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Administrator
   
Country : India | |
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Administrator
Country : India | Logic Masters India announces WPF Sudoku Grand Prix — Serbian Round
Dates : 20 th — 22 nd April
Instructions Booklet and Submission : here
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skywalker
Posts: 42
Country : Serbia | Two important notes: 1. Examples in IB are taken from various sources. 2. Authors had excellent test solver who also reviewed IB and PB, so Nikola prepared appropriate gift for him  (for Thomas.png)Attachments ----------------  for Thomas.png (25KB - 5 downloads) |
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greenhorn
Posts: 164
Country : Slovakia | Hi everybody,
I have one question on the ninth sudoku - Frameless: What does mean this sentence? "The amount of digits can differ from sum to sum and CAN BE ONLY ONE DIGIT." I believe, that I understood the rules, but the ending of this sentence worries me.
Thanks a lot. |
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connect4
Posts: 7
Country : United States | greenhorn - 2013-04-03 6:09 AM
Hi everybody,
I have one question on the ninth sudoku - Frameless: What does mean this sentence? "The amount of digits can differ from sum to sum and CAN BE ONLY ONE DIGIT." I believe, that I understood the rules, but the ending of this sentence worries me.
Thanks a lot.
If the number outside is 7, for example, then the first digit could be 7, or they could be 34/25/16/124 in various permutations. So the sum can be the sum of a single digit. |
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skywalker
Posts: 42
Country : Serbia | Numbers outside the grid are sums of some number (from single digit to all nine digits) of digits from that side of grid (first N numbers).
Branko |
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greenhorn
Posts: 164
Country : Slovakia | Fred, Branko, thank you. I got the rules at first, but then wondered why it is said, when it is clear. I need to improve my English first  |
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wicktroll
Posts: 16
Country : Hungary | Hi everyone,
I have a question about puzzle 16 Movable digits. The puzzle rule says (I'm sure I misunderstand it...):
"However, for any number placed into the grid, at least one of its (at most) four edge adjacent neighbour cells must contain same number in the solved puzzle as the cell itself has in original grid."
Could you please tell me why there's a 1 in R3C1 in the solution grid? I tried to understand this rule in 2 ways, but
1. None of the neighbours of R3C1 is 1 in the original grid.
2. None of the neighbours of R3C1 contain the same digit in the solution grid as in the original grid.
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Para
Posts: 315
Country : The Netherlands | Para posted @ 2013-04-04 11:44 AM wicktroll - 2013-04-04 11:28 AM
Hi everyone,
I have a question about puzzle 16 Movable digits. The puzzle rule says (I'm sure I misunderstand it...):
"However, for any number placed into the grid, at least one of its (at most) four edge adjacent neighbour cells must contain same number in the solved puzzle as the cell itself has in original grid."
Could you please tell me why there's a 1 in R3C1 in the solution grid? I tried to understand this rule in 2 ways, but
1. None of the neighbours of R3C1 is 1 in the original grid.
2. None of the neighbours of R3C1 contain the same digit in the solution grid as in the original grid.
The rule doesn't apply reversely. The rule only states that one of the neighbours of a GIVEN digit, must contain that digit. This doesn't mean that every cell must be one of its given neighbours as equal digits can transfer to the same cell. For example look at R5C5. The clues in R4C5, R5C4, R5C6 and R6C5 all move to this cell. |
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tojejedno
Posts: 4
Country : Czech Republic | I tried to solve the IB (not only to read the instructions). When solving the puzzles number 4, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 I realized that I am not able to read my digits and pencil marks (all written by pencil), because the grey colour is too dark. Would it be possible to use a little bit lighter grey in the PB, please? |
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skywalker
Posts: 42
Country : Serbia | We'll prepare version 2 of IB with lighter grey to check is it better and after that define grey for PB.
Branko |
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wicktroll
Posts: 16
Country : Hungary | Thanks, it's clear now. |
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Administrator
Country : India | skywalker - 2013-04-04 2:14 PM
We'll prepare version 2 of IB with lighter grey to check is it better and after that define grey for PB.
Updated version of IB uploaded, with gray cells being 25% gray. (Images for 13 Placement and 14 Thermo are not fixed, but they will use 25% gray in the puzzle booklet ).
