Logic Masters India announces June Puzzle Test — Fillomino Fillia

Authors : Grant Fikes (mathgrant) & Palmer Mebane (mellowmelon)

Dates : 4th and 5th June

Length : 120 minutes

IB and Submission Link : here

Grant and Palmer promise to provide a preview series for Fillimino-Fillia. So keep checking their blogs for more practice materials and may be few strategy to solve some types.

Grant has already posted some dos and don'ts about the test!

For Cipher Fillomino, is it necessary that the numbers are in the range 1-N or can A-D represent any combination of numbers (eg 2,3,4,6)

There is no restriction on the letters. They can be anything as long as the same letters are the same value and different letters are different values. So 2,3,4,6 would be possible.

The preview series has started - check Classic Fillomino and Shape Fillomino

After Classic Sudoku, and then Classic Tapa, and now Classic Fillomino, I wonder how many types will be prefixed by Classic in the future!!

hey
in EVEN ODD
i think it can have multiple solution..
the 8 at r2c3 and 1 at r2c4 can be interchanged.

If that switch were made it would violate the even-odd constraint. The 1 on R2C3 would not be connected to the other odd numbers (touching at a corner does not count).

ok , that's what i didnt understood the rule properly.
now its clear after reading this.
thank you.

Can anybody help out how to start the cipher fillomino.?

Walkthrough for the Cipher example:
-- From the top left A, you can determine that A is at most 2.
-- From the pair of As in the third column, you know A is at least 2. So A = 2. All of the given As can be finished easily.
-- From the bottom right D, you know D is at most 2. Since A is already 2, we have D = 1.
-- R5C4 is adjacent to completed 1 and 2 polyominoes, so it is at least 3. Hence it is C (whatever value that is).
-- Both B and C is at least 3 since we already have 1 or 2. So the Cs in R4-5C4 must extend up to R3C4 and connect to the C on R3C3. The B on R2C2 also extends down and traps the four Cs. Hence C = 4.
-- From the top right corner, we know B is at most 4. 1,2,4 are all taken, so B = 3.
-- The rest of the puzzle finishes like a simple classic would.

mathgrant has posted several full-size Cipher Fillominoes on his blog already, so you might consider doing some of them for practice on full-size ones, not to mention the Cipher in the preview series that will be posted later.

Preview series part 2 - Odd Even and Greater Than

Okay, I might be the only one, but I didn't understand what you meant with enter the units digits per square until I saw the answer keys for the practise puzzles. I think you might want to clarify that a little, because it isn't explained anywhere in the booklet and the practise puzzles don't have multi-digit numbers. I haven't ever heard this term before to mean the last digit of a number. Maybe it's some mathematical term, but as I'm not an English native speaker or done any mathematics after highschool, it's not something I have ever come across.

Sorry about that. Would it help to refer to it as the last digit as well? The edited text would read "Enter the units digit (last digit) of each square's number..."

Preview series part 3 of 4 - Cipher and Sum

Today's preview series looks difficult...I haven't solved yet....I am telling just based on the looks.

Even the Greater Than yesterday looked Zooish, but it was an interesting solve.

Edited by rakesh_rai 2011-06-02 7:47 PM

Preview series part 4 of 4 - Shikaku and Star

Instructions in Chinese is available here - http://www.sudokufans.org.cn/forums/index.php?showtopic=265

Only at the classic fillomino you have given the explanation of the answer entry. Namely, that only the unit digits (=last digits) of each square's content has to be entered.

Is this specification of the answer entry valid for all puzzles? Or do you want to imply that only the classic fillomino can have numbers greater than 9? I don't believe so but I better ask...

For Cipher Fillomino the numbers can be greater than 9 also, I assume. But the numbers 2 and 12 are denoted by different letters (even when both numbers are given by a 2 at the answer entry). Correct?

Actually for checking the answer the letter denoting the 2 and the letter denoting the 12 should be interpreted the same. Otherwise it is "unfair": If the correct entry would be ABBB (A=2, B=12) for some row/column, then a competitor typing 2222 would be awarded points while a competitor typing AAAB wouldn't.

Have fun, thanks for the test,
Stefan

In the Cipher variation, is it possible that there will be additional areas of a size not represented by a letter?

I am not sure that I will be able to compete this weekend as I am in Dallas and haven't found an internet cafe yet.

