Hi, can you please tell me, what mean "two" numbers in Odd Even Queen Sudoku? Or at least schow in solution where this Queens are? Thanks

In the 6x6 example, the "odd" queen is 1 and the "even" queen is 6.
In the 9x9 example, the "odd" queen is 5 and the "even" queen is 6.
No two queens of the same parity are on the same row, column or diagonal.

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Anti Knight Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

Very nice sudokus. The 9x9 variants were challenging but had nice solve paths.

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Odd Even Bridge Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Anti Knight Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

My printer is a lack of yellow and therefore it didn't print the shaded squares and circles, odd-even bridges and consecutive bars. The gridlines came out perfectly. I had to redraw everything. Is it solvable issue? Maybe there should be 2 files - one with darker areas and solver can choose which one to pick.

But I know this is actually my problem. Have redrawing everithing since 2 gp rounds back already. Maybe I should buy new yellow toner.

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Odd Even Queen Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Anti Knight Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth too much or too little

Very nice set of sudokus which I feel will definitely improve the skill set when I complete everything after the test. Thanks to the authors :)

In my opinion, all puzzles were towards the fairly difficult side. I felt consecutive deserves way more than the 10 points allocated. This was the most difficult consecutive I came across.

Then came a moment that I felt, if this has the lowest point allocated among the variants, then every other puzzle would be difficult.

Did not attempt 9 of the 18 sudokus. Its a good thing I came to know that I have so many things to learn and improve myself after this performance.

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Consecutive Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

The quality of the sudokus was great, but I felt the sudokues were a bit on the harder side. I got stuck in the Antiknight for too long (still couldn't finish it) which ruined my test. These are perfect puzzles for untimed solving. Thanks Harmeet and Ramesh for the test!

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Odd Even Bridge Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little

Thank you Harmeet and Ramesh for this test.
Was cruising along until i hit the Anti Knight,which was like a brick wall in my path.
Broke the consecutive 3 times and that doomed this round for me.
I didnt like the quality of the puzzles: being forced to guess on many, and especially Anti Knight felt more like a machine generated sudoku. I felt the difficulty was slightly above normal, but acceptably so.
I felt 15 points for Odd even bridge was too much, and that AK could have had more points.
Favourite is probably the Odd Even Bridge 9*9 and the Odd even Queen 6*6

Thank you

Spotting a naked single in r2c5 is crucial in the Anti-Knight. It is nice logic but such narrow steps tend to cause high variance in contests :)

Thanks for a fun contest btw Harmeet and Ramesh. My favourites were the Consecutive 9*9 and the Odd Even Bridge 9*9.

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Below Average
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Odd Even Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little

Thanks Harmeet and Ramesh for the contest and to Rakesh for the tremendous effort being put round after round.

Anti-Knight took me far too longer than I could have even dreamed.I had to guess on a guess to finish it and it was only due to my lucky stars that I was able to complete it despite bifurcating twice.

When I started on it, I spent around 15 mins and I could hardly see anything logical.After getting stuck, I waited and waited and waited .......for the logic to strike.Nothing came off it.So I guessed on that and even with the guess, I was stuck again.At this point, I decided to move on to salvage some points and tackle it later.

The next debacle came in the form of 10 pointer consecutive. Pushed for time (and a little irritated too) by this point after seeing nothing for a few minutes, I ventured out with a guess on consecutive also.The guess was "kind" enough to lead me to a no solution only after I solved about 60% of the sudoku.So I had to erase completely and again more time wasted than necessary on a mere 10 pointer.

Overall, it feels as if I don't deserve the points that I landed up as my solve in consecutive was completely crappy and my AK solve too wasn't upto the mark and thats what hurts.I guessed on a lot of sudokus.Perhaps, I should have sticked to my strategy and guessed in AK too right at the start somewhere.Also, I felt consecutive & perhaps AK too deserved more points than allotted.

To sum up, a contest I couldn't enjoy much because of the difficulty and the randomness in the solve paths.But seeing the result board tells me a different story and the poor show may entirely be due to my own shorcomings.

