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Purpose

LMI has been running monthly contests for a long time now, but we have had little success in attracting many Indian players. During the Time Sudoku Championship, we had a chance to interact with many Sudoku lovers, and we realize that there are 2 main problems for which many Indian players do not seriously participate in these monthly tests. 1) Most of the variants are new to them 2) Sudokus are in general tougher than what they have solved in news papers.
Keeping these in mind, we decided to start "LMI Beginners' Sudoku Contests" - where our target participants are players who have mostly solved Classic sudokus in the past. These contests will be held once a month, and will contain mostly easy / medium level Sudokus.

Round Structure

We will start with 2 rounds per contest, exactly the same way the Qualifying rounds were held in different cities.
Each round will be of 30 minutes and 30 points. (Edit : Changed to 40 minutes each round)
First round will have 4 Classics.
Second round will have 4 variations.
As mentioned above, Sudokus will be much easier and we expect many players to get bonus points (which will be 1 point per every minute saved if all 4 Sudokus are correct). This will be computed upto seconds.
Every month 2 variations will be repeated from last month, and 2 new variations will be introduced.
The contest will open for one week, so that players can participate at their own comfort.

Difficulty of Sudokus

We will target to have 75% easy Sudokus and 25% medium level Sudokus. The timing of 40 minutes is set such that most solvers will be able to solve at least 75% of the Sudokus, and good solvers can certainly aim for time bonus.

Frequency

We'll run one contest once every month, till end of this year.
Beginning 2013, we will review if we need to increase / decrease the frequency.

What about top Solvers?

Any solver with a LMI rating of 500+ will have their own target to match. For example, a solver with LMI rating 800 will be expected to solve all sudokus with 15 minutes bonus in each round. Details will be available in the Instruction booklet when we release.

Suggestion - Keep a target for everyone, including newcomers, so that everyone has something to play for.

This is a very good initiative. I think this will improve my Sudoku solving skills.

Regards,
Ravi

prasanna16391 - 2012-07-19 11:43 AM

Suggestion - Keep a target for everyone, including newcomers, so that everyone has something to play for.

How can you keep a target for everyone? We would have no clue about the skills of newcomers. And if a newcomer does not achieve her/his target, there is disappointment for the player which is exactly what we have to avoid.

In fact, we can keep it open for longer, so that more players can submit all sudokus. Completing all sudokus within time certainly gives pleasure and I don't see any reason why we cannot have 100 players submitting before time. The time-stamp will anyway separate them with ranks.

Rohan Rao - 2012-07-19 3:02 PM

In fact, we can keep it open for longer, so that more players can submit all sudokus. Completing all sudokus within time certainly gives pleasure and I don't see any reason why we cannot have 100 players submitting before time. The time-stamp will anyway separate them with ranks.

1) Lets try to replicate the same model we had in Times Sudoku Championship.
2) I'm not exactly for keeping it open for longer period. The competitiveness might die.

Rohan Rao - 2012-07-19 3:02 PM

prasanna16391 - 2012-07-19 11:43 AM

Suggestion - Keep a target for everyone, including newcomers, so that everyone has something to play for.

Like the topic start says, ratings. By newcomers I didn't necessarily mean people who're participating for the very first time.

About keeping it open longer, I think we must balance competitiveness with interest in solving. So, I suggest some way of keeping the submissions and grading open for the duration of the contest even after the half an hour, unofficially, just to know if the person has solved it right.

Edited by prasanna16391 2012-07-19 3:47 PM

PERFECT FORMAT.....we may add 6x6 sprints also in some of the rounds...maybe later on

Edited by neerajmehrotra 2012-07-20 11:34 AM

how to register for lmi begineers sudoku....
and when is the test

Edited by mahaveer 2012-07-20 12:29 PM

mahaveer - 2012-07-20 12:28 PM

how to register for lmi begineers sudoku....
and when is the test

No special registrations required. As long as you are a member here you can participate. The test will be held at the end of each month and this month's will be announced soon.

Edited by prasanna16391 2012-07-20 1:06 PM

is their any prize for the winner or it's just for practice .......

dreamsudoko - 2012-07-20 8:07 PM

is their any prize for the winner or it's just for practice .......

NO PRIZES......it is only for practice.....

dreamsudoko - 2012-07-20 8:07 PM

is their any prize for the winner or it's just for practice .......

Practice, fun, thrill of competition. ;)

dreamsudoko - 2012-07-20 8:07 PM

is their any prize for the winner or it's just for practice .......

That is a good question in my opinion. Why should someone participate every month?

I hope you were not expecting any monetary prize. LMI struggles to pay for running this website itself.

no problem,i am still an LMI fan & will participate every month.

Great initiative... i too was confident before the contest.. but reality is different from newspaper sudokus and Nokia's 100 sudokus!!

Rohan Rao - 2012-07-19 3:02 PM

prasanna16391 - 2012-07-19 11:43 AM

Suggestion - Keep a target for everyone, including newcomers, so that everyone has something to play for.

giving participants a decent target to achieve in general would help them to ipmrove and on achieving the target, they would be motivated to participate again

Great Initiative...Even though i used to have time to attend the contest, but sheer time that was needed to be spent in familiarising with the variants & working out the strategies prevented me from writing them. This will make things a lot easier.
Perhaps, u can also continue to have the previous monthly tests but with lesser frequency (once in three months)....

channa - 2012-07-23 10:09 AM

Perhaps, u can also continue to have the previous monthly tests but with lesser frequency (once in three months)....

Just to clarify, the monthly tests will continue to exist as earlier (i.e. once a month, with no change in format). That has a different set of audience.
And we expect that "beginners" start participating in monthly tests after they feel more comfortable, in due course of time.

Edited by debmohanty 2012-07-23 10:14 AM

wen r the july ones starting??

avermaful - 2012-07-23 8:19 PM

wen r the july ones starting??

Last week of July (25th to 31st July)

Announcements - Sudoku Types for July'2012

Sudoku Types for July - http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/types/B201207.asp

will round2 be immediately after round 1?? n what is the difficulty level of sudokus given in the above link i.e. http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/types/201207.asp

avermaful - 2012-07-24 2:12 PM

will round2 be immediately after round 1?? n what is the difficulty level of sudokus given in the above link i.e. http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/types/201207.asp

Round2 can be taken later, even on another day. In fact you can choose to take Round2 before Round1.
The difficulty level of the examples is easy. Can someone else please confirm?

Edited by Organisers 2012-07-24 2:25 PM

Organisers - 2012-07-24 2:25 PM
Can someone else please confirm?

All easy. Just solved.

In most of the competitions, puzzles are not appearing on my screen. What can I do if same thing will happen in this event ???

Edited by dreamsudoko 2012-07-24 7:11 PM

How do you register for the monthly contests?

To participate in the monthly contests no separate registration is required. Since you are already registered here in LMI, just logon and and you can participate.

dreamsudoko - 2012-07-24 7:05 PM

In most of the competitions, puzzles are not appearing on my screen. What can I do if same thing will happen in this event ???

It is advisable to play sudokus offline (i mean by taking prints of the pdf), especially if you are a beginner. Balnk screens etc are local computer problems which can be sorted out by refreshing the page or by logging in again.

neerajmehrotra - 2012-07-24 8:17 PM

dreamsudoko - 2012-07-24 7:05 PM

In most of the competitions, puzzles are not appearing on my screen. What can I do if same thing will happen in this event ???

Or, it could be a software issue as well in your computer (Adobe Flash player). Only sudoku tests will have the puzzles appearing on screen and that too, not all tests.

LMI Beginners' Sudoku Contest - July'2012

Submission Link - http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/

(Please note, we have increased the length slightly to 40 minutes considering that players might have to take printouts and enter the answer keys)

Haha ! too many mistakes for me on the 4 classic sudokus ! Must now wait till the end to play variants...

Oh I didn't see the link for the variants. I can play now

Edited by Fred76 2012-07-25 6:12 PM

Fred76 - 2012-07-25 5:58 PM

Haha ! too many mistakes for me on the 4 classic sudokus ! Must now wait till the end to play variants...

Oh I didn't see the link for the variants. I can play now

Yes, the Variants have a different link. These 2 rounds are independent of each other.
I think top players like you should start both the rounds at the same time and have a maximum submission time of 40 minutes.

We are seeing some good participation. Thank you everyone who have participated so far.

Request to players, especially the new ones, to leave any kind of feedback here so that we can improve the future contests.

i guess the puzzles are still a bit tough ones...it could be better if slightly easier puzzles with 6 in each round would be better so that most players can atleast finish half..

btw why is prassanna's score not showing if he has solved the puzzles??

gauravkorde - 2012-07-26 1:19 PM
btw why is prasanna's score not showing if he has solved the puzzles??