Re: euklid
The answer entry for Classic is intended to apply for all puzzles.

For Cipher, it is true that a 2 and a 12 would be denoted by a different letter but have the same last digit. So your answer would look a bit different if you entered letters than if you entered units digits. This is okay.

I do not consider it unfair that AAAB would not be accepted if it is wrong. If you want the advantages of being able to entering an answer that can't distinguish between 2 or 12, you have to enter the numbers. That the letters could be entered at all was a concession by us in the first place.


Re: David McNeill
It would cause problems for entering answers by letters if hidden polyominoes whose size is not equal to any of the givens were allowed. I will go ahead and say that it won't happen, and that knowing that almost certainly won't help you solve any of the actual test's puzzles.

Edited by MellowMelon 2011-06-05 5:22 AM

I would have just suggested an example in the instruction booklet would have suffised: (e.g. If a square says 15 or 25, you enter a 5). Don't think anything more would be necessary.

I think you mean that a 2 and a 12 would be denoted by different letters. But what do I know? I'm only your co-author. :)

Edited by mathgrant 2011-06-03 10:48 PM

Puzzle booklet is uploaded. It has 9 pages. Each page has 2 puzzles. There is no cover page / points table.

All the answer keys are simple and consistent this time. So we don't expect much manual overrides, but if anyone feels they didn't get points because of a formatting problem, they should post here or send a message to Grant.

While posting here, please don't post the answer, fully or partially - just the puzzle id is enough.

Alright, finished the test a little while ago with a score of 8/18 correct. Not a terrible performance, but of course I hope to improve in the future.

As for the puzzles, I'll leave specific comments to after everyone has competed, but the ones I solved were Classic 1-3, Easy Shikaku, Easy Even-Odd, Easy and Hard Cipher (Hard Cipher was quite good) and Easy Sum. I'm looking forward to doing the rest though, including the Hard Star Fillomino, which looks to be worth every one of those 20 points.

Thanks for the test Grant and Palmer. One question though: will you eventually say who authored which puzzles? I want to see if my guesses as to which was which are accurate.

Hi, I've made a really stupid and costly numpad-style mistake. I'm not sure whether you can do a "manual override" on such thing :)

PS. It's funny how nikoli made me to dislike several puzzle types. I never really thought that fillomino can be so entertaining/interesting, especially since in general I dislike puzzles with numbers/digits.

Yep, we figured it was a Numpad typo. You should already have those (hard-earned) points.

hey i think in the test the shape filimino is wrong...please check the top one

ok srry i dont no then.
thank u.

hey i got it just did silly mistake ..

Ok - I'm deleting your original post. Players may get confused.

That was fun. Sadly my sloppy handwriting cost me 7 points on the shikaku fillomino. Misread one of the digits. Obviously didn't think that digit could go there as it clashes with a given.

Great Test. Many puzzles that weren't super hard. I did enter my answer for the easy Sum Fillomino on the greater-than answer key (they're on the same answer page) Check for me?

Personal frustration on being 1 second slower than desired in typing the last answer. Oh well. This happens.

It's hard to rate this test. Normally I use an internal scale that starts at 5-6 (or lower) for my least favorite puzzles, up to 10 for my favorite. While that would work within everything here, it would not do justice to this test relative to others. I don't have any least favorite puzzles here - nothing that solved in an inelegant or unfriendly way. All I saw were quality puzzles and a lot of really creative designs.

In a few cases I think I could pass the Pepsi challenge and ID the designer, but even with these guesses I have both Grant and Palmer to thank for my favorite puzzles. A superstar team with an excellent test. Thanks.

Re: Para
mathgrant and I knocked our heads together on this for awhile, but in the end we are giving you those 7 points. Good job on your performance too.

Re: TroyS
Normally I'd say "I'll tell Deb and he'll fix it when he wakes up", but it appears to me that you would have had the answer wrong anyway. Look at the last few entries of column B. Sorry. Glad you enjoyed the test.

Re: motris
Thanks a lot for the glowing review and the blog recommendation. :D I think mathgrant and I may have an informal contest on our blogs to guess who wrote each of the puzzles after it's all done, so maybe you can try that out for fun. Great performance too. You may know what I mean when I say I thought you were in trouble 55 minutes in... but then I don't know the whole story. Your classic speed floored us both.