Favourites are Odd Even and Classics.

The alternative is to force your printer to print in greyscale only. Ideally the PDF should be set up like this already so that the user doesn't even have to think about it, rather than saved with any kind of colour profile.

I welcome the lighter shades of grey in the files!

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Anti Knight Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Odd Even Queen Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

Too hard to quantify how good this set is. A very well-balanced set and top quality sudokus. Enjoyed every one of them.

Favourites: 6x6 Odd Even Queen, 6x6 Odd Even Bridge, 9x9 Classic 1

Thanks Harmeet and Ramesh!

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Consecutive Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

A really good set of puzzles. My favourites were Consecutive and OE Queen 9x9s. Really awesome constructs. I felt the AK could have had a few more points considering the very narrow path. Like Prasanna said, if you get R2C5 then puzzle opens up nicely, if not then you are left staring at the grid. Fortunately or unfortunately, I did not get the number directly and made a guess once I had narrowed it down to 2 possibilities. Am glad made the right choice.

It is really heartening to see such great quality puzzles.Awesome job Harmeet and Ramesh.

Edited by purifire 2020-05-04 2:34 PM

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Odd Even Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

Thanks Ramesh and Harmeet for giving good quality puzzles

Hi sir/madam
after the test has been completed before 90 mins i have clicked submit all answers i don't know whether it has been taken or not. can you confirm it?

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many medium difficult puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Classic Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

You can check the Score page and it seems your answers have been submitted.

I had been trying to set things up for some days and had changed couple of browsers in the process. But the Start button does not show even for active running contests.
In some it says Plugin not supported and in others it does not even show anything. Could you please tell is it java applet plugin which is being used or something else like Flash?

All sudokus were very good... enjoyed them all and yes they were on a difficult side as compared to other SM rounds... but very good mind boggling sudokus... We need such sudokus sometimes.
My favourites are antiknight, consecutive, and OE queen
Thank you Harmeet and Ramesh for such interesting sudokus

Edited by Bansalpooja.b 2020-05-04 10:55 PM

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Odd Even Bridge Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

Flash

These are nice sudokus; but in a competition, I think it is way too difficult.
Once the difficulty reaches a certain threshold, it becomes more beneficial to guess.
For example; hacking at the Antiknight and coming to dead-ends might still be faster than trying to find R2C5 (which I didn't see).
Or in my case, choosing one of the main early branches [2,4 in R5C1,R5C9] of the OE Bridge still allowed me to finish in time despite trying out all the wrong steps in the wrong path earlier on.

These grids would be fun to try to find logical paths to, but in a race, there's just no time for that.
Thanks for the puzzles again! Nicely made.

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Classic Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Odd Even Queen Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

The set of puzles were quite good, though I felt many of the variant 9*9 puzzles were tough

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many medium difficult puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Anti Knight Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many medium difficult puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Consecutive Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little

Since I neither had a printer nor a mouse at home, i had to copy the digits for 9x9 sudokus and draw the grids for 6x6. That took a lot of time since I had forgotten to mark the answer keys and had to scroll up and down for marking them. I started with 9x9 classics . On the variants side, I started with consecutive , couldnt proceed after some initial digits. Then I was completely stuck in anti knight. To my bad luck , I broke the odd even as well. I even logged out when around 25 minutes were left. Then I thought of submitting the classics I had solved and also attempting some 6x6 sudokus. The test was definitely one of the hardest that I have seen in Sudoku Mahabharat.

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Odd Even Bridge Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little

I am seeing that SM2020 is on harder side except first round which was well balanced.
I genuinely feel that for this round is really on harder side specially, Antiknight which looked laborious to me unless I missed some obvious better deductions.
Overall puzzle qualities if I see are very good but may not fit SM theme.
Thanks Harmeet and Ramesh.