Hope it is better. |
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tojejedno
Posts: 4
Country : Czech Republic | Administrator - 2013-04-05 1:17 AM
skywalker - 2013-04-04 2:14 PM
We'll prepare version 2 of IB with lighter grey to check is it better and after that define grey for PB.
Updated version of IB uploaded, with gray cells being 25% gray. (Images for 13 Placement and 14 Thermo are not fixed, but they will use 25% gray in the puzzle booklet ).
Hope it is better.
Thanks a lot, it is much better. |
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TiiT
Posts: 139
Country : Estonia | TiiT posted @ 2013-04-11 10:52 AM About word search:
1.The rule says that Find all given words. Do I really have to find all the words or do I need to solve the sudoku? Or you just want to say that it's not solvable if you don't find all the words?
2. What do you mean about Find all given words (only words with capital letters) in the words list? Do I have to find all the words or do I have to find only the words with capital letters. The rule speaks against itself.
TiiT |
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Ours brun
Posts: 148
Country : France | 1. I guess we have to read it as "words can be found in the grid and you'd better search them if you want to solve the sudoku", indeed.
2. I may be wrong but I suppose there will be something like a text accompanying the competition puzzle, with only some words in capital letters. |
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skywalker
Posts: 42
Country : Serbia | TiiT - 2013-04-11 10:52 AM
About word search:
1.The rule says that Find all given words. Do I really have to find all the words or do I need to solve the sudoku? Or you just want to say that it's not solvable if you don't find all the words?
2. What do you mean about Find all given words (only words with capital letters) in the words list? Do I have to find all the words or do I have to find only the words with capital letters. The rule speaks against itself.
TiiT
All words written by capital letters (there will be additional words in competition puzzle, that you can completely ignore during solve ) are placed somewhere in solved sudoku. You don't need to mark words in solved grid. It is enough to solve sudoku according to this additional rules.
For example: BUENOS Aires, New YORK. Only BUENOS and YORK must be in solved sudoku.
Branko |
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Karel Tesar
Posts: 28
Country : Czech Republic | I hope you'll appreciate a little bit of practice on the next WPF round.
We are preparing for you these sudoku variants:
15.04.2013 - Quadruple (practice on WPF Sudoku Grand Prix — Serbian Round )
16.04.2013 - Arrow Sudoku (practice on WPF Sudoku Grand Prix — Serbian Round )
17.04.2013 - Tennis Sudoku (practice on WPF Sudoku Grand Prix — Serbian Round )
18.04.2013 - Little Killer (practice on WPF Sudoku Grand Prix — Serbian Round )
19.04.2013 - Thermo-sudoku (practice on WPF Sudoku Grand Prix — Serbian Round )
20.04.2013 - Renban Groups (practice on WPF Sudoku Grand Prix — Serbian Round )
21.04.2013 - Jigsaw Sudoku (practice on WPF Sudoku Grand Prix — Serbian Round )
More you can find on http://sudokucup.com/node/1901 |
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TiiT
Posts: 139
Country : Estonia | TiiT posted @ 2013-04-12 9:33 PM About New YORK, actually the capital letters are NYORK, do I need to find N_ _ YORK somewhere, or NYORK somewhere (how do I need to take blanks). Or what if there is like SeRbIa, how do I have to act then? I just don't have it clear and I would like to avoid unpleasant surprises.
TiiT |
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dp_94
Posts: 25
Country : India | dp_94 posted @ 2013-04-13 12:19 AM word search -> words may be found in any of eight directions can someone clears it |
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greenhorn
Posts: 164
Country : Slovakia | dp_94 - 2013-04-13 12:19 AM
word search -> words may be found in any of eight directions can someone clears it
Yes, all 8 directions are allowed. |
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skywalker
Posts: 42
Country : Serbia | TiiT - 2013-04-12 9:33 PM
About New YORK, actually the capital letters are NYORK, do I need to find N_ _ YORK somewhere, or NYORK somewhere (how do I need to take blanks). Or what if there is like SeRbIa, how do I have to act then? I just don't have it clear and I would like to avoid unpleasant surprises.
TiiT
Tiit, sorry if I confused you. There will be no surprises in competition puzzle. Words completely written using CAPITAL letters must be found somewhere in solved grid.