Prasanna and Tejal were the test solvers. Thats why their names are missing.

In the results page,

http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/score.asp

I can see a button "Claim Score" for one of the puzzles I have solved and the points for that particular puzzle has not been added to my total score as well. When I try to press the button and submit, I get an error - "Error occured while connecting to server".

What is this button "Claim Score" meant for? Is there any issues currently?

krisram - 2012-07-26 2:54 PM

What is this button "Claim Score" meant for? Is there any issues currently?

If you think your solution is correct, but you are not given points, you can use this button to communicate with the organizers.
There was a problem with this button, it is rectified. Please try now again.

Thanks for the clarification ... Indeed, my solution was wrong ... Solved it correctly now :)

I find very good response to the beginners contest....40 plus Indian participants have played.....May I request especially new comers to play...this is a really good contest.....

LMI tournaments are very impressive and hard, often frustrating for Beginners or slow players like me.
I hope these contests will be suggested again ,It 's also a good training against the stress of the stopwatch .
Thank you for this great idea

distri - 2012-07-28 8:39 PM

I hope these contests will be suggested again

As the home page suggests, this is scheduled at least for the next two months, and the plan is to keep it as a monthly thing just like the traditional monthly tests.

We have noticed that many participants are using the "claim points" button for every wrong submission. This button is only to be used if you feel you have solved the Sudoku correctly and have made an error of some sort while entering the answer key. All other claims will be rejected. Once you have submitted please check your solutions for errors before claiming points, else its really a waste of time.

I cannot participate in the Sudoku contest as the puzzle is not opening. I tried clicking on the reset button by pressing Control Enter but its still not happening. Please help me out. Thanks.

sudokufan - 2012-07-30 3:52 PM

I cannot participate in the Sudoku contest as the puzzle is not opening. I tried clicking on the reset button by pressing Control Enter but its still not happening. Please help me out. Thanks.

Send us a screenshot - logicmasteradmin@gmail.com

July Beginners' Contest is over. We are trying to filter out some results (like the one in the attachment)

(AmazingTime.png)

Attachments
----------------

AmazingTime.png (7KB - 6 downloads)

Based the number of participants (314 participants, 204 non-zero scores, 203 Indians), we can very well say that lot of participants are looking forward to "easier" competitions (compared to, for example, the monthly tests). We will continue to hold these Beginners' contests as frequently as we can, but not certainly more than once a month. At the same time, we expect some of these players should try the monthly tests as well. Most, if not all, monthly tests have some basic sudoku types as well as some easy sudokus.

Now back to July's results - obviously jaku111 and kimking solved the 8 sudokus in incredible time.

We have not defined (not sure if it is objectively possible to define) who a beginner is - any suggestions welcome. However, we are pleased to announce the top 3 debutants.
They are, in order :
Manuj Arora (manuj) - India
SUDOMICH - France
ARCHANA TAYADE (ARTAYADE) - India

Congratulations everyone, and thank you for participating and making it a success.

Please share any feedback you might have (except that the Classics were tougher than the Variants :-)

First, I would like to point out that the variants were clearly easier than the classics. Don't know if this had been said before.

(sorry)

Seriously, I think the very high indian participation proves the attractiveness of such easy tests. The 40' length is certainly a good thing too for some beginners who may be afraid of two hours contests, or are not yet passionate enough to spend that much time solving sudokus. Definitely a good initiative to pursue.

Happy to see fellow Sudomich doing well; he has been solving classic sudokus for a long time now, but has only recently entered the variants world. Clearly he is the type of player to who these tests may be useful.

Thanks to LMI team once again !

Administrator - 2012-08-01 8:59 AM

We have not defined (not sure if it is objectively possible to define) who a beginner is - any suggestions welcome.

This is an important topic. While we've acknowledged the debutants, thats a really narrowed down scope. In any case, the 3 mentioned above have done really well even if we consider some definitive way to determine who is a beginner, and I believe their scores show they're ready to keep a solid target of solving a good chunk of a Monthly test too. The point here, other than giving the beginner something interesting to tackle, is also to give confidence to the ones who do well that they can move to the next level. So for that we need to acknowledge any beginner stepping up, not just the debutants which by definition is a one-time thing.

Anyway, congratulations to Manuj, Sudomich and Archana for some really impressive performances. I met Manuj in the Mumbai round of the Times Sudoku Championship, and his score was really impressive. Its good to see him replicate that here.

Edited by prasanna16391 2012-08-01 4:43 PM

I think that every contestant should have enough self-reflection and could decide whether he is a beginner or "professional". Before starting the test everyone should submit the proper button with these two choices. We could not decide whether the contestant is experienced enough.
Here in Slovakia we have 2 categories in every sudoku tournament - A for the experienced puzzlers and B for the beginners and recreative solvers. The solver who win two of five tournaments is automatically transfered into the A-category. Maybe that is why we have large amount of unexperienced puzzlers visiting our tournaments. They never have embarrassing feelings about being overrun by the strong competition. But there is another question - is the goal of LMI organisers to have two separate scorecards?

Allowing a participant to choose is good, but there still needs to be some limit, since some really good solver who is relatively new(say few months or so in) can still consider himself "inexperienced". But it is a valid idea nonetheless.

As for separate scorecards, that is a possibility. We are trying to give the Beginners a level of competition among themselves. Obviously top solvers like this as practice too so a division would be nice. But we'll need to make sure the categories are definite. Your suggestion is good in that respect.

Also I would like to add few words to the competition. Before the test I thought about the system of submitting answers. I usually submit all solved puzzles and then have 5-8 minutes to "solve" the rest. The biggest disadvantage of this system is that I often missed the time limit and could not submit all the puzzles. But this time I realised that 40 minutes are enough to solve and submit everything. There was also no necessary to speculate on the order of puzzles to solve (this is my another bad habit). But after the test I was quite surprised that 8 puzzles from the top10 have submitted their answers continuosly during solving. Only I and Bastian did it after solving everything. However 6 of the puzzles at positions from 11 to 20 used the way of one submission. Whereas the differences among the top 20 (or among the 3 and 20th position) were very close it seems so that the continious submitting is more suitable. It would be interesting to know how many players of these used the online solving mode, because I suppose, that the great majority of "one submission players" use this way.

greenhorn - 2012-08-01 2:52 PMIt would be interesting to know how many players of these used the online solving mode, because I suppose, that the great majority of "one submission players" use this way.

When you look at answer strings of each competitor, you can see who solved the puzzles on paper (strings with # in between) and who solved online (just one string of digits)

Gotroch - 2012-08-01 9:15 PM

When you look at answer strings of each competitor, you can see who solved the puzzles on paper (strings with # in between) and who solved online (just one string of digits)

Díky

Thanks for organizing this contest.

Seeing the results and participation (more than 200 Indian players !), I think you can consider that it's a success.
Being administrator of a french forum, I'm happy to see a good participation of french players. Some of them are regular player here, and others are new or don't play LMI test regularly.
I hope that there will be more swiss players next month. I know some players who could have fun in taking part in these beginners' contests.

I think it should be good to have 2 separate rankings. 1 for experienced or good players ("""professional"""), another one for beginners or players being less competitive and who have perhaps less fun in the "regular" monthly test. I think it should be good to let new players choose in which category they want to play, but I think for following tests, there should be a clear criterion edicted by LMI. The limit could be based on the number of points gained in preceeding beginners' test, if the tests are all approximately the same difficulty. Perhaps having done more than 60 points (means that the player has solved all puzzles or had enough time bonus in one part to compensate some mistake or unsolved in the other part) could be an interesting limit. If you are able to solve the 8 puzzles in 40+40 minutes, you should be able to solve a few grids in "regular" monthly test and perhaps have fun with them. Of course players who didn't have a score of 60 points can also have fun in participating in "regular" monthly test, but perhaps these players will have some frustrating time on hard tests (see distri's previous message).
Perhaps you have to think also about players who solved only one part (classic or variant). If a very good player only take part to one part, that doesn't mean that he should be in the "beginners' liga" next month...

I don't know if a such system can be implemented for these beginners contests?

About solving modes:

I think it could be a bigger difference between both modes than for regular monthly test. Results could let us think that it's probably more efficient to use online mode for these short tests, especially for good players. I played on paper. Despite the fact that I made very good results using online solving on LMI tests in 2010, I've seen that I was not comfortable with the flash LMI interface (just a matter of habit).
I think it doesn't really matter, as it affects much more players who solve each part in less than say 20 minutes, and they are not the target audience of these contests. But it could be good just to mention for each player if they used "online mode", "paper mode" or mixed both.

