Logic Masters India announces March Puzzle Test — Hybrids

Author : Bram de Laat

Date : 12^th and 13^th March

Length : 120 minutes

IB and Submission Link : Here

Puzzle Types : 10 common types and their Hybrids. And one "Xtra Puzzles Section"

Notes about Corral - As mentioned in the IB, Normal corral includes the cell itself. The puzzle has been changed it here to keep in line with the seethrough to avoid counting mistakes.

Small revision in the Instruction booklet for the Star Battle Answer Key instructions. It now reads correctly how to enter the answer key: Enter the rows and/or columns where the size 2 and 3 ships lie.

for OUTSIDE SKYSCRAPER SUDOKU doesn't the clue tells about that particular row/column which indicates??
Check out the clue "1 4".
1 says its in the 2X3 box and the 4 tells about the skyscraper.
so 1 should be present in that column and the corresponding 2X3 box...
but it is not....

Between 1 and 4, you've to determine which one is Skyscraper clue and which one is Outside clue. It is written in the instructions. This process is part of solving.

Instructions in Chinese - http://www.sudokufans.org.cn/forums/index.php?showtopic=234 - Thanks to Minfang Lin

Looking forward to this test :)

I did not understand 'Dice' and 'Alphanumeric Dice'.

The rules are that each puzzle has a set of 6-sided dice. Either 3 or 4 Dice.

For Dice. On each die there are 6 letters, one on each side/face. All letters are different. The example puzzle has 3 die, so a total of 18 letters. When you were to roll the dice, 3 letters will show on top, one from each die. The given words all thus have a letter from each die. You have to figure out which 6 letters are on each die, so that the given words can be rolled using those 3 dice.
The actual puzzle will have 4 dice, so a total of 24 letters.

Alphanumeric dice has basically the same premise, except now each die has a letter and a digit from 1-6 on each side/face. Each die will have each digit from 1-6 once, like a normal die. The 3 die puzzle again has 18 different letters. The 4 die puzzle has 24 different letters.
Now if you were to roll the dice, 4 letters and 4 digits will show on top. In this puzzle you are given the 4 letters rolled and the sum of those 4 digits (just like in the ABC puzzle). Now you have to figure out which letter and digit are on the 6 sides/faces of each die, so that the given words can be rolled with the given sums.
(ps. you can check the last icon from the banner to visualise how such a die would look)

I hope this is clearer. If not, can you let me know what exactly you don't understand. It's different from the regular puzzles as it's not a grid based puzzle, it's a logic based puzzle though.

Edited by Para 2011-03-08 10:49 PM

Rohan, See the logo ( the last of the 6 boxes) for example of how an Alphanumeric die would look like.

Ok. Thanks, I understood the puzzle now.

The instruction says 'You have a set of 3 dice' and then it says '...that are rolled with those 4 dice', so I felt I was missing something. I assume the 4 dice is for the actual puzzle, whereas the example has 3 dice.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Sorry, that seems to be a typo. I'll have it fixed.

We've release the Myopia genre on puzzlepicnic. I had come across this genre once on a slitherlink site, hadn't been aware of this puzzletype before. (If anyone has, sorry for the name mix-up). There's an extra rule in the puzzlepicnic rules. There won't be any of the white arrows/lines in the competition puzzles.

http://puzzlepicnic.com/genre?myopia (there's a link to all puzzles at the bottom).

Thanks for the link Bram. Myopia is probably not as common as most other variants that you've.
The 2 puzzles by you at puzzlepicnic should serve as good practice.

I have some doubts about this test and I would like to remove it:

D3/4. Sea Battle
You say: '...so that in every row, column and boldly marked area exactly 2 ships appear.' I think it is impossible if you have at least one 3-cell ship. I would like to make everything clear here.

E3/4. Pentopia
If we looking in the T-line in the example, the closest penta is placed diagonally. So, I assume that there will be no diagonal lines in the grid. Am I right?