For New YORK, you need to place YORK somewhere in grid.
Branko |
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skywalker
Posts: 42
Country : Serbia | dp_94 - 2013-04-13 12:19 AM
word search -> words may be found in any of eight directions can someone clears it
The words may be placed in any direction: horizontally, vertically, diagonally, and forwards and backwards (8 directions in total ).
Branko |
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Fred76
Posts: 337
Country : Switzerland | Fred76 posted @ 2013-04-16 8:59 PM In the IB, rules of sudokus: "placement (shape) sudoku", "thermo-sudoku", "killer sudoku" and "movable digits" contain words "bolded region" instead of "bolded 3x3 box".
Will they all be irregular or is it just a little lack of precision of rules (examples have 3x3 boxes, except movable digits)?
Can we know exactly which sudokus will have irregular regions (example of movable digits has irregular regions, but the actual puzzle in WSC 2011 had 3x3 boxes)?
Thanks,
Fred
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skywalker
Posts: 42
Country : Serbia | Fred76 - 2013-04-16 8:59 PM
In the IB, rules of sudokus: "placement (shape) sudoku", "thermo-sudoku", "killer sudoku" and "movable digits" contain words "bolded region" instead of "bolded 3x3 box".
Will they all be irregular or is it just a little lack of precision of rules (examples have 3x3 boxes, except movable digits)?
Can we know exactly which sudokus will have irregular regions (example of movable digits has irregular regions, but the actual puzzle in WSC 2011 had 3x3 boxes)?
Thanks,
Fred
Movable digits has irregular regions, all other sudokus are with 3x3 boxes.
P.S. In all three sudokus (placement, thermo, killer ) will be some non-box shapes for sure...
Branko |
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Fred76
Posts: 337
Country : Switzerland | Fred76 posted @ 2013-04-17 1:05 AM Thanks ! |
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Administrator
Country : India | All sudokus in this contest can be solved online as well. Selected examples are available for online solving for practice purpose.
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robertolee
Posts: 1
Country : Taiwan | Sorry, I don't still understand the 16th question. Original, I have the same idea with Wicktroll. But after Para's reply, I was confused. Could anyone explain how you solve this puzzle at first 3 or 5 steps? thanks.
About Para's reply, he said "The rule only states that one of the neighbors of a GIVEN digit, must contain that digit." what is the GIVEN digit? thanks. |
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skywalker
Posts: 42
Country : Serbia | robertolee - 2013-04-17 8:22 PM
Sorry, I don't still understand the 16th question. Original, I have the same idea with Wicktroll. But after Para's reply, I was confused. Could anyone explain how you solve this puzzle at first 3 or 5 steps? thanks.
About Para's reply, he said "The rule only states that one of the neighbors of a GIVEN digit, must contain that digit." what is the GIVEN digit? thanks.
For example: 6 is GIVEN digit (left grid ) on R6C1. This digit 6 in solved grid must be on R5C1 or R6C2 and for sure this 6 doesn't leave region (bottom left ).
GIVEN 6 on R5C1 must move on some of next cells: R5C2, R6C1, R4C1. First digit 6 is on R5C1 or R6C2, so that leaves only R4C1 as position for second 6.
After that you can conclude that first 6 is on R6C2.
You can try to continue using similar logic...
Branko |
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Administrator
Country : India | About Movable Digits, in pictures
Any given digit in left grid, must appear at one of the 4 adjacent cells in the right grid.
In the grid below look at the marked cell with "A" in the left grid. It means, "A" must appear at least once in the marked cells in the right grid. (It could appear twice, but at least once ).
Now here is the sudoku from the instruction booklet, with the solution next to it. You can see the rule being applied for each of the given digits in the left grid.
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Mahyar
Posts: 8
Country : Iran | Mahyar posted @ 2013-04-18 1:34 PM Hello Admin,
Thank you for explaining Movable Digits rule.
Everything is clear.... |
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skywalker
Posts: 42
Country : Serbia | Thanks, Deb.
Branko
Edited by skywalker 2013-04-18 10:48 PM
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Administrator
Country : India | Announcements 1 ) Password protected Sudoku booklet is uploaded. It has 9 pages. There is no cover page or points table.