Edited by MellowMelon 2011-06-05 4:59 AM

I've changed in any case.

Re motris: I am so, so, so, so very excited that you liked this test so much! It means so much to me, someone whose only experience in the competition setting is your 20/10 test on which I scored a meager 777, having you, a grandmaster of construction and solving alike, say this about a test to which I contributed half of the puzzles. Honestly, though, even if I made the puzzles, Palmer is probably responsible for most of what made my puzzles come together along with his to be an actual test, and I think he deserves far more of the credit than I do. (I only allow myself to have top billing on the cover page of the IB because my name comes first alphabetically. :) )

If I don't post here much, it's not because I don't care about this test and what you guys think of it; it's because Palmer keeps saying the same things I would say, except more authoritatively. *laughs*

Edited by mathgrant 2011-06-05 5:09 AM

I think there is a lot to be said about how having a good co-author makes one's own work better; so I'd never single out recognition of one author here over the other as it's clear the combination of authors and styles worked better here as a test than either alone would have been.

You co-wrote Mutant Sudoku with Wei-Hwa Huang, so perhaps I should trust you when you say that. :P

I typo'd my greater-than (bottom) entry (should have been a xxxxxxxxxx before the last 2 digits). I'll take a manual override if they're still available :).

Edited by debmohanty at 2011-06-05 8:45 AM (since the answer key is partially revealed)

That one ended up being harder to decide on than Para's error. But you now have those points too.

Thanks! My puzzle for you ;).

Excellent stuff all around, as expected. Only thing that could've been better is if I was able to count to numbers above 3. :)

Message to mystery_boy

Please introduce yourself in the forum.

Message to cmd2do

Please fill-in your correct country and realname.

Thanks. Seems a bit odd to confuse those 2 digits, I know. But if you'd seen the handwriting you'd get it. Also got commented on it by judges during the WSC last year.

The possibility of having handwriting that can confuse those two was easy to accept. The issue of how plausible it is to have a wrong solution with a digit swap like that took a bit more thought. Not that we're accusing you of lying about the handwriting, but if anyone else submits the same solution...

More generally, shouldn't there be a consistent rule about mistyped solutions (those in the right box but which don't match the key)?

Everyone is essentially doing the test on trust since it would be easy enough to get a friend to help with a couple of puzzles, or maybe go to an internet cafe and view the PDF in advance from a different IP address (or even run a password cracker), so in principle I don't see anything wrong with allowing people to ask for typos to be corrected. If people want to cheat they can do so anyway after all, and it's usually pretty obvious if they do.

However in practice we all know it's faster to do the puzzle without entering the key so clearly getting the key correct and checking takes time, so isn't it unfair to penalise those who do take the time to check by awarding points to those who got it wrong? In general I'd have thought it would be better to require the key to be correct on the basis that typing it in accurately is "part of the test", however trivial a part.

If you do allow corrections, however, shouldn't they be applied consistently? E.g. allow a single digit only to be deleted/inserted/substituted if accompanied by a promise that it was a typing error not a puzzle mistake - that might be a reasonable rule for example. However some puzzle-based judgement as to how likely the person is to be lying (as is taking place here) is surely an awkward precedent to set. For full disclosure I had my single digit typing error rejected for correction, and I'm sure it was much harder to be sure of than those above, but I do think it's a reasonable question to ask generally. If it's done on "likelihood that player is lying", what is the threshold for that likelihood?

I'm always firmly in the middle of the results table and I really don't mind whether I personally get 4 points more or not, but wouldn't it be a good idea to have a consistent rule?

Sorry, perhaps I should have excluded the word "lying" entirely from my post. The issue of trust is actually not a factor in the decisions at all; in fact we are only looking at the answer. Something to note is that the manual override system is done by entering the person's wrong answer as an alternate correct answer, so this is why I bring up the idea of someone else giving the same answer. One person's typo, like perhaps in your case, could be another's mistake on the page.

Although I can't reveal details until after the test ends, your sample rule about "allow a single digit only to be deleted/inserted/substituted if accompanied by a promise that it was a typing error not a puzzle mistake" may result in the problems of the above paragraph for a particular puzzle in this test. There is a common wrong answer being submitted that is plausible as a typing mistake but also very likely to be an error on the page. If we follow this rule and accept one person's promise that this commonly mistaken digit was a typo, the manual override system forces us to credit every single person that made the error. Whether this is a problem with the system itself or not could be argued, although my opinion is that it's fine.

