Dates: 14-20 August
Author - Prasanna Seshadri
IB - Coming on 11th August

For puzzle 18 (Clock Faces Loop The Loop), it seems that the direction of the path is left to be determined by the solver, yes?

That is correct, and I had even meant to add that in there on the recommendation of one of the test solvers and forgot to. It'll be added in the version with the points distribution.

Does the Even Sandwich Sudoku in the IB have a solution? Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like the odd numbers can be placed in columns 5 and 6, which then results in a contradiction in row 3 about where the 5 can/must be placed (no 1 outside clue -> R3C4 must be odd -> must be 5, but then the 5 outside clue can't be satisfied).

EDIT: Oh, I just realized the solutions are at the end. Am I misunderstanding the rules and the solution is valid, or is the puzzle incorrect?

Edited by ghirsch 2020-08-12 11:36 AM

Ouch, you are right. Sorry about this, it is an error. It'll be fixed soon. The clue in R3 should be a 5 1.

This is fixed now.



This is added to the rules now.

Is the even sandwich sudoku in the IB supposed to have multiple solutions or did I do something wrong? Because unless I'm really missing something, there seems to be multiple possible ways to place the even digits on the grid in that puzzle, and not enough information to lead to a unique solution. (for example, I got a valid solution that would yield a solution code of 453621, 235641)

Yes. It looks like I have forgotten two givens in the grid looking at my notebook. Without those it is impossible to resolve 4 and 6 in any way in the grid. A fix will be added shortly. Sorry for the error, thanks for pointing it out!

Really fun, fast-paced test! I liked how the puzzles were divided into sets of sudoku variant / classic / classic variant. Nice puzzles all around!

Favorites:
09 Non-Consecutive Nanro
12 Odd-Even Fillomino
15 Skyscraper Snake
21 Diagonal Kurotto
30 Irregular Doppelblock Yajilin

I really enjoyed this, aside from my inability to count the lengths of loop solutions. :) Great puzzles Prasanna!

Thank you Prasanna for a very engaging set both from this world and the other! My favorites were Irregular Doppelblock, Non-Consecutive Nanro, and Even sandwich Sudoku.
It a great set keeping in mind there is something for everyone, at the same time retaining high quality!

Thanks, Prasanna for this great test. Most of the puzzles were solvable logically. It contained all the difficulty levels from very easy to very hard puzzles. Thanks once again for this wonderful test.

I am new in this forum. I was trying to open PUIII Pb but it is password protected. How do i know what is the pwrd?

It is suggested to read the FAQ - https://logicmastersindia.com/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=381

But short answer is, when you click the start button, a timer will start counting down from 90 minutes and you will see the password which you can copy and open the PDF with. After that, you have 90 minutes to solve and submit as much as you can. It is also recommended that you view the Instruction booklet first, understand all the rules and answer key codes, and then start the contest.

Thanks Walker, Will, Harmeet and Rajesh :) I'm glad you all enjoyed the contest!

Thanks Prasanna and LMI team for another enjoyable contest and also for extending the deadline, otherwise I would not have been able to participate.

Looks like I misunderstood the rules of two puzzles which made it very difficult (impossibly) for me to solve. Anyway, nice mixture of sudoku and puzzles from both universes. I wish to see the next part of this saga, maybe with some more valuable sudoku puzzles.

Thanks to all 188 participants, especially the participants who were taking part in a Puzzle test for the first time!

Congratulations to the Top three - Endo Ken, Walker Anderson and Freddie Hand - and the other seven participants who finished all 30 puzzles within the time.

Among participants from India, Congratulations to Swaroop Guggilam for the top score and Amit Sowani, Ashish Kumar and Kishore Kumar for positions 2-4 (separated by six points).

Among mini-Sudokus, Irregular Doppelblock proved to be the toughest. Among mini-Puzzzles, Hohle was the toughest by a distance. Among combo puzzles, Palindrome-Hohle proved to be the toughest.

The Solution Booklet is now available here.

Thanks Prasanna Seshadri for this interesting test.

Thank you to everyone who participated. I (we?) hope you enjoyed the contest. If you haven't yet, please vote in the other forum topic - https://logicmastersindia.com/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=2753 . It will help us in knowing how useful the Penpa feature was. Feel free to comment on that topic about shortcomings if any that you'd like to see improved if at all we do this again in a future contest.

Congratulations to all the winners.

This is meant for everyone, but especially those Sudoku solvers who gave a puzzle contest a go for the first time, please feel free to try the puzzles at leisure as well and post your doubts here on rules or ways to approach the puzzles.

My experience on this one was a weird one. I had some puzzles ready, and I didn't have any overall theme that I was happy with. I ended up scrapping the whole idea, discarding the puzzles and redoing the contest to have A) Minis that would be good for beginners, B) a tie-in to Sudoku, and C) the theme through the contest for the 6x6s. Overall I'm happy with how it turned out, and I thank Murat especially for his quick uniqueness-check testing and feedback so that I could get this ready in very short time.

The other testers as credited on the Instruction booklet, had their strengths and weaknesses with regards to Sudoku vs other puzzle types, and that made it a bit more difficult than usual to assign points. I generally erred on the side of thinking "Its ok if Sudokus are overvalued a little because this is a puzzle contest that neeedn't account for 'Sudoku specialists'". I hope that worked and gave solvers an accurate experience.