2 ) Paper only link : http://logicmastersindia.com/2013/04S/?paper=1 Use this link if you are not planning to use online solving at all. (Paper Only link will keep your browser less cluttered and your browser uses less memory )
3 ) Link to score page : http://logicmastersindia.com/2013/04S/score.asp
4 ) This thread will be made restricted so that players can freely discuss about the competition.
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Administrator
Country : India | You can
see this message after completing the test.
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Para
Posts: 315
Country : The Netherlands | Para posted @ 2013-04-20 1:52 AM Is the last post important, as I'm not allowed to read it except for the words "You can". |
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Administrator
Country : India | Para - 2013-04-20 1:52 AM
Is the last post important, as I'm not allowed to read it except for the words "You can". It is just a test message. |
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Administrator
Country : India | WPF Sudoku Grand Prix — Serbian Round has started. Good luck to all.
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Cyclone
Posts: 8
Country : Canada | Cyclone posted @ 2013-04-20 7:40 AM Now here is the sudoku from the instruction booklet, with the solution next to it. You can see the rule being applied for each of the given digits in the left grid.
There is an error in the example. There is a 3 where there should be a 4 in the puzzle. I came upon this error when, in the first two columns, there was no 4. Therefore, because no 4 could be entered legally in the first column, the demo has no valid solution. This is confirmed with five 4s and seven 3s in the puzzle layout.
Additionally, I find it hilarious that my own posts are restricted from my view during the test. LMAO
Cyclone
Edited by Cyclone 2013-04-20 7:42 AM
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debmohanty
Country : India | Cyclone - 2013-04-20 7:40 AM
Additionally, I find it hilarious that my own posts are restricted from my view during the test. LMAO
I find it more hilarious that you still didn't understand the rule. |
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Gotroch
Posts: 83
Country : Czech Republic | Gotroch posted @ 2013-04-20 7:50 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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Gotroch
Posts: 83
Country : Czech Republic | Gotroch posted @ 2013-04-20 8:17 AM Very nice tennis theme through all puzzles.
It will be interesting to watch results if someone will solve all puzzles in time limit, because this time it will be difficult quest I think.
Little Killer got me, I spent a lot of time there and couldn't solve it, but I had to try for that massive 157 points.
Almost same happened with Movable digits, but luckilly I solved it. And it was my favourite puzzle from the set (together with Frameless).
Thanks for great test! |
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spelvin
Posts: 20
Country : United States | spelvin posted @ 2013-04-20 8:55 AM I'm embarrassed that I missed so many of the tennis references during the test... after time ran out I asked my fiancee (who also competed) what she made of the recurring 15-30-40 and then everything clicked and I started to notice the theme in puzzle after puzzle...
Like Gotroch, I gambled on the Little Killer, but for me it paid off. Looking forward to solving the ones I skipped at a leisurely pace. My compliments to the chef! |
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TiiT
Posts: 139
Country : Estonia | TiiT posted @ 2013-04-20 3:40 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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Caca_CZ
Posts: 2
Country : Czech Republic | Caca_CZ posted @ 2013-04-20 6:00 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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Joo M.Y
Posts: 72
Country : South Korea | Joo M.Y posted @ 2013-04-20 7:11 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-20 7:57 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Way too many puzzles (too little time) | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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spelvin
Posts: 20
Country : United States | spelvin posted @ 2013-04-20 8:12 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | A bit skewed | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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Ours brun
Posts: 148
Country : France | Cyclone - 2013-04-20 3:40 AM
There is an error in the example. There is a 3 where there should be a 4 in the puzzle. I came upon this error when, in the first two columns, there was no 4. Therefore, because no 4 could be entered legally in the first column, the demo has no valid solution. This is confirmed with five 4s and seven 3s in the puzzle layout.
No, there is not. This was explained in a very concise and clear way a few messages ago. See in particular this sentence, which seems limpid to me:
Para - 2013-04-04 7:44 AM
This doesn't mean that every cell must be one of its given neighbours [...]