The rule that we are applying consistently is whether there is a sensible incorrect answer on the page that could result in someone giving the wrong answer being debated. If we find reasons to believe there isn't one, we typically give credit. If we can imagine a situation in which a minor mistake results in the answer we got, we don't give credit. This admittedly involves some subjective considerations, but mathgrant and I are being as thorough as we can in applying this principle. For example, if we get an answer with a wrong row or column entered, we'll both redo the puzzle part of the way to see what the implications of getting that particular row/column right are.

On the topic of checking when wrong answers can get credit, there is the point that the vast majority of incorrectly entered answers are not getting points, although the posts in this topic may give a different impression. So checking your answers is still important.

As a final note, I think the only 100% fair way to do manual overriding is to have none of it at all. But personally I think a sufficient level of fairness can be reached without having to resort to such an extreme, and I personally like LMI better for the occasional leniency.

Edited by MellowMelon 2011-06-05 10:46 PM

I understand. I've been on the other side and it takes a little thought to figure out where the mistake comes from and if there's another explanation for it. For some puzzle types it's much easier to figure out than for fillomino as there's no restrictions to the answer key content. Especially with the units digit implication there's more to look into.
I don't really think this manual override system should be questioned. I've been involved in it and the decisions are always made fairly. There's always the option to file for corrections in puzzle championships as well.

Thank you for an enjoyable test. I have made a silly mistake on my answer entry for Even-Odd Fillomino. On my last digit I had a small circle on my sheet to identify the cell, then I wrote the actual number in the box, but I've then misread that as I've entered my answer. The number that I submitted there doesn't appear in the last four columns at all. Please can you check my answer manually. I made a careless mistake in one of the other puzzles, but that was my fault - can't count!

Nice puzzles. Couldn't complete many coz I'm damn sleepy, but worth it :)

Re: puzzlemad
We have decided to give you credit for that puzzle. Glad you liked the test.

There are no competitors right now and it's past the final starting time, so Fillomino-Fillia is now over. Here are the full results (as soon as Deb gets around to telling the site the test is over a bit early). Congratulations to deu for topping the test with 148 points, finishing the test a whole 28 minutes early. motris, flooser, and uvo are next, all finishing with 11, 8, and 5 minutes to spare respectively.

Thank you everyone for competing; both mathgrant and I hope you all enjoyed the test and the puzzles we made for it.

Edited by MellowMelon 2011-06-06 5:42 AM

These puzzles are excellent. I never would have thought Fillomino could be so enjoyable. Well done to both authors :)
I am looking forward to doing the second Star puzzle, looks like it has an awesome logic!

Unfortunately I found the precision required to complete the final cells and get a correct solution key frustrating - not a reflection of the coolness of the puzzle solving process... I personally dropped two puzzles, and in both cases because I couldn't count up to 2 in the final cells of the puzzle. I can't claim they are typos - in my mind they are clear but minor mistakes. :S

I suppose this is just part of the nature of Fillomino puzzles. The application of the typo/mistake allocation has been eminently reasonable, so a nice job to the authors and Deb for administering the test.

Thank you M&M for F&F, one of the most beautiful puzzle sets here.

deu breezed in in awesome 91 minutes, but then, from time to time, he or motris or some others make test-solvers timings look ridiculous.

Congratulations!


In terms of numbers, this has highest number of participants in any 2011 LMI puzzle test. But unfortunately no Indians did particularly well. Both Rakesh and Rohan mentioned to me in privately that they were lured into the 20-pointer Star Fillomino, and lost 30+ minutes for that.

Palmer's detailed post-mortem post and 'guess-the-constructor' contest here

The score page has been modified to show a * prefixed to players names, if they chose to 'Not include their score is LMI Ratings'

At Deb's recommendation, I am posting a logical solution for the hard Star Fillomino at the end of the test. You can view it here. (also posted in the Solving Techniques forum)

Thanks for the detailed walkthrough. It is indeed a 'Star Battle' varia, than a Fillomino varia.
Some very beautiful logic there, and I can only recommend everyone to solve the Star Fillomino first, before looking at the document.