X1. Dice and X3/4. Alphanumeric Dice
It might be useful here to show an example with the solving steps.

I hope this will be a nice test, especially I like sudoku variations.

Thanks!

Nikola

Edited by Nikola 2011-03-10 1:50 PM

In the meantime I figured out the rules for D3/4. Sea Battle puzzle.

Nikola

Ok.
Regarding "E3/4. Pentopia", there won't be any diagonal lines.

Just in case anyone else has the same questions.


It's 2 ships per row/column and boldly marked areas, not ship parts. So a size 2, 3 or 4 ship in a row/column counts as one.


It's only in horizontal and vertical directions. The same goes for myopia.



Well I can give you an opening step and you figure out the rest. It might help you get an idea of the solving techniques involved.
DICE example:
From BED - AND - PEA you can determine this. D must be on the same die as one of PEA, but can't go with either A or E, so it must go with P. You can now also figure out how to distribute the letters ABEN with these words.

Alphanumeric Dice Example:
|NOD 5-YES 6-CAR 7| are 9 different letters that add to 18, so they all have to be either accompanied by a 1,2 or 3 on their side/face as this is the minimum you can have. When you now combine ABC and Dice techniques, you should get to the solution.

Puzzle booklet uploaded. It has 13 pages including the cover page (with points table)

You can view your score after completing the test.

If you didn't get points for any puzzle because you entered in wrong format, please
post a reply here
OR
send a PM to Bram
OR
to me

Please don't post full / part of solution. Just the puzzle name.

Thanks for a fun test. One of the first competitions I've avoided making a mistake on. I figured I was going to have a hard time given how much trouble the examples gave me, but I was happy to exceed my own expectations at least. Still probably not incredibly well given how much time was spent staring at Sudoku, which is generally not a good use of time for me.

Another awesome test, another idiotic mistake for me. (I assumed the entry rules for all the dice puzzles were the same, and alphabetized them all.)Thanks to Bram and everyone.

Excellent puzzles...I liked both the sea battles the most. Thanks Bram.

And, probably inspired by Akash, I wasted close to half an hour in the end.

Very nice puzzles, well done Bram. I particularly loved the Pentopia puzzles, hope to see more of them in the future

Marcin

Very nice puzzles, so I enjoyed two hours. Thank you for Bram!

By the way, in Japan where I am from, many people are suffering from the earthquakes and tsunami which happend on March 11th.
I live in Tokyo which is far from the hypocenter, so there is little damage around me.

From the Internet and so on, I heard the news that so many people are anxious about the present circumstances in Japan all over the world.
I appreciate for the care from other countries. And I think that it is happy that I solve the puzzles as usual.

Thank you for reading.

Kota

Hi Kota, Thank you for kind update about the quake and tsunami. What we gather from internet and newspapers is that it is really devastating.
We can just pray and hope for well-being of everyone there.

Also read from deu's blog that he had to walk few miles from his office to home. Hope everything is well there too.

Deb

I enjoyed this test very much, and managed to complete 6 puzzles (which for me is good) - I am not yet practised enough to solve fast.
Unfortunately, I made a typo in one entry, and a mistake in the puzzle for another... the worst thing was my final puzzle tht I submitted with about 1:30 to go (according to the counter) didn't get accepted :(

However, I will be taking the remaining puzzles to solve on the train - I usually give uncompleted puzzles to my 4 yo to draw on. So in that regard, this is probably the best (most suited to my puzzle interests) LMI I have attempted (even though I did enjoy some of the other ones).

It is unlikely that the 'counter' ran slowly (90 seconds is a lot of time), so I would tend to think that it could be a connectivity issue.
Thanks for participating in this test (and other tests too). Glad that you enjoy these tests.

I won't be able to do the test but it seems amazing.
Thanks for this posibility.
I'm from Argentina and we are so far away of this level, but I try anyway.
Thanks again and best wishes to Japan.