All digits which are given have to be in the final grid, but two given digits can correspond to the same definitive one; and a definitive digit does not necessarily have to correspond to a given one, since this is nowhere mentioned in the rules. The puzzle is perfectly valid, the explanations are just fine, the only problem here is the attitude you are showing despite the fact that you are wrong. So please learn to be slightly less arrogant and at the least, try to be respectful of the benevolent work of people who spend countless hours trying to help other players. |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-20 11:06 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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xevs
Posts: 43
Country : Japan | xevs posted @ 2013-04-20 11:11 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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Mahyar
Posts: 8
Country : Iran | Mahyar posted @ 2013-04-21 1:20 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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distri
Posts: 12
Country : France | distri posted @ 2013-04-21 2:08 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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Nilz
Posts: 29
Country : United Kingdom | Nilz posted @ 2013-04-21 3:39 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
Really nice test- loved the fact that it had a theme running through some of the puzzles- that was unexpected, so it was a nice touch. I would've enjoyed the test more if it was about 3 seconds longer, since then I would've submitted the moving digits one (and I'm not exaggerating ). But a nice test anyway! |
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munna
Posts: 6
Country : India | munna posted @ 2013-04-21 7:11 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Too few pages / too small grids | |
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Eykir
Posts: 11
Country : United States | Eykir posted @ 2013-04-21 7:39 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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tamz29
Posts: 225
Country : Thailand | tamz29 posted @ 2013-04-21 8:41 AM The puzzles were excellent.
However, I thought the Shape Sudoku diagrams could be made clearer.
We didn't know if there were 4 pieces or 20 pieces, or how the pieces were meant to layout exactly. The moulding isn't very clear.
A lot of us can infer that the 4 pieces were meant to overlap at the centre but this isn't fair for newcomers unfamiliar with the variant.
Perhaps, an intact giant piece would've done the job.
The same is said with the Renban. Is the top of the A the same group as the rest of the A?
We know that a one-shaded cell in a Renban is redundant, so was it shaded merely to form the A of the ATP theme?
Edited by tamz29 2013-04-21 8:42 AM
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debmohanty
Country : India | tamz29 - 2013-04-21 8:41 AM
However, I thought the Shape Sudoku diagrams could be made clearer.
We didn't know if there were 4 pieces or 20 pieces, or how the pieces were meant to layout exactly. The moulding isn't very clear.
A lot of us can infer that the 4 pieces were meant to overlap at the centre but this isn't fair for newcomers unfamiliar with the variant.
Perhaps, an intact giant piece would've done the job.
The same is said with the Renban. Is the top of the A the same group as the rest of the A?
We know that a one-shaded cell in a Renban is redundant, so was it shaded merely to form the A of the ATP theme? I would let Branko / other authors to have final say, but it looks like you missed some rules.
1. Shape Sudoku - It was mentioned in IB that "Shapes partially overlap in competition puzzle."
2. Renban - "Is the top of the A the same group as the rest of the A? " : Yes, it is. Renban Groups can be connected to each other either by sharing edges or corners. (Just like Extra Regions in Extra Region Sudoku ) |
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skywalker
Posts: 42
Country : Serbia | tamz29 - 2013-04-21 8:41 AM
The puzzles were excellent.
However, I thought the Shape Sudoku diagrams could be made clearer.
We didn't know if there were 4 pieces or 20 pieces, or how the pieces were meant to layout exactly. The moulding isn't very clear.
A lot of us can infer that the 4 pieces were meant to overlap at the centre but this isn't fair for newcomers unfamiliar with the variant.
Perhaps, an intact giant piece would've done the job.
The same is said with the Renban. Is the top of the A the same group as the rest of the A?
We know that a one-shaded cell in a Renban is redundant, so was it shaded merely to form the A of the ATP theme?
Shape: We discussed a lot about this sudoku before competition and we decided to put sentence about overlapping and to hope that players wouldn't miss theme of contest. We wanted to make little surprise with this sudoku, nothing more.
Renban: For this sudoku, I don't have to add anything more. Deb answer is complete.