Finally: the Classics were tougher than the Variants

, BUT:
I think it's better that way: One can find tons of classic sudokus in newspaper, website, etc... so we can really practice classic sudokus everywhere, we don't need LMI to get good at classic sudokus. It's a bit different with variants, even if lot of resource can be found on internet.

Fred

Cheers LMI....I think the goal is accomplished.....we have 200 plus Indians participating....hope to see this number increasing in the next months contest....

Fred76 - 2012-08-02 4:03 AM

I think it should be good to have 2 separate rankings. 1 for experienced or good players ("""professional"""), another one for beginners or players being less competitive and who have perhaps less fun in the "regular" monthly test. I think it should be good to let new players choose in which category they want to play, but I think for following tests, there should be a clear criterion edicted by LMI.

Fred

I had suggested something similar a long time back, that on the score page, to have a tab which shows the results of ONLY those players with LMI rating <= yours (or maybe +- 10% of your rating). That way, each player can see how they performed w.r.t. players who have a rating lower than their's. Similarly, have a tab showing results of all first-timers.

This can be implemented in the LMI Monthly Tests as well.

I dont know how useful this will be, but when I view the score page, I always try to 'find' the players' results whose ratings is +- 50 of my rating.

Thanks to greenhorn, Fred, Rohan for ideas.

We shall be announcing the August Beginners' contest soon. We have decided to go with the following changes for now -
The participation will be divided into two categories, Beginners and Seasoners.

The following are Seasoners by default -
1. Those who have attained, at any point, an LMI Sudoku rating of 500+.
2. Those who have achieved a rank of 25 or better in an LMI monthly Sudoku test.
3. Those who get 2 75+ total scores in the Beginners' Contests(This can obviously take effect only from the September edition).

The rest of the participants all have an option to participate as a Beginner and have their own set of rankings.

Announcement

Here are the types for the August Edition of LMI Beginners' Contest - http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/Types/B201208.asp

We have decided to keep 2 variants from last time (Odd-Even and Diagonal) and introduce 2 new ones (Irregular and Non-Consecutive).

Dates for August Beginners' Sudoku Test

Dates : Aug 10th to Aug 16th, both inclusive

Submission Link : http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/

There seems to be a couple of bugs in the new Result Table of July Contest... Hopefully, you must be aware about them..... But one of the weirdest one is that it doesn't show the details of all the individual sudokus when I click the row against my username..... It shows them for every other user that I clicked.... I wasn't logged on while viewing the page.... :)

adityasaraf007 - 2012-08-08 10:24 PM
But one of the weirdest one is that it doesn't show the details of all the individual sudokus when I click the row against my username.....

Fixed. Please check again.

adityasaraf007 - 2012-08-08 10:24 PM
There seems to be a couple of bugs in the new Result Table of July Contest... Hopefully, you must be aware about them.....

Not really. Feel free to post any other oddities that you / anyone else notice/s.

1. TSecs column shows incorrect values for most of the users...

2. When I single-click on my username - it shows multiple entries for the same sudoku... See the snapshot below... (This is again weird - just for me)

3. Problem of multiple entries was there for every user when I checked it before that post.... It has been solved now.... However, if I click on a username 2/3/4/multiple times, details of individual sudokus are retrieved 2/3/4/multiple times as well.....

Snapshot

PS - Why do I have to write the posts in html.... Even after I disable html - I have to use html tags.... Do I need to make any changes in settings?

Edited by adityasaraf007 2012-08-08 11:23 PM

adityasaraf007 - 2012-08-08 10:53 PM
1. TSecs column shows incorrect values for most of the users...

Fixed.

adityasaraf007 - 2012-08-08 10:53 PM
2. When I single-click on my username - it shows multiple entries for the same sudoku... See the snapshot below... (This is again weird - just for me)

That is because you have submitted same sudoku multiple times. This shown for other users also (check misko for example)

adityasaraf007 - 2012-08-08 10:53 PM
3. Problem of multiple entries was there for every user when I checked it before that post.... It has been solved now.... However, if I click on a username 2/3/4/multiple times, details of individual sudokus are retrieved 2/3/4/multiple times as well.....

Are you expecting the details to be collapsed?

adityasaraf007 - 2012-08-08 10:53 PM
Why do I have to write the posts in html.... Even after I disable html - I have to use html tags.... Do I need to make any changes in settings?

Not sure. This happens to few users (happens to Rakesh too I think)

Replying to the quotes in a numbered manner because of html issues:

1. Thank you...

2. OMG!!!! Does it mean I am so demanding on LMI Servers..... I used to think everyone submits all the grids for the 2nd time when they are finished solving all the grids/the test is about to over....However, In my view it should show just the last correct timestamp for all the grids....

3. Expecting it to retrieve and show just the last correct timestamp just once (even if the row is clicked multiple times)....

4. Okay.... I would have to live with these html issues....

Edited by adityasaraf007 2012-08-09 3:45 PM

We decided to keep it this way because some people may want to keep track of the multiple submissions too. As a participant I sometimes like to see such things myself. Seeing as it has no change in the scoring, I don't see it as a big issue either way, so I'm thinking we'll let it be that way.

Sudoku Booklets uploaded

Each pdf has 2 pages, with 2 Sudokus per page.

Not really. Feel free to post any other oddities that you / anyone else notice/s.

I could not see the results before finishing Classics, which was fine. But once I finished Classics, I could see overall results for BOTH Classics and Variants. More of an oddity than an issue. :-)

lenson - 2012-08-09 11:01 PM

Not really. Feel free to post any other oddities that you / anyone else notice/s.

I could not see the results before finishing Classics, which was fine. But once I finished Classics, I could see overall results for BOTH Classics and Variants. More of an oddity than an issue. :-)

Fixed. Please check this time.

prasanna16391 - 2012-08-06 4:59 PM

Thanks to greenhorn, Fred, Rohan for ideas.

We shall be announcing the August Beginners' contest soon. We have decided to go with the following changes for now -
The participation will be divided into two categories, Beginners and Seasoners.

The following are Seasoners by default -
1. Those who have attained, at any point, an LMI Sudoku rating of 500+.
2. Those who have achieved a rank of 25 or better in an LMI monthly Sudoku test.
3. Those who get 2 75+ total scores in the Beginners' Contests(This can obviously take effect only from the September edition).

The rest of the participants all have an option to participate as a Beginner and have their own set of rankings.

In light of some performances from players with a prior reputation, we have added a 4th category as follows -
4. Those who score 100+ on the Beginners' Contest shall be bumped to Seasoner level on the spot.

We must remember that the main point of these contests is to encourage new talents who are not familiar with all the types and techniques of Sudoku.

Two of the links on the left pane of the test page extend across the width of the page.was that intended?

Edited by anurag 2012-08-11 4:43 PM

The two in question are explanations of the LMI interface in detail, with screenshots of the various features. So yes, it was intended.

LAME! While sitting here waiting for the timer to run out, I notice that I entered the same answer twice! Lucky I saw it, but I lost 12 minutes or so. :(

In the score page, I find a couple of scores (excluding Time Bonus) which are not whole numbers.... Scores like 28.60, 28.80, 17.50, etc.... Does it indicate partial points for 1 answer key being correct or something like this.... How are partial points allotted...

adityasaraf007 - 2012-08-12 8:22 PM

In the score page, I find a couple of scores (excluding Time Bonus) which are not whole numbers.... Scores like 28.60, 28.80, 17.50, etc.... Does it indicate partial points for 1 answer key being correct or something like this.... How are partial points allotted...

Partial points are allotted if just one number is wrong, or if 2 numbers adjacent to each other are swapped in the entire key, and nothing more than that. For more details you can look at the July version. I will say, we are a bit more lenient here as it is a Beginners' Contest. You may not get points for the same keys in a Monthly Test.

Got it... Thanks.... And what about Bonus.... if I get partial points for 2 sudokus or more, would I be allotted Bonus... or Bonus is limited to just 1 incorrect submission... :)

Just wanted to say thanks for this test. As a sudoku enthusiast, but definitely no expert, it was great to find a competition that I could actually have a good go at. I have participated in several of the previous competions in the past, just for the fun of having a go, but was beginning to find the puzzles far too hard on the whole and had stopped taking part. So it was a real pleasure to feel I could take join in again for a change. I am still pretty slow, but managed all four classics correctly and three of the four variants - just ran out of time on the last one.

adityasaraf007 - 2012-08-12 9:23 PM

Got it... Thanks.... And what about Bonus.... if I get partial points for 2 sudokus or more, would I be allotted Bonus... or Bonus is limited to just 1 incorrect submission... :)

The theory behind the partial points is that the error is so small that you've most probably solved the entire thing correctly but just mis-entered some digits somewhere. So yes, even if 2 out of the 4 have such minute errors, once you get the partial points, you will be allotted the bonus as you have theoretically solved everything correctly and have been penalized for the little error. (Again, things may be different for Monthly tests)

Just an idea.... Can "LMI Beginners' Puzzle Contests" be also organized along similar lines...

adityasaraf007 - 2012-08-12 11:17 PM

Just an idea.... Can "LMI Beginners' Puzzle Contests" be also organized along similar lines...