I certainly wasted most of my time on the one non-fillomino here (at least Melon's point about my score looking bad after 55 minutes was I'd taken 7 minutes to finish the classics and then 48 to knock off the two stars and the first sum with my second submission). I immediately knew how the 20 pointer would work (80 cells accounted for by the givens, with 20 stars to find), but really struggled to get the logic going my way. And even when I'd intuited the right things, I made an error or two so it took a second copy to finish it off. Certainly a high-variance puzzle.

Since Palmer mentioned about it, let me explain why the score page works the way it is.
Every puzzle has a perfect solution key, and it may have 0 or more alternate solution keys which authors decide to accept. When a player reports claims for a puzzle, authors validate the request and decide to either give credits or the other way. If they decide to give points, any other player who made same submission get points too. The other player could have made a typo or a genuinely solving mistake.

The question is why don't we just give points only to the player who claimed. After running the tests for close to 1 year, we realize that most of the players don't claim for points. We might see few claims in the forum, but authors spend lot of time verifying each and every wrong submission. So, we really can't go by who claimed and who didn't. If we are giving points to X for an imperfect submission, we must give points to Y & Z who also same submission mistake.

Like every system, this may be debatable. If their are strong objections against how this works or there are alternate solutions, let us know.

One change which I would like to see is that, in all these cases where players submitted a wrong answer due to whatever reason (transcription error, bad handwriting, keyboard issue, typo, etc) they do not deserve "full points" for those puzzles. As someone mentioned earlier, it is slightly unfair to those who spent time in ensuring their answer keys are correct by double checking, for example. So, while I am in favour of giving some credit to such cases, they should get only a % of points (80%, 75%, 50%, whatever seems appropriate, but not 100%).

I think I would be in favor of that. 75 or 80 sounds about right.

Thanks for a really good competition!
I especially liked Classic 4 (I spent about 5 minutes to find where to start it) and 3 puzzles with >10 points.
I think Even-Odd (Bottom) is a difficult puzzle, but I solved it smoothly thanks to Mathgrant's practice puzzle, which reminded me of some techniques in Yin-Yang.

This is the first monthly puzzle test which specializes in only one puzzle type.
I am interested in whether this trend will continue or not.

About partial credits: As Logic Masters Deutschland has already adopted, 80 percent (or around) seems good.

80% have been used at the most recent German Logic Masters contests. This surely is a good idea to implement also for all LMI contests.

Stefan

First of all, congratulations on so good a finish. It will be interesting to see what effect it has on LMI ratings.

So far, we've never enforced any authors to have puzzles from different types.
It was completely Grant and Palmer's idea to present a Fillomino based set. Credits to them because some of the puzzles needed strategies from other puzzle types.

Whether we'll have more such contests, well, it depends upon what authors can come up with.

Applauses for authors and congratulations to deu!

I also want to point out my favourites. These are certainly the second star puzzle, math variants, but the best puzzle and the hardest at the same time was the second odd/even. Very fun and enjoyable test!

Nikola

Same for me, excellent puzzles for a great contest, many thanks to the authors and the organization.
I like very much starbattle puzzles and so I lost 25+ minutes to solve the difficult star puzzle without success, no problem for the first step I check within 30-60 seconds, but I didn’t saw the second step, the four red rectangles in mellow walkthrough, at all… It was really a great puzzle!

As usual, I lost some points for very, very, stupid errors but, indeed, my target are not the top positions and so... who cares? :-)

Wait for Fillomino FIllia -2 :-)

GaS


Edited by GaS 2011-06-06 4:44 PM

When I first saw Roland's (Roland Voigt) "Hochhausrätsel-Wettbewerb" (Skyscrapers and Variations-2009) at LM Deutschland, I thought this contest idea is very brilliant. Because all puzzles of test are based on a classic puzzle, and of course this helps the puzzle solver to get better results. Because there is a solid rule which belongs to classic type, and this helps to understand rules easily. After this contest Nils Miehe prepared a "Rundweg-Wettbewerb" (Slitherlink and Variations) at the same web page. I was getting familiar with this contest type, and it started to seem better to me.

After WPC 2009 Antalya, Gulce and I were thinking about a Tapa contest. But we didnt know how it would be back then. Maybe it could contain Tapa and some variations. But after I saw Roland's contest idea, everyting was clear in my mind. So we decided to make a Tapa Variations Contest, based on this contest type. After making first four TVC's we were sure that we would repeat it next year, and we did TVC 2011 here under LMI.