Branko |
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rajeshk
Posts: 542
Country : India | rajeshk posted @ 2013-04-21 11:56 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
Loved this test. |
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kishy72
Posts: 419
Country : India | kishy72 posted @ 2013-04-21 1:25 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | A bit skewed | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Too many hard puzzles | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Way too many puzzles (too little time) | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Many puzzles were worth too much or too little | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
An excellent test in continuation with the other Grand prix rounds.All the sudokus which i solved had a very nice hard solving path. However there are one or 2 things that i wish to bring to the notice of the respected authors. Points Distribution : * I dont think the point distribution was fair at all.It was very skewed.It could have been way better.For example,i dont think the quadruple was worth 32 points at all .It was certainly much more than that (atleast 60 ) compared with how other sudokus are weighed.And the surprise factor in Renban makes it surely deserve much more than just 36 points.By surprise factor i mean how the shaded cells were present extending into other regions.Weighing one sudoku with 157 points and the rest except 2 , not given even half the points is surely not the way to go . So a person who solves just 2 and sits back and enjoys stands to gain more than a person who has sweated it out and solved 8 or even 9 sudokus.Now Whatever be the difficulty of those 2 sudokus this should NEVER be the case in any test. Consider this situation.Both A and B represent the same country in the olympics. A wins 1 Gold medal and 1 silver medal in 2 individual events (does not take part in other events ) B wins 5 silver medals , 3 Bronze medals in 8 individual events. Now can person A be given more recognition just because he has topped a single event??That seems to be the case here in this test which would reflect on the standings and not give an accurate picture.Mind you i am not trying to say that B should be given more weightage .All i m trying to say is that the balance should not go unfairly down on one side . Rather it should be more or less in the middle (which could have been done surely by slicing points from the 100 pointer ones and distributing among the rest ) *Time frame : I know the time frame is only 2 hours which would be convenient for everyone and which has been the case in all the Grand prix rounds so far.But for a test such as this which has a killer worth 157 points,another killer worth 108 points and another one worth more than 100 points,the test should surely be close to 150 mins (atleast ). I was heart broken that i could not enter the solution of the diagonally consecutive inspite of being on the threshold of completing it which surely would not have been the case if i had prevented myself from being a Sherlock Holmes and trying to figure out how the Little killer would proceed (Wasted 10 mins and decided that this was surely not in my reach ). I hope my suggestions are taken in the right perspective.I also hope from the next rounds the point distribution would be better.The above 2 points that i have raised surely dont take away anything from the quality of the sudokus created.The sudokus were simply stunning and stand testimony to the quality of the excellent authors involved. I really enjoyed the test. 3/3 stars!!! |
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-21 3:05 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Way too many puzzles (too little time) | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Too few pages / too small grids | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-21 3:46 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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janoslaw
Posts: 3
Country : Poland | About 15 minutes to the time limit, I started submitting answers, but I couldn`t send my solutions, because the website blew out. I was trying to refresh the website, restart the browser etc., but the situation was still repeating. I lost all answers, that I wrote out. After few attempts of repairing the malfunction, the time finally ended. I don`t know how can I protest, because I cannot prove anything, what I have just written. What will happen with my results, which currently equals 0?
Jan Mrozowski |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-21 3:53 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Too many hard puzzles | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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greenhorn
Posts: 164
Country : Slovakia | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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Para
Posts: 315
Country : The Netherlands | Para posted @ 2013-04-21 5:16 PM janoslaw - 2013-04-21 3:49 PM
About 15 minutes to the time limit, I started submitting answers, but I couldn`t send my solutions, because the website blew out. I was trying to refresh the website, restart the browser etc., but the situation was still repeating. I lost all answers, that I wrote out. After few attempts of repairing the malfunction, the time finally ended. I don`t know how can I protest, because I cannot prove anything, what I have just written. What will happen with my results, which currently equals 0?
Jan Mrozowski
This has happened to me before too. I lost a few minutes then as I had to close my browser and reopen as refreshing fixed nothing.
I would have suggested emailing of PM-ing Deb all your answer keys at the moment it happened, so he could confirm your time stamp and adjust accordingly, but I guess that is now too late. I don't know if Deb would be happy with that, but in my mind that would be the best option next time. |
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Realshaggy
Posts: 69
Country : Germany | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Very skewed | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-21 6:55 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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wicktroll
Posts: 16
Country : Hungary | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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ingmanc
Posts: 42
Country : ITALY | ingmanc posted @ 2013-04-21 7:21 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | A bit skewed | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | |
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mahoned_91770
Posts: 6
Country : United States | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | A bit skewed | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Too many easy puzzles | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-21 10:30 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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zorko
Posts: 11
Country : Bulgaria | zorko posted @ 2013-04-21 10:35 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2013-04-21 10:38 PM kishy72 - 2013-04-21 12:25 AM
* I dont think the point distribution was fair at all.It was very skewed.It could have been way better.For example,i dont think the quadruple was worth 32 points at all .It was certainly much more than that(atleast 60) compared with how other sudokus are weighed.And the surprise factor in Renban makes it surely deserve much more than just 36 points.By surprise factor i mean how the shaded cells were present extending into other regions.Weighing one sudoku with 157 points and the rest except 2 , not given even half the points is surely not the way to go .