We started this first on the back of Times Sudoku Championship and decided to see how it goes. Now with the World Championship coming up soon and all that, the schedule is packed. We may think of something like that later on if this continues to be a success.

i lost time over re-solving Classic Sudoku - 1 3 times. The puzzle seems to be wrong. i couldnt complete it. however i did complete the Classic Sudoku - 2 successfully

pooja.seksaria - 2012-08-13 12:39 PM

i lost time over re-solving Classic Sudoku - 1 3 times. The puzzle seems to be wrong. i couldnt complete it. however i did complete the Classic Sudoku - 2 successfully

100 + participants seem to have solved it, so I doubt the problem is with the puzzle. It is possible(and quite common, even among top solvers) that you are just making a wrong assumption somewhere repeatedly. Keep trying, and once the deadline is over, feel free to post where you are getting stuck. Another option is to send me a private message of where you are getting a contradiction.

I have to agree with gramar: most of the other contests are very hard to solve and in the end the fun factor just blows away. Thank you for this easy and solvable contest :)

i interchanged 2 digits by mistake..but i hav solved d entire sudoku correct !...how come i get 0 points???

sreejith - 2012-08-16 12:44 AM

i interchanged 2 digits by mistake..but i hav solved d entire sudoku correct !...how come i get 0 points???

Awarding of partial points has to be done manually, please give one of the organizers time to look into it, and if your case is similar to other cases where partial points were awarded, you will surely be awarded it too. That is why we have the "claim points" button, to alert us to such things, even though we try our best to monitor everyone.

Anyway, you have been awarded partial points. You can check now.

Can anyone post what is the final time by which beginners contest for the month aug (10th - 16th) will end ??

abhishekgoenka89 - 2012-08-16 2:28 PM

Can anyone post what is the final time by which beginners contest for the month aug (10th - 16th) will end ??

Check the beginners' contest page - if still unclear, let us know.

i have gone through the above link. However it is showing that this contest if for the period from 9thaug to 15th aug.
I just want to know is this sudoku contest still going on or has it over and if it has not got over then what is the final time by which i can participate today.

It should have been 10th to 16th.

In any case, it ends at 5:30AM IST tomorrow morning. See attachment

(timing.png)

Attachments
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timing.png (2KB - 3 downloads)

Beginners' Contest August is now over. With the new categorization, it looks like more people wanted to submit the answers and be competitive among fellow Beginners. Whether that be the reason or not, this month's contest saw a high ratio of people who solved at least one sudoku (293/332 Compared to 204/314). This is quite a pleasing stat as the main aim of these contests is that everyone should be able to solve something within the given competitive time.

As this test was categorized, here are the stats on each side -

Beginners - 164 participants and 136 of them solved at least one sudoku. 16 of them solved all 8 correctly.
Seasoners - 167 participants and 157 of them solved at least one sudoku. 96 of them solved all 8 correctly.

Now to the winners,

Congratulations to zyx (Thailand), Manuj (India) and PMarlin (USA) for being the top 3 Beginners.

Among the Seasoners, f4han (Malaysia), jaku111 (Czech Republic) and janoslaw (Poland) were the top 3.

Some of the winners from the Beginners Contest will get shifted to the Seasoner category after this as posted before. They can now try the LMI monthly tests and use the future Beginners' Contests as practice to continue their move towards the top, as they have excelled at the Beginner level. This means some of the other Beginners have a chance of winning the next edition.

Thank you all for participating!

When exact starts the LMI Seasoners`Sudoku Contest in September?

felezeu 1 - 2012-08-29 11:25 PM

When exact starts the LMI Seasoners`Sudoku Contest in September?

This is yet to be decided. ~~It'll mostly be later on in the month, 3rd or 4th week.~~ Watch this topic for announcements.

Edited by debmohanty 2012-09-04 9:53 PM

Types for September

Here are the types for the September Edition of LMI Beginners' Contest - http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/Types/B201209.asp

We are continuing with 2 variants from last time (Irregular and NonConsecutive)
We are introducing 2 variants (Odd Sudoku and Extra Region Sudoku)

Does there will be 2 rounds, each of 100 minutes for September Sudoku Contest

dp_94 - 2012-09-03 9:07 AM

Does there will be 2 rounds, each of 100 minutes for September Sudoku Contest

Not really.The length was set to 100 minutes for our testing purpose. Sorry about the confusion.

Dates for September Beginners Sudoku Contest

Dates : 7^th — 13^th September

can the soduku puzzles be solved offline

If I solve the sudoku puzzles within time for the beginners contest, do I get a rank or somethign?

abhi5670 - 2012-09-06 3:45 PM

can the soduku puzzles be solved offline

I'm not exactly sure what 'offline' means.
You can either solve online using the flash interface
OR
you can print (the same set of sudokus) on paper and solve on paper, and then enter the rows marked by arrows.

abhi5670 - 2012-09-06 3:46 PM

If I solve the sudoku puzzles within time for the beginners contest, do I get a rank or somethign?

Again, not sure what your question is about. What exactly are you expecting if you solve the sudokus within time?

September Beginners Sudoku Contest has started

Here is the link, if you still haven't figured it out.

Points Distribution

Classic 1 - 4 points
Classic 2 - 7 points
Classic 3 - 8 points
Classic 4 - 11 points

Variant 1 (Irregular) - 4 points
Variant 2 (Odd) - 11 points
Variant 3 (Non Consecutive) - 7 points
Variant 4 (Extra Region) - 8 points

abhi5670 - 2012-09-06 3:46 PM

If I solve the sudoku puzzles within time for the beginners contest, do I get a rank or somethign?

See the previous scoring pages. You'll get "a rank" no matter how many you solve, as long as you participate. You'll get "a better rank" if you finish more sudokus/finish the same number faster. But on a side note, if you forget about the ranks, you invariably end up enjoying the test and giving a good performance too ;)

prasanna16391 - 2012-08-06 4:59 PM

The following are Seasoners by default -
1. Those who have attained, at any point, an LMI Sudoku rating of 500+.
2. Those who have achieved a rank of 25 or better in an LMI monthly Sudoku test.
3. Those who get 2 75+ total scores in the Beginners' Contests(This can obviously take effect only from the September edition).
4. Those who score 100+ on the Beginners' Contest shall be bumped to Seasoner level on the spot.

Following players are moved to Seasoners because of 3, even if they chose to play as beginner in August
B. Thananon
godisdead
jzverina
manuj
ZYX

This is a restricted thread. As you might have seen during other LMI tests :

Comments posted in the thread after the test started can only be viewed by players who have finished the test. If you are not logged in to forum or if you have not finished the test, you will see first few characters of the post.

The purpose is to encourage players to freely post comments while the test is running.

hi, can the contests be attempted more than once?

hi, can the contests be enttred more than once

how does one get practice for sudoku variants?

abhi5670 - 2012-09-08 12:10 AM

hi, can the contests be attempted more than once?

Well, whats the point of a "contest" then? You can attempt the sudokus only once. If you attempt it again after having seen them, that gives you an unfair advantage.

abhi5670 - 2012-09-08 12:16 AM

how does one get practice for sudoku variants?

One of the main points of the Beginners' Contests IS to give practice to beginners in Sudoku variants. If you meant solving tips, etc. there is no extensive covering of all variants as far as I know, so if you post a specific grid, one of us will surely give you the required tricks and pushes to solve it.

This was another wonderful attempt by LMI to encourage beginners in the puzzling world in general and sudoku in particular......
The classics were of easy / medium difficulty. 11 pointer was slightly difficult. As regards variants.....
I loved the non-consecutive..........odd was difficult and deserved more points than 11..........
all the best to all the solvers....