Also Roland did second Hochhausrätsel-Wettbewerb, and second Rundweg-Wettbewerb was held at LM Deutschland. I thought I should make a contest at LMD for contributing to this contest type series. Jörg Reitze and I made a contest, it is named "Schlangenrätselwettbewerb" (Snake and Variations) [Probably second series will be held in august]. Also Voigt brothers made one "Pentomino-Wettbewerb" in 2011.

Andrey Bogdanov has recently been making variations series in Forsmarts and Diogen, until now he made Domino and Variations, Yin-Yang Variations and Scrabble Variations. Probably he will continue these variation contests.

And finally Palmer and Grant made this beautiful Fillomino and Variations.

I am sure that different authors would follow this path, and we will see a lot of contests which is based on this contest type. Because as a puzzle community we have a lot of classic puzzles, and we have wonderful puzzle designers all over the world.

I want to thank Roland and followers to start a very fun contest habit, and of course I want to thank LM Deutschland. Becase LMD always try different things, contest type, concepts, applications etc.

Best

Serkan

* LMD contests: http://www.logic-masters.de/Meisterschaften/liste.php ( to see the puzzles, you should register)
* Andrey Bogdanov contests: http://forsmarts.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=302
* TVC 2010 series: http://oapc.wpc2009.org/archive.php

Thank you everyone for the positive comments. I didn't imagine this test would be received so well.

On the flipside to the points that Serkan brings up, throughout the whole process I had several worries about doing a themed contest like this one, especially when it seems as though LMI tests are entering into more and more prominence. My reason for feeling this way can be summed up by the note about how I was going through a past WPC (2003?), came upon a Dominoes round, and thought "Ah crap... this is gonna suck". Both LMI and the UK are using these tests for rating systems, the latter for WPC qualification, and although the LMI one doesn't have an end at least some stock seems to be put in it. A contest like this one will throw off the results of people who are really good or really bad at Fillomino.

That said, I think picking Fillomino was probably a good choice, as it is not so common. In discussing this point on the UK forums drsteve brought up the point that a similar contest with Slitherlink would probably make the above problem of people who are good and people who aren't much worse. The reasons for this are probably identical to the reasons that Sudoku tests here, what you could think of as a themed puzzle test, are considered entirely separately. There is too much emphasis on Slitherlink/Sudoku, so the correlation between skill on general puzzles and skill on these types is too low. In fact Sudoku has developed into its own brand of competitions, with the skills on them and skills on general puzzles separated quite a bit.

In any case, mathgrant and I had considered these issues at some point in the process, and we tried to ensure that people with strength in a certain subset of WPC skills would be able to put them to use. For people good at word fill-ins, we had Shape. If Black and White / Yin-Yang is your thing, we had Even-Odd. For arithmetic, we had Sum and perhaps Shikaku. Latin square type puzzles weren't possible though, so the Star variation was included to have long-range row/column deductions, which was the closest we felt we could get. I can say for sure that Sum and Star would not have appeared if we hadn't been considering these things. So although Serkan may have a point in saying that it's a bit easier to make a fun and enjoyable themed contest, one still ought to be careful and keep things like this in consideration.

So I think there are reasons for LMI to avoid hosting too many themed contests, and it will be better if the majority of their tests are variety like Evergreens or the Decathlon. I suppose this is a bit selfish to say since we just took up one spot in the quota, but I have reasons for believing it that I just explained. And there's also the wonderful habit of LMI to trust the authors to deliver a high quality contest without telling them what to do or not to do, so I think this will probably have to stay a guideline rather than anything enforced.

Also, for these reasons, sorry, I doubt a Fillomino-Fillia 2 is coming. A second mathgrant/MellowMelon collab is likely, but not for a long time as I want to stick to competing for awhile.

I certainly agree with an 80% standard for manually fixed solutions.