I think your question should be focused more on the spread of difficulty of the puzzles than on the specific scoring. In other words, the proper constructive spirit of your points are: Should a test have a puzzle that takes five times as long as another? Should it then be scored so that it is worth five times the other?
The first is really the question of test balance. The second is just the organizers determining what is fair. There is a lot of variation in how people view the first question but I don't believe there is much variation with the second. If, in a timed heat, something takes twice as long to do as another task it is most often awarded twice the value without any question. The "points per minute" value is meant to be close to constant.
All test authors make their best attempts to score a test based on the solving data they get from both internal and external test-solvers. While these scores and entry rows are not completely based on my testing, they were definitely influenced by my testing results. So let's just say each puzzle is worth in points about 10x my solving time in minutes. If a puzzle takes me about 3 minutes (quadruple ) and another takes me over 15 minutes (Little Killer ), then scores of 32 and 157 reflect the spread in the difficulty of those puzzles for a top-level solver. Similarly the 36 point Renban took me close to 3.5 minutes, "surprise" and all. I was not surprised. Perhaps my prior knowledge of tennis and my expectation the Serbian test would use it a lot meant I more quickly grasped that A, T, P made sense as the three regions. Perhaps I'm just good at testing surprise puzzles. The Indian Grand Prix test similarly had complaints about the Even/Odd/Big/Small sudoku. It was not a surprise to me. The score given was pretty reflective of my time and other testers.
Perhaps more testers would help. But having so many solvers want to compete in the Grand Prix means there are few options out there. And recognize that even with a lot of testers, the scoring will reflect how solvers gets through the puzzles on average but cannot possibly represent how you individually will solve the puzzles as you will have your own strengths and weaknesses. If you keep finding that you are spending too much time on under-valued puzzles and never solving the over-valued ones, you are probably taking the wrong approach to these tests and could improve simply by changes in test-taking strategy. Understand, in other words, there is a difference between "over-valued in general" and "over-valued for you".
kishy72 - 2013-04-21 12:25 AM
Consider this situation.Both A and B represent the same country in the olympics.
A wins 1 Gold medal and 1 silver medal in 2 individual events(does not take part in other events)
B wins 5 silver medals , 3 Bronze medals in 8 individual events.
Now can person A be given more recognition just because he has topped a single event??
As a sports fan in addition to a sudoku solver, I can't let this go undiscussed either. Your Olympics analogy seems flawed in that it treats all events as equals. Some competitions involve performing 1 thing for 30 seconds and others involve performing 10 things over 2 days. I do view a gold medal in team basketball quite differently from a gold medal in the 50m butterfly and both of those quite different from a gold medal in the Decathlon. This is why I do not put much credance in the "nation weighting of medals" as there is no real way to equate all medals from quite different competitions. What is essentially different here is we are not comparing the results of an archer with those of a marathon runner.
No, here we are comparing the results of several hundred solvers on a 16 sudoku competition for which they have 2 hours to compete, and the puzzles have varying difficulty indicated in a fair -- albeit impossible to be perfect -- way with variable scoring made known to all solvers in advance.
Edited by motris 2013-04-21 10:48 PM
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neerajmehrotra
Posts: 329
Country : India | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-21 10:59 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Way too many puzzles (too little time) | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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greenhorn
Posts: 164
Country : Slovakia | Dear Serbian friends, thank you for a such great puzzles! I really liked the tennis theme. During solving I discovered about 10 secrets, and have a great time after competition when discovering the other ones. Converting the ideas to ALL (!!!) puzzles is really unbelievable, specially letters ATP in movable digits. Thank you once again.