Forgot to add a note in the pdf file :

Classics 2,3,4 are provided by our Chinese friends TTHsieh and Lin Minfang

From my solving experience,the points for the 4th classic didnt justify those for the other 2.It was ridiculously easy.I spent 5 minutes on it and 12 on the 7-pointer.

fellas is there any sure shot of improving speed in sudoku ? because i have been solving sudokus for the past 2-3 months extensively after becoming a member of LMI compared to the number of sudokus i used to do earlier and still i am unable to increase my speed by as much as i would have liked and when i see people here submitting 4 classic sudokus within 5mins 26 secs !!!!!!!!!!(oh my god )under 10 mins and so on i feel as i m missing the picture somewhere?!..or is there something that needs to kept in mind as a pre-requisite while solving sudokus????how do people solve within 10 mins 4 sudokus effectively completing each sudoku be it easy or hard under 150 seconds...share ur thoughts pls .....

kishy72 - 2012-09-09 1:41 PM

fellas is there any sure shot of improving speed in sudoku ? because i have been solving sudokus for the past 2-3 months extensively after becoming a member of LMI compared to the number of sudokus i used to do earlier and still i am unable to increase my speed by as much as i would have liked and when i see people here submitting 4 classic sudokus within 5mins 26 secs !!!!!!!!!!(oh my god )under 10 mins and so on i feel as i m missing the picture somewhere?!..or is there something that needs to kept in mind as a pre-requisite while solving sudokus????how do people solve within 10 mins 4 sudokus effectively completing each sudoku be it easy or hard under 150 seconds...share ur thoughts pls .....

In any competition, there will be different levels of ability. This doesn't mean one can't improve. The 5 min 26 seconds person you mention has been a top solver for many years, so not getting anywhere near that after 2-3 months of practice shouldn't be a surprise right? In any case, thats what the Beginners-Seasoners categories are for. Different people have different growth patterns in terms of improving solving speed. That is the base of competition.

There isn't any sure shot way of improving your speed other than practicing as far as I know. There are certain techniques, like the ones listed here - http://www.sudokuwiki.org/sudoku.htm , but its up to you to learn how to use them with time.

Edited by prasanna16391 2012-09-09 2:00 PM

Why do players do this?

(Why.png)

Attachments
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Why.png (7KB - 5 downloads)

Can I re-do a test to improve points ?

vijaya_rajan - 2012-09-12 6:12 PM

Can I re-do a test to improve points ?

As shown in the post directly above you, you can improve your points to the extent of submitting in a second, but then there isn't any point in competing(Edit - And your second attempt will be disqualified anyway). You have more chance of improving yourself if you just concentrate on solving rather than improving the points more than your actual capacity :)

Edited by prasanna16391 2012-09-12 6:31 PM

Email notification test ----
Thanks Richard.

Last one day for September's edition. Actually little less than 21 hours as I post this.

Where are the top sixteen Indians .....I can see only Rakesh, Akash Doulani and Zalak..(sorry if I have missed someone).........baaki janta kahan hai....

neerajmehrotra - 2012-09-13 7:31 PM

Where are the top sixteen Indians .....I can see only Rakesh, Akash Doulani and Zalak..(sorry if I have missed someone).........baaki janta kahan hai....

Ah... This is for "Beginners" - so others in top 16 don't want to degrade their value by playing - even though we have seen top players from all other countries. Or may be too difficult to fit in 40 minutes in 10080 minutes in their busy schedules.

neerajmehrotra - 2012-09-13 7:31 PM

Where are the top sixteen Indians .....I can see only Rakesh, Akash Doulani and Zalak..(sorry if I have missed someone).........baaki janta kahan hai....

Can add Jaipal now :)

prasanna16391 - 2012-09-13 10:04 PM

neerajmehrotra - 2012-09-13 7:31 PM

Where are the top sixteen Indians .....I can see only Rakesh, Akash Doulani and Zalak..(sorry if I have missed someone).........baaki janta kahan hai....

Can add Jaipal now :)

Thats great.....hope one or two more people join the gang.....

Septembers Beginners' contest is over. Passwords removed from booklets.

LMI Beginners' contest September is over. Statistically it is very similar to the August edition. 336 participants and 289 of them submitted at least one sudoku correctly.

The top 3 Beginners this time are Pwned from USA, mtgs from the United Kingdom, and PMarlin from USA(2nd podium finish). From Indians, aashay and prabhadoshi are worth mentioning, finishing 4th and 5th respectively.

jaku111(Czech Republic), Timothy(France) and Kota(Japan) topped the Seasoner standings.

Thank you all for Participating!

I am sure these contests must really be a confidence booster for beginners especially for those who find themselves placed above the seasoners.....

Types for October

Here are the types for the October Edition of LMI Beginners' Contest - http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/types/?test=B201210

We are continuing with 2 variants from last time (Odd Sudoku and Extra Region Sudoku)
We are introducing 2 new variants (Toroidal and Consecutive)

The contest will start on the 11th of October and run till the 17th. Other details will be posted shortly.

Beginners' Contests changes

1. Instant Grading
=============
Instant Grading will be enabled in Beginners' contests. Upon submitting, either with paper mode or online mode, you will immediately know if the submission is correct or not. Each wrong submission will be penalized by adding 1 minute to your submission time. There will not be any deduction of points.

2. Extended Time
=============
To encourage players to solve and submit all Sudokus, players can now submit Sudokus even after the initial 40 minutes is over. However, sudokus submitted after 40 minutes will get only 50% of the points for the corresponding sudoku. Note that the timer will now start from 00:00, running up.

3. Score Page
==========
Score page can be viewed anytime after you submit your first sudoku correctly. However, you cannot see others' submissions for sudokus you have not solved correctly. As usual, score page can be refreshed only once in 30 minutes. Also, there are few changes in terms of the default score page view.

what is the difference between a toroidal sudoku and an irregular sudoku? and in the example provided, some of the outlined regions have 2,3,4,5 etc (arbit number of cells)How do u fill then the digits 1 to 7 in each outlined region.....
PS : Glad that P.S and the glitz and glamour that was missing for 2 weeks is back in LMI. :-P

The regions 'wrap' around the grid. For example: R1C1, R1C2, R2C1, R6C1, R6C2, R7C1, R7C2 is one region of seven cells.
Wherever there is no thick border at an edge, it means the region continues to the opposite end. Look at the 5 at R2C3 and the 4 at R7C4, they lie in the same region.

In Irregular Sudoku, there is no 'wrapping' in the regions.

(TS.png)

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Re : Beginners' Contests changes

Just a clarification about extended time, this time will run till Beginners' contest is over, i.e. 17th October in this case.

hi, can anyone tell me a site to practice some odd sudokus

dp_94 - 2012-10-10 3:53 PM

hi, can anyone tell me a site to practice some odd sudokus

http://rohanrao.blogspot.in/search/label/Odd%20Sudoku

http://sudokucup.com/node/2127

http://www.worldpuzzle.org/sudoku/sudoku-w26/

http://www.sachsentext.de/en/node/608

(mock18.png)

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mock18.png (15KB - 1 downloads)

Rohan Rao - 2012-10-10 12:02 PM

The regions 'wrap' around the grid. For example: R1C1, R1C2, R2C1, R6C1, R6C2, R7C1, R7C2 is one region of seven cells.
Wherever there is no thick border at an edge, it means the region continues to the opposite end. Look at the 5 at R2C3 and the 4 at R7C4, they lie in the same region.

In Irregular Sudoku, there is no 'wrapping' in the regions.

mind block cleared.....Thnks Rohan...

No Penalty award

In case a participant has submitted without entering the required number of digits, or only entered one half of the key, that participant will be awarded no penalty for that submission. However, this change needs to be manual from our end so the change may not occur immediately.

prasanna16391 - 2012-10-11 5:57 PM

No Penalty award

"penalty award" - is that an oxymoron !!

Thanks for another good beginner's contest. The half credit for late submissions to encourage everyone to work all puzzles is an excellent idea.

Beginners Contest for October is over.
Password removed from the pdfs.

Congrats to hjkl18(Czech Republic), momiji(China) and mtgs(UK) for topping Beginners' Contest October. Among Seasoners, F4han(Malaysia), jaku111(Czech Republic) and janoslaw(Poland) top the standings.

Out of 116 Beginners, 102 solved at least one sudoku correctly, and the corresponding numbers for Seasoners is 156/164. Its pleasing to see so many non-zero scores, as that was the main aim with the extended time idea. We have received some good feedback on this, including a comment above, but we welcome more feedback on this and any other aspect of this month's contest.

Thank you all for participating!

Something I'd like to add separately -

There has been some curiosity about the author of these contests. The author so far, barring the one noted here, has been Deb. But, we encourage other authors to contribute too. Obviously, by now, the difficulty expected in these contests is known. The technicalities are -
1. These authors won't be added/updated on the author's page, but they will be given credit on this topic.
2. If at all someone would like to author a Beginners' contest, contact me/Deb and we will let you know the variants for that particular month.