It was delightful test! I had a lot fun. :) Thank you very much. I could be make better, but in any case this result enough for me. Thank you very much again, Bram.

Liked the test very much but I'm not a big fan of bonus points of this kind. It makes the difference between stronger and weaker solvers even bigger without any upside I'm aware of. Especially regarding the Puzzle rating of LMI it might have an undesired effect...

Beautiful puzzles Bram. Thoroughly enjoyed the test... :-)

Hi,

I've just solved a few grids. I didn't read the instruction booklet before beginning, just look at puzzle types, and I wanted to do some. But those I solved were very good. So I think other ones were good, too

I just asked myself a quick question: why bonus are bigger (more %) for easy puzzles and smaller for hard puzzles? Instinctively I would have done the opposite (or just the same rate) and I can't understand what is the logic of that. (Just for my curiosity )

Thanks

Fred

Edited by Fred76 2011-03-14 4:44 AM

Connectivity is entirely likely to be the issue, I have recently noticed that sometimes it takes 2 or 3 attempts to reach a webpage... but haven't had issues once I get there. (I think it is time to change ISP)

Hello all,

I had a quick question (that might be a FAQ)-- I was able to register for this site but when I typed in my login ID and password and country then clicked "login" to start taking the test, basically nothing happened except the login button disabled. Also, I did not receive a code to open the puzzle pdf. I'm a beginner, so maybe I did something wrong?

Definitely strange. If you are doing what you mentioned, that is the correct step to login.
From the database I see that your country is still empty.

So, basically, fill Login Id, password, and country. And click on Login. It is very surprising when you say "Login" button is disabled, but you also "Clicked on" it.
Is your password single character or 2 characters?

Thank you for the quick response! Ah, my password uses upper case letters, lower case letters, and numbers. It is 8 characters long. I will try to go to my profile and update my country, thanks for pointing out that it is empty.

The country can be updated from the test page itself, so that is not the issue.
Anyway - this test will be over now (in few seconds) - but you can still fix the login problem and get set for the next test.

Post here or send me a PM, if you still face issues.

Now that full results are out, it appears that the Extra section did in fact count for everyone. In page 2 of the instruction booklet it says that section would only count if 18 puzzles were solved correctly. Was that changed? It didn't affect the standings at the top since no one worked on them, but for the past few days I've been baffled by the solving statistics on those puzzles, when no one ever had more than 18 puzzles solved.

Just that players didn't read the very details in the IB. As many as 10 players have solved (correctly) X1 dice. I'm not sure how to deal with this. Giving them 0 for something they spent time on is probably harsh.
I'll discuss with Bram and decide something soon. But as you mentioned, the top 10 does not change.

We still need to finish the manual checking for all the puzzles for possible credits.

But the top 10 results are already checked, so the winners for Puzzle Hybrids are deu, MellowMelon and motris - Congratulations.

Thank you everyone for participating.

Many thanks to Bram for the good puzzles.
This is my best result, but I missed the medal, maybe next time.
Unfortunately I choosed the Sea battle, what just 3 people could solve, and i got 70 points instead of the hard Worm sudoku. And I made an other mistake too.

I have a suggestion for the authors.
In my opinion in this test and in the last month the answer system was too difficult.
You should use Serkan's answer system. Choose some rows and the answer is the number of squares in the connecting blocks. For instance in the slitherlink's example the first row is 21. This is more easier than counting the cells in EVERY ROW.
And you could use this system in A2, A3, maybe B1, D2, D3, E1!!!, E2,E3!!!
An uniform system is better than 10 differents answer format.

My favourite puzzles in this set:
Star battle, Sea battle easy, and the two Pentopia. It is a very good penta variation. I will use it on the WPC ;)
The X1 and X3 puzzles are really good too. Unfortunately I could solve them just after the test :)

Finally, I congratulate the best solvers.