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Odd Even Queen Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

Really nice test, enjoyed the puzzles, puzzle quality was really nice, although I broke / got stuck on almost all the 9x9s and thus didn't score well at all. Hope to catch up in the last round a bit! Thanks Harmeet and Ramesh! Lovely construction :) also very heartwarming to see one more tribute to Shaheer :)
Thank you!

Edited by priyambhushan 2020-05-07 5:31 AM

Congratulations to Prasanna Seshadri, Tiit Vunk and Seungjae Kwak for taking the top three places, well ahead of the fourth placed participant.

Thanks to the 337 participants from 41 countries. Veronika Kolvekova (Slovakia) was the first to start the test and Rajani Rokade (India) was the last person to start the test. 29 participants completed the set within the allotted time, and 318 participants (94.36%) scored non-zero points. The median score of the test was 37.

Top 3 for countries with 10+ participants:

India(124): Rohan Rao, Rishi Puri and Ashish Kumar (2nd-4th)
Japan(21): Kota Morinishi, Endo Ken and Hideaki Jo
Poland(18): Piotr Gdowski, zbych and Tomasz Strozak
USA (17): Jason Zuffranieri, Walker Anderson and Jenna Rivet
Germany(16): Michael Ley, Robert Vollmert and Laje6
France(16): Timothy Doyle, Anne Limoges and Yannick Meyapin
Italy(16): Laura Tarchetti, Matteo Testa and Paolo Tivano
Slovakia (10): Katarina Simonovicova, Natalia Chanova and Marek Kasar

Thanks Ramesh Swarnakar and Harmeet Singh for the sudokus!

Participants may share feedback on the results page and rate the puzzles on the contest page.

The Solution Booklet is now available here.

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Odd Even Queen Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Odd Even Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little

To start with we would like to thanks everyone who participated in the contest. We would further like to congratulate Prasanna Seshadri, Tiit Vunk & Seungjae Kwak for taking the overall top three places amongst the 337 participants and Rohan Rao, Rishi Puri & Ashish Kumar for bagging the next 3 positions amongst the 124 Indian participants.

We got mixed feedback regarding the quality of puzzles and their difficulty level. But overall, the general feeling was that the sudokus were hard. We agree. But our sole aim was to give good but challenging sudokus to everyone. Odd-Even Bridge-2 (9x9) has seen the least submissions. Interesting to note that the original Odd-Even Bridge-2 had lesser number of givens and while finalizing we decided to add few more givens to ease it. But still it turned out to be the least submitted Sudoku. The Odd-Even-2 (9x9) was made easier by adding more clues than what original was having because that is one variant which almost everyone likes whether the solver is a newcomer or an expert. While in the process of finalizing the sudokus for the contest we felt that Antiknight-2 (9x9), even though hard, can remain as it is. It was certainly hard but logically solvable and has some nice deductions which everyone will agree with. A walkthrough for solving the Antiknight-2 has already been uploaded in the site which will provide better insight to it. We felt that Consecutive-2 (9x9) was comparatively easier and can’t be compared with the difficulty of Antiknight-2. But, yes, with respect to points distribution it appears Consecutive-2 and Anti Knight-2 deserved more points than allotted. This is in the retrospective. May be we need collective results of more test solvers while point allotment.

Nevertheless, we will keep the overall feedback in mind and try our best to provide good and interesting sudokus. We would like to thank LMI for giving us the opportunity to author this round of Sudoku Mahabharat 2020. Once again we thank you all for participating in this wonderful event. Last but not the least, we would like to thank Rakesh Rai, who has been so supportive and patient to make this contest happen.

One more thing, though painful & heartening, we would like to remember our beloved friend and great Sudoku enthusiast, Shaheer Rehman, who is no more with us. But we will always remember him and hence would like to dedicate Anti-Knight 2 and Odd-Even Queen 2 sudokus to him. These are our favourite sudokus as an author of SM Round5 2020.

Thanks & Regards

Harmeet & Ramesh

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Odd Even Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little

A very creative and great idea, I think your idea will be implemented and invented many other ideas.