We're pleased to announce that Fred Stalder(Fred76) has already offered to author Beginners' Contest November.

prasanna16391 - 2012-10-18 10:53 AM

Congrats to hjkl18(Czech Republic), momiji(China) and mtgs(UK) for topping Beginners' Contest October.

mtgs will be moved to Seasoners category after 2 scores of 75+.

what makes a person disqualified ?i see a person disqualified in the list...what might be the reason?pardon me if i m touching on sensitive topics..but i m curious ..apart from posting ridiculous times like 0:01 for solving all sudokus which happened in the previous month ,does solving all in under 15 or so min warrant a disqualification just because the person might be a beginner?

It is always a difficult decision to disqualify anyone, beginner or seasoner. We discuss it multiple times internally before finalizing anything. I'm not going to share those most-difficult-part-of-administering-online-puzzle-tests here. But "solving under 15 minutes" is not a criteria to disqualify anyone.

Since you are curious, I'll send you an PM regarding why we had a disqualified player this time.

prasanna16391 - 2012-10-18 11:03 AM

We're pleased to announce that Fred Stalder(Fred76) has already offered to author Beginners' Contest November.

If you're friendly with me, there is a chance that sudokus will be easier than those in the "Diagonal Vision" test.

Haha, I'm joking, of course ! I'm glad to have the honor of creating the grids for the next beginners contest !

Fred

November Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Types

Here are the types for the November Edition of LMI Beginners' Contest - http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/types/?test=B201211

We are continuing with 2 variants from last time (Toroidal and Consecutive)
We are introducing 2 new variants (Outside and No Knight Step)

Dates

The contest will start on the 8th of November and run till the 14th, including both dates.

Author

All 8 Sudokus for November are written by Fred Stalder. As you all know, Fred regularly posts sudokus and sudoku related information in his blog Variantes de Sudoku and also administers the highly popular French sudoku forum SUDOKU VARIANTE.

There is a small change in image format for the Consecutive Sudoku that appeared last month. Instead of dots, bars will be present between consecutive digits.

I just registered on the LMI site. Could you please tell me where do I get puzzles to practice for this month's beginner's challenge.

Also, could you please share any link on the format how this tournament will be conducted.

I am sure this must be there on the site but being a newbie I am not sure where it is.

ashwinparadkar - 2012-11-04 3:11 PM

I just registered on the LMI site. Could you please tell me where do I get puzzles to practice for this month's beginner's challenge.

Also, could you please share any link on the format how this tournament will be conducted.

I am sure this must be there on the site but being a newbie I am not sure where it is.

For practice you can view the previous Beginners' Contests here - http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/?test=B201210 . The new types, Outside and No Knight Step(or Anti Knight), can be found, along with other variants if you look through the Monthly Tests, or go to the blogs/sites provided on the links page - http://logicmastersindia.com/home/?g=links . Out of the sites Fed Sudoku, Sudoku Cup and Argio Logic have online solving.

As for format, once the contest page link is shared, there will be a section there giving details of how to use the interface/make submissions. The basic summary is -

You have 40 minutes of "official time", during which you can either download and print a PDF, solve on paper and submit the rows or columns that the arrows show, or you can solve online itself. With each submission the Instant Grading will let you know if you're right or wrong. If wrong, you can re submit but you'll get a penalty of 1 minute added to your time taken for each wrong submission. You may submit after the 40 minutes are done till the contest dates are over, but you will get just 50 % of the points then.

Thanks a lot Prasanna. That was exactly what I was looking for :)

It looks like some players, especially the ones solving on paper, are submitting all Sudokus at the end. Please remember that the points are halved after 40 minutes. So if you have solved some sudokus before 40 minutes, it is important to submit them before the 'penalty period' starts.

what is the password for opening the document

It is written in red right below the buttons 'start classics' and 'start variants' after you have hit such a button.

Beginners' November is over. The top 3 Beginners are hjkl18 (Czech Republic), DavidCollison (UK) and lukasz6500 (Poland). hjkl18's highly impressive runaway performance means he now has 2 consecutive top performances on these contests, and will be bumped up to the Seasoners' category because of this. adityasaraf007 had the best Indian performance among the Beginners.

Among Seasoners, jaku111 and Gotroch make it a Czech 1-2, with Kota finishing at 3rd place.

Thank you all for participating, and thanks to Fred Stalder for providing some beautifully constructed grids. On a personal note, the Outside 1-9 theme was my favorite :)

Thanks Fred for writing the Beginners contest. It certainly helps me a lot, when I don't have to write 8 sudokus every month

With a highest score of 110.65 (compared to 126 in Sep / 118 in Oct), this contest was certainly more difficult even for top solvers. Some of the puzzles were time-consuming to fill so many digits (Outside / Consecutive), if not very difficult. The result was not completely surprising, in fact Fred and me were mostly expecting it. At some point before the test, Prasanna even had suggested increasing time limit.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that beginners shouldn't get demotivated if they scored less in this test compared to previous ones.

Edited by debmohanty 2012-11-16 10:40 PM

Just a few words about the puzzles:

Classics: Not lot of things to say. 4th sudoku was the hardest, with a naked single in R8C2. Once this found, it doesn't require hard step, but the logical path is narrow, so it explains surely that some players spent some time on this one.
I hope that you have seen what I tried to do aesthetically on these grids.

Variants: I was asked by Deb and Prasanna to create a 7*7 toroidal, a consecutive sudoku, an outside sudoku and a killer sudoku. After test solving the set, we found that it was a bit too difficult compared to previous tests, especially killer sudoku. I could have created an easier one, but I don't find very exciting to create very easy killer sudoku. In my opinion, killer sudoku is not an easy variant, and even the easy ones, without hard logical step, take some time to be solved. So we decided that I create another variant: It seemed more appropriate to create an easy antiknight sudoku.

Toroidal sudoku: Most of the time, I like to create toroidal sudoku with the same shape for all regions. This is perhaps because it's impossible with irregular sudoku that I find it interesting.
Outside sudoku: I feared that it could be hard to create something aesthetic for this one. In fact, that is the first outside sudoku I created. I didn't want to put digits inside the grid (otherwise, why name it outside sudoku), and I didn't want to have too much digits outside the grid. I decided the 1-9 stuff for the upper side and right side,and tried to have no more than 2 digits for each row/column in the bottom and left sides. This construction has the effect that the end of the solving is the regions 2,3,5,6. The hardest steps here were two pairs (13 in region 2 and 89 in region 6), that make the puzzle rather medium than easy. (The players that took part in the last WSC know that it's possible to create hard outside sudokus !)
Consecutive sudoku: I chosed the theme being my name's initials: FS. I constructed the puzzle trying to have these letters clearly visible, so trying to have the least possible of consecutive digits outside of the digits making the letters. I tried to "push" the consecutive digits in the regions 3 and 7, where I also placed the digits.
The puzzle doesn't need some hard step to be solved, but it is also, as the outside sudoku, more a medium one than an easy one.

Finally the antiknight sudoku. I think it is not hard, but requires lot of placement using the antiknight rule. The hardest step was to find the pair 25 in region 2 due to the antiknight placement for the 5.

I hope every player have fun, especially those who spent lot of time (spending lot of time without having fun is not an ideal entertainment) !

Fred

Reading you would be the author of a beginners contest, I already thought it would be harder than average. I thought the same during solving. I was very much aware of the ability for naked singles, so I didn't find the 4th sudoku harder than the others.

For the variants, I can confirm some bottlenecks you described; the pair 13 in box 2 in the outside sudoku was hard to spot. This one certainly took most time. The consecutive was not that hard. The long series in column 7 provided much info, and the absence of a lot of bars means you often have to place two consecutive digits with one cell in between.
I have almost no experience in solving anti knights. For your test I practised a few, and learned some typical tricks, most of them being elimination steps. That helped, and I found the pair 25 pretty soon.

I had a lot of fun with the puzzles. Also afterwards, when I noticed my relative good scoring. But during the test the same feelings crossed my mind as Deb wrote above.

Anyway: thanks for the test!

December Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Types

Here are the types for the December Edition of LMI Beginners' Contest - http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/types/?test=B201212

We are continuing with 2 variants from last time (Outside and No Knight Step)
We are introducing 2 new variants (UnTouch and Killer)

Dates

The contest will start on the 13th of December and run till the 19th, including both dates.

Author

All 8 Sudokus for December are written by detuned (Tom Collyer). To know more about Tom and to get a Nikoli puzzle every Friday, checkout Tom's blog detuned radio.