Edited by Valezius 2011-03-14 6:42 AM

Solutions Booklet is uploaded here

That is very good point Zoltan.
I think it is also important for us to have some kind of uniform "answer keys" across the monthly tests. [ for example, all loop kind of puzzles should have same answering system across all tests ]

Nice Puzzles.........although difficult from my standards.......but happy with my result. Congrats to all the winners.........and to Bram for excellent set of Puzzles......
ABC was very interesting and cud solve it after the test was over.

It was a very good and innovative set of puzzles.
Initially was a bit frightened but (as Melllow Melon has already pointed out) the competition diagrams were probably easier than those in the instrution booklet.
Congratulations to the solvers and thanks to the author and the organizers.
Also my best wishes to the Japanese players and to their country in this difficult moment.
stefano

ABC was an awesome puzzle! Unfortunately, it ate through 45 minutes of my time. (I feel proud to have solved this one, though)
Great puzzles.

Edited by ksun48 2011-03-14 5:19 PM

I had at least three reading comprehension failures on the test. If my score for one of the extra puzzles doesn't count, I really have no one to blame but myself.

However, in the future, I'd rather not have puzzles on the test that I'm not supposed to solve. At the very least, they should be a separate PDF.

So, my first try at designing a test is over. It was interesting to see what happens behind the scenes. It was a fun experience for me and glad to see people enjoyed the test too. Thanks for the comments, they are appreciated.

Congrats to Deu for finishing first and MellowMelon and Motris also finishing on the podium.

A little bit too bad no-one managed to solve all puzzles. I guess working with the same puzzle types eventually leads to a bit of an underestimation of the difficulty. Many puzzles were second draft. Many of the first draft pzzles were much harder than what you some solved now. Especially the Hard Corral, Hard Worm Sudoku and Seethrough were made easier. That might be part of the reason I underestimated the total solving time in the end.

The solving stats are mostly what I expected. I had anticipated that the Hard Worm Sudoku, Outside Skyscraper and Sea Battle would probably get the least solves. I am a bit confused on the low solve rate for the Seethrough. I can only guess that the logic involved wasn't properly grabbed. I'll try to show later how the design was supposed to go.
The outside skyscraper, it could have been a bit too hard. When looking at some solving entries, this puzzle might have hold up some puzzlers and prevented the solving from some other puzzles. The logic path should have probably have been a bit less restricted.
The Hard worm Sudoku got the amount of solves I had guessed. At first I had made 9by9 grids. They work but were just too hard for the test. It was probably because 18 clues on a jigsaw sudoku already pretty tough, let alone with an unknown grid at the start.
The low solve on the Sea Battle Hard might have also been the missing of some logic. The easy sea battle has a minimal structure: N/2 areas for N ships. This forces no ships to cross any bold borders. The Hard one, like the example, is the other way around. There are 14 areas for 28 ship parts. This forced all ships to only lay across bold borders as each area had 2 ship parts from 2 different ships. This logic severely limits the amount of places the size 4 ships can go. This was picked up by the testers, so didn't think it would be a problem. I'm not sure if this was the actual problem when solving, but it's my best thought as these are really the key realisations you have to have about the genre.

I also expected the puzzle ratings to be about the same. My own favourite hybrids to make were the Pentopia, Outside Skyscraper Sudoku and Worm Sudoku. I understand the Alphanumeric Dice puzzles might not everyone's favourite, but it's just a type of puzzle I always enjoy solving.

Some comment answers.

