Any guesses on the theme of this one?

For starters from the logo,
Looks like all Sudoku grids might have same numbers populated at the start and then based on the variant the solving would differ for each

But this seems too simple to be true !!

Just a thought Rohan, if we can clone you , 3 more Rohans and we have Strong team for ISC !!


Edited by utkaarsh 2012-06-20 2:30 PM

There was a round named "clone sudoku" in this year Beijing tournament.
Perhaps it's a similar concept here?

Fred

And if other countries start doing the same thing? :P

I see your point PS , but this can win us this year championships, by the time it is copied, we will come up with a better idea again next year !!


Edited by utkaarsh 2012-06-20 10:47 PM

You mean in 15-25 years, right? Cloning Rohan now means, you'll have baby Rohan's who sadly won't be any good at sudoku yet.

Coming from a guy who's known him forever, I think there's possibility to train him then too :P Anyway, lets quit cloning around now and get back to Sudoclones.

Edited by prasanna16391 2012-06-23 9:05 AM

Yeah, allow us few hours to publish the IB.

Bingo! Maybe you should ask for some bonus points.

And negative points for contradicting his own guess too.

I must say, I like the variants here. Should be right up my alley, so hope I do well for once :P

What's meant by "PARITY" in Parity Calcdoku..... "All the cells with a circle contain digits of the same parity.".....

Either all odd (13579), or all even (2468).

Thanks for clarifying...

Edited by adityasaraf007 2012-06-23 7:14 PM

It is easy to figure out that both SudoClones and Copy Paste have similar themes. It is interesting that Richard and Sylvain came up with similar ideas with few weeks apart (much before Clone round in BIST). Thats when we decided to schedule these 2 tests one week apart and to publish the IBs at the same time.

Luckily, the variations in these 2 tests are very different and I'm sure players will enjoy these tests like every other LMI tests.

Is anyone facing problem with shaded cells of Thermometer / Trio / Parity / Extra Region GT in paper printout of the IB ?

Nope I did not face any problems with shaded cells !!

I also did not have any problems with the color grey in any of thepuzzles.

Looking forward to the test, although I didn't have much time to practise. Anyway, I doubt if practising would have any meaning for such a slow solver like me. Haha.

Hi, Need help on how to solve skyscraper sudoku. The number outside indicates the number of skyscrapers inside the grid... NOt sure how I am supposed to use that to solve the puzzle. Need help..

Trio was quite light, so it wasn't very comfortable to solve it. Others were fine, at least for me.

If I read again the scyscrapers sudoku rules, they don't say that you must imagine that every cell in the grid is a scyscraper and the number in cell is representing the height of a scyscraper. The person, who haven't solved this type, will be really difficult to understand the rules. That's probably what pavrose wanted to point out.

TiiT

Yes, there was an omission in the skyscrapers rules : the number in cell is representing the height of a skyscraper.

Gray cells in the test pdf will be little darker.

Read the F.A.Q.

Thanks for this wonderful test, Sylvain !

Grids are very well constructed, it's fun to solve them !

Fred

Wonderful set of sudokus. Thanks for the test Sylvain.

I have a question for you: Which sudoku did you create first? (My guess would be Anti Knight)

That would be the obvious guess I think, considering thats the one you can't play with outside/extra clues in.

Thanks for a nice set Sylvain!
I spent a lot of time on a puzzle I was completely stuck in, unfortunately, and while finishing another one I miswrote myself. In one of the diagonals, so that cost me a lot of points.
I am looking forward to solving the other ones later.

Thanks Fred, Rohan and Richard

The grid I cloned was obviously the antiknight. I wanted to start from a classic look-alike grid.

Fun puzzles, thanks!

Some lucky players will get an extra second when the leap second is added :)

Edited by PuzzleScott 2012-07-01 2:30 PM

Very nice set indeed, thanks Sylvain. It was interesting and quite disturbing to play with the same set of givens on all the puzzles. After having screwed up one, it is quite hard to realize that the next puzzle you will try will look the same. Really interesting sensation, and I felt it multiple times since I screwed up a lot of puzzles.

Some pretty logical paths made for a really good test. Now eagerly waiting for Richard's one !

I was deeply impressed that each grid looked same but had different taste of solving.
Thanks a lot, Sylvain!

Thanks Scott, Bastien and Yuhei. I'll just say for now that it was a very interesting challenge to create the grids from the same set of figures.

Beautiful puzzles. Wish I could've done better.

Very nice puzzles indeed. It was fun to participate again after a long time. Thanks Sylvain.