If the code/interface allows, I might even propose a more radical change to the system. When a person submits an answer, it is instantly graded and returns points. If the submission is wrong, the value is now presented as 80% of the value and the solver has to retype. If they are wrong again, it goes to 60% and so on down. In this way, solvers will know when they are "done" with a puzzle and similarly done with the whole test. Also, if they've made a really stupid entry mistake (which won't even be fixed by manual checking), they'll have an opportunity to fix that mistake to regain credit although they won't get full points. This kind of instant grading (with penalty) is used in some programming contests and would be interesting to try in one of these. I was certainly going to propose trying it for the next test I write, but I'd be interested to hear opinions on it now. I know some people will say this is different from live test grading, and therefore a bad idea since they prefer the live competition format, but these tests are not live tests and so running it more like a site like croco-puzzle where you get instant feedback with your solution makes sense to me (at least as a change from the ordinary). It would probably be ideal to test first on a sudoku contest where applet-solving is common and answer entry is standardized (rows/columns of 9 numbers).

Edited by motris 2011-06-06 8:30 PM

In the spirit of keeping LMI tests closer to an online version of WPC rounds (although I guess the playoffs are similar), I think that change might be a bit too much. Also, it would probably make me scared to death of clicking the Submit button at any point. I would be willing to try it for at least one test, but I'm not too confident that I would be fond of it.

Despite having competed only once, I really think penalizing the solver for changing answers is a bit much. Giving partial credit instead of full credit for mistyped answers sounds fair, though.

As your score will only ever improve with this system (unless you ever get to a time where you can check all your answers, which for most solvers is rare), it's interesting that this would make you more scared. I think the degradation of scores doesn't have to be as fast (everyone can always get one free change), if that is the concern, but the goal is to get solvers who have finished puzzles, but have issues with typing, to not lose points. If they are legitimately wrong with the puzzle, they will not regain points and will stay at 0. If they are right, they will eventually enter what is intended. For solvers at all levels I think the disappointment of typos can be removed with changes in the system. I prefer to start at 80% as some "mistakes" give information to the solver, but when the current system would give most solvers 0 points (or a manual regrade) in these cases, 80% is a lot more than 0%, and this removes both the need and challenge to do manual regrading.

As a different change, I've spoken with Deb about adding a "I'm done with this test" button. Right now the clock continues to run as a few of us frantically check everything we entered. I sometimes spend a long period of time just checking work which isn't fun while I wait to be able to check my score. To match the live tournament structure, you should not be getting bonus if you are still working on things. That includes checking your work. So add in intermediate checking or add in a finished with test option to start the bonus clock.

Edited by motris 2011-06-06 8:45 PM

You have to remember that I have no competition experience, and thus no idea what a real-life (non-electronic) competition's supposed to feel like.

I'm all for giving partial (but not full) credit for typos, but I'm not sure how much I like being penalized for entering a wrong answer and then fixing it before the time limit, as opposed to getting it right the first time. Certainly, I don't feel like these two systems belong together (unless the penalty for a wrong answer is steeper than the penalty for a fixed answer, thus encouraging people to fix their answers).

Edited by mathgrant 2011-06-06 8:48 PM

mathgrant : The real question is how many players get time and chance to change the answer once submitted. It would be only those players who finish all puzzles ahead of time. May be few players double check what they have typed, and they can still do that before they submit.
Unfortunately, I don't have any real data to share how many times submissions have changed for a particular puzzle for a particular player.

motris: Yes, the "I'm done button" is pending. I don't think it can be done before next Sudoku test. But certainly before July puzzle test #1, which will be yet another Nikoli test, and I'm sure we'll see from frantic submissions from some.

Given that their is lot of support for 80% for obvious typos, we'll implement that right from the next test.

One question I've : Should we also allow this for Sudoku tests? So far in Sudoku tests, we don't allow any manual override, as I posted here.

Regarding motris's radial suggestion, personally, I think we have to try this at least once before we exactly know what to expect.
It is not as much a technical challenge, but the bigger challenge is for authors/organizers to come up complete list of valid alternate solution codes for each puzzle before the test starts. With a Sudoku test, it is much easier. But not necessarily so in a puzzle test. Although the answer keys are strictly defined in all tests and LMI submission system flags when the answer is not in expected format, in every test there are many submissions which are otherwise valid except the entered format.
I would certainly be interested to try this in motris's forthcoming test, whenever that will be planned.

There were more number of votes to display submission time for each puzzle. Score page now displays that - http://logicmastersindia.com/M201106P/score.asp

This will be a hassle for genres like say battleships where coordinates will be asked. Because someone might put MA instead of AM, or enter them out of the intended order.
I don't really like the idea of giving people the chance to correct mistakes though during the test time after they have submitted. I think people should get the chance to have their typos corrected, which is normal in a puzzle championship, but you never get the chance to completely resolve a puzzle after submitting, unless it's in the playoff format where it's just about trying to finish all puzzles as fast as possible. I think it should just remain like any main puzzle round. Where you submit your answers, they get checked and if you think your mistake should still get points, you can submit it to the judges for evaluation to see if they feel you deserve the points.

