it looks like I'm not the only one.
I commented to motris that experience solving nikoli puzzles, especially those that they publish online, would confer a substantial advantage for this test. Not surprising to see H.Jo win, with that in mind.
It was certainly the outlier in your times, but was actually one of Wei-Hwa's faster solves (under two minutes, in line with the Hard of the same type ). I figured it was the most high variance of the mutants, since the solve is so dependent on noticing a property of the number list and does not solve in any other way like brute force which can be applied on a lot of the other puzzles.
The key insight to the Number Skeleton mutant is to see that all the 6 digit numbers have digits strictly increasing from left-to-right. This means as you follow a path of five-cell entries from top-left to bottom-right, the digits along that entire path must also be strictly increasing, but this places a lot of constraints on the digits at the intersections, particularly the first digit of the entry going down the rightmost column. Along this thinking you should be able to get that the intersecting 3 cell entries are 131 and 615 and from those get the other 3 cell entries which will help complete the puzzle. Edited by motris 2010-10-19 4:00 AM
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vopani
Posts: 739
Country : India | vopani posted @ 2010-10-19 7:05 PM 6 Germans in top 10.
What do you have to say about that with WPC round the corner? ;-) |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | Rohan Rao - 2010-10-19 7:05 PM
6 Germans in top 10.
What do you have to say about that with WPC round the corner? ;-) At the WPC, there cannot be more than 4 in the top 10 |
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debmohanty
Country : India | rakesh_rai - 2010-10-19 7:46 PM
Rohan Rao - 2010-10-19 7:05 PM
6 Germans in top 10.
What do you have to say about that with WPC round the corner? ;-) At the WPC, there cannot be more than 4 in the top 10 Also, 3 of the four USA participants were involved in creating / testing the puzzles. |
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY | motris - 2010-10-18 6:42 AM
The simplest answer - on a test like this which was pretty well-timed given the test-solvers - is to ignore time bonus and use raw clock time to break ties. That, or a much steeper drop off of the partial value was certainly needed. The partial time bonus was included to address the possibility someone might finish very early, but with an error, as has happened on past tests but that was not really a factor here. Certainly worth more improvements before the next time.
alternatively, you can simply go back to the original plan and award the maximum bonus only in the case of 10/10 puzzle solved. This also considering how kind you have been in forgiving typing mistakes, this reduces the impact of wrong transcriptions.
stefano |
20/10 Puzzle Decathlon - LMI October Puzzle Test #2