I certainly have a tough act to follow in Fred, but I've tried my best to put together a nice set. I don't think it will be quite as challenging in difficulty as November! I suppose if you look at my blog you'll see I haven't posted sudoku variants for quite a while, so it was lots of fun putting some sudoku together for a change. Hopefully you'll see that when you get to solve the puzzles :)

detuned - 2012-12-06 4:02 AM

I certainly have a tough act to follow in Fred

As everyone knows , the grids of Fred shake the neurons ..

....Ah !Ah ! but we like our agitator of brain, of course !!!

detuned - 2012-12-06 4:02 AM
but I've tried my best to put together a nice set

That's very kind of you to prepare the grids for (the past) and next Edition of Lmi beginners.
Thanks to the authors , we make progress .
Thank you very much.

Nice clean sudokus, thanks for the puzzles Tom. :)

---------
So 5 minutes 36 seconds is the time to beat.

Edited by debmohanty 2012-12-13 5:05 PM

Nice sudokus, Tom. Thanks !

My pleasure. I hope everyone's neurons have been tickled, rather than shaken, so far :)

Thanks for the puzzles

Nice puzzles! I had a horrendously difficult time with the Outside until I noticed that I had failed to use one of the clues. The classics were all pretty nice puzzles, the no knight was rather clever, and the killer was really beautiful but I think pretty difficult for a beginner contest! It took a while to see how to make use of the layout most effectively.

In first , the possibility of playing online is really comfortable with the zoom , I see as well as a mole !!!
Thank you Deb .
I thought that I had no chance I never play untouch , anti knight and killer , but the grids were very nice , not easy but not too difficult .(I confirm tickles only...Ah!Ah!)
unfortunately about the killer (I confirm more that tickles in spite of 15 in the middle) ..... I close my mouth because I played as a smurfette , to the right ...to the left ....etc but never at the right place !!!!! result.....far too many time .
The classics were great especially the third and the fourth .
Thank you Tom

Edited by distri 2012-12-16 4:23 PM

All of the puzzles were very nice, though I broke the Killer a couple of times, gave up, came back the next day, and solved it. Also, I spent a few minutes staring at a nearly-completed AntiKnight puzzle before realizing that I had forgotten to use the 2 in the bottom-centre grid.

December Beginners' Contest is over now. Passwords removed from booklets.

adityasaraf007 and khuski move to seasoners after Decembers contest.

I guess I'll had some of my own thoughts, as Fred did last month.

Classics: in general I quite like writing easy classics as you can really put a lot of thought into the design. With puzzle #1 I was hoping to get the digits 1-8, rather than 2-9 around the edge of the puzzle, but sometimes it doesn't quite work out like that. #2 featured some diagonal stripes - and this meant there were very few opportunities to put singles into the puzzle. Instead it was more profitable to solve by focussing on one or two digits at a time. This was supposed to be true of #3 as well, but it turned out even easier than that. I was astonished to see several sub-minute solves, with some as quick as 40 seconds! #4 was supposed to be a little trickier, and is based upon a favourite design of mine. I've used it in tests before, and as perhaps die hard fans of my blog will tell you, is (almost) the pattern I used for my first ever puzzle!

Variants: sometimes you just throw down a design and see where it gets you. With the added constraints that a variant can give, you often have a puzzle that needs very little tweaking. You can clearly see this is what I was after with the untouch puzzle. I was hoping not to need those digits in the 5th column, but didn't quite manage it. The killer was my favourite of the lot. Actually I was a little dopey when initially sketching out the cages and left blank spaces at R1C5, R5C1, R5C9 and R9C1. When I came to extend the cages that now contain those cells, I found that the puzzle still solved perfectly well. A pet hate of mine with killers is where you have to do too much adding up. I guess you have to do a bit to get yourself started here with the "cross" in the middle, but I much prefer to rely on logic that involves restricting a cage to a potential set of numbers and then using them as mini extra regions. So once you worked out how the L shaped 16 and 17 cages in the middle interacted, you were well on your way to solving. I suppose the outside was probably my least favourite of the set. I can't say I'm totally in love with this variant, but I tried to give a good clean solve and leave things well presented. The unfortunate thing with this sort of variant is that often you can miss the significance of one particular clue and be left scratching you head for a while until you come to re-examine it. Finally the anti-knight. I initially tried a design very similar to the untouch, but couldn't get it to work. In a fit of desperation (it was getting quite late that evening and i wanted to finish everything off), I had a look at Fred's completed grid from last month, permuted the digits and gave it a rotation, and then sketched out a striking design which I thought would solve uniquely. Without too much tweaking I got what I wanted. There are lots of subtle interactions with the antiknight logic for certain cells in the grid, and so if you knew what you were looking for the solve was fairly straightforward.

Anyhow, I hope everyone enjoyed the puzzles, congratulations to the winners, and my thanks to LMI for giving me the opportunity to showcase some of my puzzles :)

Tom

Thanks Tom for providing a nice set to solve. The detailed post about creating the grids is really interesting and useful too.

Anyway, the top 3 Beginners are zbych (Poland), DavidCollison (UK) and elena_tens (Greece). dp_94 had the best Indian performance among the Beginners.

Among Seasoners, no one got close to the fairly early "time to beat" set by jaku111 (Czech Republic). Timothy (France) and Gotroch (Czech Republic) are the "best of the rest" with 2nd and 3rd place respectively.

Congrats to all the winners, and thank you all for participating. :)

January Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Types

Here are the types for the January Edition of LMI Beginners' Contest - http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/types/?test=B201301

We are continuing with 2 variants from last time (UnTouch and Killer)
We are introducing 1 new variant (Sudoku XV)
Now that we have been running Beginners for 6 months, we have decided to start revisiting an old variant every month. It will be Irregular Sudoku this time.

Dates

Will be announced soon.

Author

All 8 Sudokus for January are written by Richard Stolk. Read more about Richard at our authors page, and don't forget to check out his recently concluded Advent Calendar 2012.

Update

Dates

The contest will start on the 18th of January and run till the 24th, including both dates.

About Untouch Sudoku, can identical digits touch each other "diagonally"?
I can understand it's not allowed (by observing the Example), but I think some "beginner"s can't.

xevs - 2013-01-18 1:23 PM

About Untouch Sudoku, can identical digits touch each other "diagonally"?
I can understand it's not allowed (by observing the Example), but I think some "beginner"s can't.

Yes, it's meant that they can't touch each other diagonally.

Richard - 2013-01-18 1:31 PM

xevs - 2013-01-18 1:23 PM

About Untouch Sudoku, can identical digits touch each other "diagonally"?
I can understand it's not allowed (by observing the Example), but I think some "beginner"s can't.

Yes, it's meant that they can't touch each other diagonally.

Well ... "diagonally" is the only way identical digits can touch each other in a Sudoku

[ Added the missing word in link for types. It was already present in pdf. ]

Heading of the contest page needs an update. It reads date in Dec.

Why it doesn't let me to print variants??

@TiiT, please check my messages

I would like to know if anyone has attempted correctly the 'Killer' sudoku in variants in LMI beginners' test, january. If yes, can anyone tell me the correct solution for the 'Killer' sudoku in variants. I have attempted it and think my answer is correct. But the server is showing the answer to be wrong.

My answer is O-564782391 and P-327941865

Edited by huisouvik 2013-01-20 2:59 AM

@huisouvik, Please check your inbox for solution to killer.

hii is it valid to claim points for mistyping a number...when i first submitted the solution to answer for killer ,under time pressure ,in the second row of the answer solution i typed the wrong number as the first digit..i could not check again ..i had only 10 seconds remaining..after i completed i realised that i had lost 5 points for mistyping a single digit..not sure if it is valid to claim here...can the admin check my submission pls and see if it is a vaild claim....

Since we introduced the Instant Grading system with the lenient penalty, we decided that the only time we will remove the penalty is when an answer key is incomplete (has blank spaces). We have a system to notify us of these cases so the claiming button seemed redundant. Hence, we decided to remove it.

Obviously, we are aware that the rare case of someone making a slight mistake within time and then correcting it after time is possible, but we still don't think its a valid enough claim. If we award points there, its a disadvantage to people who are careful, submit just after time and don't have a typo just before time to show for it.

prasanna16391 - 2013-01-20 6:50 PM

Since we introduced the Instant Grading system with the lenient penalty, we decided that the only time we will remove the penalty is when an answer key is incomplete (has blank spaces). We have a system to notify us of these cases so the claiming button seemed redundant. Hence, we decided to remove it.

Obviously, we are aware that the rare case of someone making a slight mistake within time and then correcting it after time is possible, but we still don't think its a valid enough claim. If we award points there, its a disadvantage to people who are careful, submit just after time and don't have a typo just before time to show for it.