The current score page handles this already. AM or MA will be handled fine
The problem is when someone enters A1 OR M1.

I'm tempted to use the same answer format motris used in 20/10 (contents of rows/columns).

There are certainly other battleship entry modes that work. I used rows/columns with 0 = water, N = ship size for my test. That would be a unique gradable string. The only common entry error was not getting the sense of N in there, so something like 1000101111 instead of 1000104444 appeared which I accepted at the time as the information of ship connectedness was in that row.

My discussions with Deb on improving the "finish" experience of a test is specifically so I can run a test that more than 2-3 people can finish. Right now I think there is a bit of a hole in the solver experience when the test ends very early but you cannot receive results until the clock runs out. There is neither a "turn in" functionality, as there exists in live tournaments to start your bonus clock, nor a partial check functionality, as exists on all the online sites I play at, but either would improve the experience. If I'm running a test where I expect 15 solvers to finish, I wouldn't mind it feeling more like a WPC playoff where time to finish is the only relevant measure, and losing 30 seconds to a minute if you turn in something wrong is an appropriate penalty. For those solvers that would finish, it is very rare to be turning in a completely wrong paper, so I expect the sense of "giving another chance" is less relevant for the podium.

The difference in that is that if you have online applets, the solution will definitely be wrong. I think it is okay in an online applets to do so, because you'll definitely have made a mistake there in solving the puzzle(even if it is like your WPC in Brazil mistake). My point is more that I think it's unfair to give the same point spread to someone who makes a typo in filling in the answer key but solved the puzzle correctly as to someone who makes a mistake in a puzzle and then gets to resolve it. The solution there might be, to evaluate if the initial mistake was an answer key or a solution problem manually and either award for example 80% or 50% of the points to the solver.

I agree though that it would be handy to have a finish button to check your scores quicker.

There is probably also information in how long it takes to submit the correct answer after the initial mistake. If someone has simply typoed, they'd likely input the correct solution in less than 30 seconds. If someone has a large mistake in the puzzle, they'd certainly need more time to fix it before re-entry.

Edited by motris 2011-06-08 5:10 AM

It seems to me that so long as the points awarded decreases with each error that this is true only if the chance to correct it provides information that helps you solve the puzzle - if for example you can narrow a puzzle down to two or three likely options and it's more points-per-time effective to run through those option and see which are correct than to actually solve. For most puzzles and answer keys this probably isn't much of an issue, assuming you are given no feedback as to what part of your key is wrong.

Other than that, what's wrong in principle with losing points and taking time to re-solve the puzzle? Losing points on resubmitting discourages you from guessing, and if there are a sufficiently large number of options then you can't use it to do something that might be called cheating. If you need to resolve the puzzle as opposed to fix a typo you lose both time and points, which seems a suitable penalty in any case - so you'd naturally be penalised an amount proportional to "how wrong" you are as you spend time checking and correcting or even re-solving from scratch.

On the other hand for those who've made either a typing/key calculation error or a small mistake when solving the puzzle it offers the chance to reward you for what you actually have succeeded in doing. Compared with someone who doesn't solve the puzzle at all, isn't that actually eminently reasonable?

It also means tests can contain bigger point puzzles which take longer without them being quite so risky if you fail to get the points due to a small mistake.

So I don't really see a downside with the concept, but technical issues with live validation might be more of a problem. For example, what if you submit a correct solution that is mis-formatted and then waste time re-solving, not realising the problem is with the key? You'd lose out compared to the current system where it would presumably be manually fixed for no penalty.

Edited by Gareth 2011-06-08 6:44 AM

Gareth: I might be an idiot, but isn't the information on whether your answers are right or wrong withheld from you until the test is over? That means you can't just submit one answer, see whether it's right or not, and then try another answer, because the only way to determine that your answer is wrong before the opportunity to change your answer disappears, is to solve the puzzle.

Yes, currently. I was talking about the possible change discussed above (motris's post 4744) whereby you are told immediately if your answer is wrong and are given a chance to resubmit for less points.