The reason there was a bonus section was obviously that the test was intended to have 6 sections for 24 puzzles. The second to last draft still had this and I thought it might be okay at first, but especially with the ABC in the one section I figured it might be too much. The ABC isn't very speedsolving friendly because of the sum sizes. I thought the hybrid was a good way to use the logic in a more speedsolving friendly way as the sums are much smaller. After seeing where the problems with MellowMelon's test lay, I was pretty much convinced it would be too long. I wasn't 100% sure how to adjust things though as I liked to have this section in the test in some way, because it was different from the puzzles normally seen in puzzle tests. They are both variants that are featured in Breinbrekers, but not seen much anywhere else. Eventually after some dicussion with Deb, we decided to build in this section as a bonus section instead of a time bonus. We both felt it was a section that did add something extra to the test. It might have been a bit smarter to make the section more clearly marked as being a bonus section in the Puzzle Booklet. This was sadly only realised when we saw that people started solving the puzzles. I decided to still award the points to people who solved them as they didn't affect the top standings.

As for the bonus system, one of the intentions was to get people to also attack the hybrids as solving the hybrids gets you more points when you've already solved a few regular puzzles on that side. I went with percentage bonus to give people more bonus for solving higher scored puzzles. The percentage discrepancy was done because I felt otherwise the total bonus for the lefthand side would turn out too low. Now the total acchievable bonus for the lefthand side was 140 points and for the righthand side 225. I thought these totals were about right, found 105 a bit too little for the lefthand side and 300 a bit too much for the righthand side.

Some puzzles could have probably done with some easier answer keys, but I somewhat wanted to have answer keys that force you as much as possible to have to solve the whole puzzle. Sometimes this does make the answer key a bit more diffcult than it needs to be. For the Loop puzzles I just borrowed the answer structure used in FLIP. The Sea Battle I didn't go for the size 1 ships as they didn't weren't really the end of the solving path.

And I'll think about including some easier examples in the instruction booklet next time. They just ended up being some interesting smaller designs I came up with while testing the puzzle types and wanted people to see them.

Lastly

Some last puzzle related comments. The original ABC design didn't include the Sweden and Norway sums. So if you haven't tried it yet and want a bit more of a challenge for it, you can remove those two sums and tackle it that way. Also I wanted to point somethign out about the Outside Sudoku Design. If you look at the top clues you'll come across 4|8|32|3|16|48|2|9|18. If you look at them per three, you'll see that 4x8=32, 3x16=48 and 2x9=18. You can do this on all four sides of the puzzle.

I tried a bunch more hybrids, but eventually thought these were the ones which I could make the nicest puzzles with, while incorporating things from both puzzle types into one puzzle. One other combination that worked well is using both Myopia and Slitherlink clues in the same grid. It can help take out some uniqueness issues from Myopia and steer clear from some regular slitherlink patterns. But I thought the Pentopia was a nicer one in the end.

The unused puzzles that are supported on puzzlepicnic, will appear there in the upcoming weeks. I will also post some leftover designs there from the Hybrids there.you can check them out there in case you're interested in them.

Edited by Para 2011-03-15 2:02 AM

Brilliant puzzles from Bram.You always make great ones.It is a pity i attempted it without a printer.I loved the star battle construction.Fences was far straight-forward,though it looks nice.
You should keep organizing more of these.

And yes,dice isnt one of the liked ones.Some of us,including me,probably didnt even try to look at it.

hi, great puzzles. however i think pentopia hard puzzle is wrong. in the down right corner, "-" does not equalise U and L shapes. there is no way to put L shape. it is wrong in the solution booklet too. the puzzle is still solvable until 2 or 3 shapes left, but it is so.

Edited by tuz 2011-03-16 5:38 AM

The sign in R5C11 and R9C10 aren't same.
The sign of R5C11 shows to right and left, and the other one points at left only.
So the official solution is correct

alright now i see it. it is not full but half of a line. ok now it has a solution : ) but admit, it is a little unclear, i spent 20 minutes to find out where i did go wrong. but for different shapes, different colours can be used. maybe print outs won't show, however a lot of people use photo editor. it could be better. anyway thanks for the reply. and one more thanks for the puzzles.

Posted some of the remainders here.

http://puzzlepicnic.com/community/posts/list/1342.page