I think LMI should thank you for participating.

Really nice set. I've still not got out of my slump, but thoroughly enjoyed the ones I managed to solve right.
Thanks Sylvain.

Thanks Tawan, Gauravkorde and Prasanna.
We must also thank Deb and LMI team for their outstanding work.

Merci sylvain, pour les très belle grilles.

I always worry with "stunt" tests that the puzzles will suffer from the extra constraint. In this case, there was no need to worry. You made a large number of very creative and challenging puzzles. Merci beaucoup!

Really beautiful puzzles and an amazing success with a very challenging way of constructing the grids. Wow. A lot of fun solving!

Nice puzzles with lots of variation. At first I thought the puzzles were only in a PDF file, and after wasting some time trying to figure out if I could work it in paint, I realized that all I had to do was scroll down and solve them on the browser.

That was awesome! None of the puzzles felt constrained, and all were very fun to solve (Different was especially beautiful).

SudoClones is now over. There have been some really impressive performances at the top. janoslaw and Kota finished with 90 seconds difference. WaterlooMathie, playing after quite a while at LMI, takes the 3rd position. 4 other players (jaku111, motris, Gotroch, uvo) finished all grids before time.

The grids have been highly praised throughout. The concept was nice, but Sylvain executed it perfectly. Thanks so much Sylvain, and also thanks for administering the test the whole weekend.

The last few submissions have not been checked for manual overrides, so there might be few (really few) changes after top 7.

Among Indians, Rohan, Gaurav and Rakesh take the top 3 positions. Out of 227 players, 171 players solved at least one sudoku correctly. Thank you everyone for participating.

The minimum rated puzzle was Frame Sudoku at 7.81, which itself is a high number. In fact, it is the highest among all 'minimum rated puzzles' across sudoku/puzzle tests.






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I liked most puzzles. My favourite was the different, even though I didn't solve it in competition.
I somewhat disliked the Diagonals Entry Key structure though. I like to have the safety check that each row/column of the answer key has the given set of digits in Sudoku Tests. I think it reduces typos.

I think number of typos (and correspondingly number of claims) were much less this time compared to other tests.

I didn't understand this. Are you suggesting any change to the submission system?

Nah, I guess what he meant is, when the answer key is Row/Column, you kinda know digits can't repeat, so thats as good as a little safety check in itself. Suppose a digit repeats in the key you know you're wrong and you can go back to it. In diagonals, digits can repeat.

Ah, well. My question really sounds dumb now.

Congratulations to Janoslaw, Kota, Waterloomathie. Thanks to all participants: for authors, the greatest gift is that players make their grids. I'll just say a few words on my way to create this test.

When I decided to make this test, so I took the most time is finding the theme. One day I woke up with this idea: the same structure of departure for each grid. So I searched a grid pattern interesting and I found this configuration: 5 empty regions and some empty diagonals. I wanted to start with a classic-look alike and I like very much antiknight. So I tried to create this first grid. I placed the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 in an area thinking it would be useful to have cells where we can only place digits above 5.
My goal was that the grids were to be aesthetic, technically intesresting and with not too many clues. The first variant I created was the arrow: I used these famous cells with numbers greater than 5. For thermometer, it was quite difficult to create a symmetrical grid. Then the grids with outside clues (highest difference, frame, skyscrapers): it's not very annoying to have fixed numbers to create this type of grid. Then I saw the two 5 on rows 6 and 7 and I immediately tried the renban with two groups of four digits. Then I tried to use the diagonals with the little killer. Make a killer with 16 digits which were already placed was a bet but when I drew the cages, I thought it would be interesting.
For these two grids I thought they were surprising because it is unusual to use these rules with grids with many digits already placed.
Then the grids where I had to use two rules because I did not have the right to add digits: parity calcdoku, tri outside and extra region Greater Than.
At that time, I sent my twelve grids to Timothy and Geoffroy. Based on their performance I thought it lacked a grid a bit difficult and I decided to reuse the diagonals with different.

I enjoyed myself so much to create these sudokus and I'm glad that you have enjoyed.

Now I think everyone looks forward to Richard’s test.

See you next week

I can imagine, moreover since the grids you prepared are very, very nice!
When creating grids, or even a step before: thinking about what I am willing to make, is big fun!



I hope so too! At least everyone is invited to take part!

Yeah, that.

Sylvain -

I was remiss in not sending you a note last week; thanks very much for the test - the puzzles were clever and quite entertaining.

Dave