Not a problem.I know computing bonus would be a bit of a headache in the event that you decide to award points.. not that i would be getting much bonus anyway.It would not have felt right to me too if you had awarded for a mistake on my part.It is just that 6 points go down the drain because of a single typo that my heart forced me to claim.Thnks for looking into the claim......

Thanks Richard, the classics in particular were very elegant!

The January contest is now over. Passwords removed from booklets.

Congratulations to the players who took the top spots, both in Seasoners category (Jaku111, Timothy, Janoslaw) as well as in Beginners (zbych, elena_tens, affpuzz) category.

I am happy to see almost 270 participants!

I am also happy to see that a lot of Beginners were able to solve all Classics within the time limit and also that seven Beginners managed to solve all Variants in time. Well done!

When Deb asked me if I was willing to write a Beginners Sudoku Contest for LMI, I didn’t hesitate for a split second. It meant two challenges for me: First of all, I have never written a classic sudoku before. Second, writing interesting but EASY variants, sounds like a contradiction in itself to me.

Classics
I just started with the classics as I lack experience. It was fun to look for nice patterns of given digits with good solvable sudokus. I wanted the maximum number of given digits to be 27, use different kinds of symmetry and use some unusual patterns.
There is not much to say about it; no dirty tricks, no naked singles (I am not so good in spotting those, and that might be the reason I am not so fond of this technique, and thus don’t put it often in my own puzzles.) Only speed solving skills are required to tackle all four classics. And a lot of you managed to do so.

Variants
When I start making a sudoku variant, one of my goals is to reduce the number of clues to an absolute minimum. Especially for the puzzles I create for the puzzle portal in Germany I do this very often. The only exception to this rule is when symmetry is broken by removing a clue.

But for the puzzles that are part of a Beginners Contest, I had to let go this rule pretty soon; the puzzles would have become too hard that way. For example: the irregular didn’t have the 6 and 4 in the centre in the First version and the killer had the two cages of 6 combined to one of 12 in rows 2/3 and cages 10 and 9 combined to one of 19 in rows 3/4/5. Both puzzles were too hard, so I repaired the difficulty level by placing extra givens and by splitting the cages.

Some notes to some of the variants:
Untouch: the untouch rule is necessary only a few times. Mainly normal sudoku solving techniques are used.

XV: For this puzzle the 3 centre columns can be filled very quick. The blocks 1 and 9 provide a lot of information so you can proceed very fast after that. Especially when using the information where there is no X or V.

Killer: I am fond of larger cages and I love diagonal symmetry. I think eight cages of size two is pretty much the minimum for keeping it a quickly and smoothly solving puzzle. In my original puzzle there was a bigger role for the cage 28/7 in the center in combination with the cages 11/3 and 16/3 sticking out of the 3x3-block bottom right. Incredible to see that the fastest solvers tackled this one in around three-and-a-half minute!

It was my pleasure to create this Beginners Contest for you. I hope you all enjoyed it!

February Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Types

Here are the types for the February Edition of LMI Beginners' Contest - http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/types/?test=B201302

We are continuing with 2 variants from last time (Irregular and Sudoku XV)
We are introducing 1 new variant (Frame Sudoku)
We are revisiting Extra Region Sudoku

Dates

15th - 21st February (including both dates)

The 3rd Sudoku, XV has 2 good results, please check ! :)
326914578
497865123
158732649
814659237
735281496
962473851
689547312
243196785
571328964

Frantz71 - 2013-02-13 4:21 PM

The 3rd Sudoku, XV has 2 good results, please check ! :)
326914578
497865123
158732649
814659237
735281496
962473851
689547312
243196785
571328964

Completely clueless about which Sudoku XV you are referring to. Please provide a link.

Administrator - 2013-02-13 4:35 PM

Frantz71 - 2013-02-13 4:21 PM

The 3rd Sudoku, XV has 2 good results, please check ! :)
326914578
497865123
158732649
814659237
735281496
962473851
689547312
243196785
571328964

Completely clueless about which Sudoku XV you are referring to. Please provide a link.

Pretty sure this is the XV Sudoku from the last WPF GP.

Frantz, all instances of X and V are given, so there can't be any digits adding to 10 or 5 anywhere in the grid except where the X's and V's are given. Because there are numerous places two adjacent digits add to 5 and 10 in your solution, where no X or V is given, you solution is not valid.

I hope this helps.

February Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Variants Points

Extra Region Sudoku - 8 points
Sudoku XV - 5 points
Irregular Sudoku - 5 points
Frame Sudoku - 12 points
All 4 variants are written by Prasanna Seshadri.

Classsic Points

Classic 1 - 4 points
Classic 2 - 7 points
Classic 3 - 11 points
Classic 4 - 8 points
All 4 classics are written by Deb Mohanty.

Submission link

If you still haven't figured out, here is the submission link for Beginners Contest.

Nice Tough sudokus.Thankful that Grand prix Indian round got completed just before this.Could carry on the momentum comfortably .I could almost feel instinctively where the numbers would be hidden.Ah Hidden singles again all over the place!!!Lovely construction
Some very really narrow points in the sudokus.Thankfully i found them sooner without wasting much time.
Overall CLASSIC classics!!!!!

The instructions on the "Frame Sudoku" for the on-screen solving (not the pdf) are wrong.
They're instructions for a Killer rather than a Frame.
It could definitely cause confusion for anyone who is expecting the instructions to remind them how Frame works.

Frame Sudoku rules

Please note that the online interface contains the rules for Killer Sudoku instead of Frame Sudoku. This will be fixed shortly. You can still access the correct rules by either keeping this page open - http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/types/?test=B201302 or just downloading and opening the pdf while solving.

Update

The above problem is now fixed.

I liked this test very much esp. the Classic puzzles. Each classic puzzle was very well created to give the minimum required hints. Extra Region Sudoku was nothing but Windoku itself. I think we could have introduced this type in this test instead of saying it as Extra Region Sudoku. I also liked the Frame Sudoku. Rest Sudoku XV and Irregular were easy ones. Overall very enjoyable Test. Thanks to Deb, Prassanna and LMI for this great test.

rajeshk - 2013-02-17 10:27 PM
Extra Region Sudoku was nothing but Windoku itself.

That is an interesting observation. Not sure if Prasanna designed it that way.

Puzzles were nice. Alas, I was hung up on the Frame Sudoku for quite a while due to my own silliness (when you need 2 pairs for a 7-sum, don't pick 2+6 and 3+5 :))

Hi :)
I'm new to LMI
I prefer to solve online but I'm not familiar with your online interface, can you please tell me how can I delete a pencil mark?
I tried "Delete" and "Backspace" and none of them can delete a pencil mark :p

Black Tiger - 2013-02-19 1:00 AM

Hi :)
I'm new to LMI
I prefer to solve online but I'm not familiar with your online interface, can you please tell me how can I delete a pencil mark?
I tried "Delete" and "Backspace" and none of them can delete a pencil mark :p

For removing a pencil mark, you can press Ctrl+digit or Ctrl+leftClick. Its given in the "How to Submit?" section of the submissions page. :)

prasanna16391 - 2013-02-19 12:33 AM

For removing a pencil mark, you can press Ctrl+digit or Ctrl+leftClick. Its given in the "How to Submit?" section of the submissions page. :)

Thank you :)
found the point and solved the test online last night :D

Purpose

Round Structure

Difficulty of Sudokus

Frequency

What about top Solvers?

Announcements - Sudoku Types for July'2012

LMI Beginners' Sudoku Contest - July'2012

Announcement

Dates for August Beginners' Sudoku Test

Sudoku Booklets uploaded

Types for September

Dates for September Beginners Sudoku Contest

Dates : 7th — 13th September

September Beginners Sudoku Contest has started

Types for October

Beginners' Contests changes

Re : Beginners' Contests changes

No Penalty award

No Penalty award

If you're friendly with me, there is a chance that sudokus will be easier than those in the "Diagonal Vision" test.

November Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Types

Dates

Author

December Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Types

Dates

Author

January Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Types

Dates

Author

Update

Dates

February Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Types

Dates

February Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Variants Points

Classsic Points

Submission link

Frame Sudoku rules

Update

March Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Types

Dates

March Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Variants Points - Submission link

Classsic Points - Submission link

June Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Types

Dates

August Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Types

Dates

Author :

Submission Link

Author :

December Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Types

Dates

Author :

Points Distribution

Classics

Variants

Submission Link

February Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Types

Dates

Author :

Links

May Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Types

Dates

Author :

Links

July Beginners' Sudoku Contest

Types

Dates

Author :

Dates : 7^th — 13^th September