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skywalker
Posts: 42
Country : Serbia | greenhorn - 2013-04-21 11:48 PM
Dear Serbian friends, thank you for a such great puzzles! I really liked the tennis theme. During solving I discovered about 10 secrets, and have a great time after competition when discovering the other ones. Converting the ideas to ALL (!!!) puzzles is really unbelievable, specially letters ATP in movable digits. Thank you once again.
In the name of all authors, thank you for kind words.
Great reward for our work.
Branko |
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skywalker
Posts: 42
Country : Serbia | janoslaw - 2013-04-21 3:49 PM
About 15 minutes to the time limit, I started submitting answers, but I couldn`t send my solutions, because the website blew out. I was trying to refresh the website, restart the browser etc., but the situation was still repeating. I lost all answers, that I wrote out. After few attempts of repairing the malfunction, the time finally ended. I don`t know how can I protest, because I cannot prove anything, what I have just written. What will happen with my results, which currently equals 0?
Jan Mrozowski
Jan,
I sent to you PM.
Please respond.
Branko |
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prasanna16391
Posts: 1801
Country : India | kishy72 - 2013-04-21 1:25 PM
*Time frame :
I know the time frame is only 2 hours which would be convenient for everyone and which has been the case in all the Grand prix rounds so far.But for a test such as this which has a killer worth 157 points,another killer worth 108 points and another one worth more than 100 points,the test should surely be close to 150 mins (atleast).
I was heart broken that i could not enter the solution of the diagonally consecutive inspite of being on the threshold of completing it
Since Thomas' post covered the rest of your feedback, I'll just address this part. The time frame is again (usually ) decided on the basis of the testers' timings. Although, here, the time frame's been set to 2 hours for uniformity and I assume the tester's times were used to confirm that the set falls within that time frame. It is fine tuned (usually ) so that the top solvers can come close to or just finish the set. Looking at the score page, this set has achieved that goal. I don't see why puzzles being worth more points means the test should go for longer. But I didn't see why the test is imbalanced either. There's all kinds of points from 20, to 30s, to 40s, to 60s, to 70s, and I think the really tough ones should be seen more as a way to differentiate the top solvers, unless they're particularly your strength. The last sentence, well, I'm sorry you couldn't submit on time, but that happens to many solvers in every test, no matter what the time constraints, so that isn't really something time frame will change.
And, thanks to the Serbian authors for a beautifully themed set of puzzles. I had the unfortunate experience of breaking the 2 highest pointers pretty late, and so skipped those two, but overall I really enjoyed the test. I'll post a few more detailed comments after I redo those and others so I know where I went wrong. |
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macherlakumar
Posts: 123
Country : India | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | |
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Ziti
Posts: 42
Country : United States | Ziti posted @ 2013-04-22 1:56 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | |
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ajselep
Posts: 3
Country : United States | ajselep posted @ 2013-04-22 2:24 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
Do not really feel qualified to judge contest. I thought I was pretty good at Sudoku until starting the Grand Prix. I enjoy doing it but seem to be completely out-classed. Where can you get experience (try, fail, learn ) on these type of 'non-standard' - at least compared to "expert" book/ newspaper puzzles without quitting my day job? This is not a complaint against any contest. I appreciate the challenge being offered - and obviously others do not find it too difficult. Keep up the good work challenging us. |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-22 2:41 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Too many hard puzzles | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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joshuazucker
Posts: 31
Country : United States | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
I would have liked to have more than 2 hours. I felt like I was often deciding whether to try a puzzle, or which ones to come back to, based on the very large point values of some puzzles and wanting to finish them in the time limit. Of course I look forward to more time spent solving the remaining puzzles later! These were quite difficult and I feel that I was lucky to solve as many as I did during the test. The tennis theme was very nicely done! I suspect there are more tennis messages for me to find if I keep looking for them. |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-22 4:38 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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esther59
Posts: 8
Country : Switzerland | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Way too many puzzles (too little time) | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Many puzzles were worth too much or too little | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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GaS
Posts: 24
Country : ITALY | GaS posted @ 2013-04-22 3:17 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-22 3:34 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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prasanna16391
Posts: 1801
Country : India | ajselep - 2013-04-22 2:24 AM
Do not really feel qualified to judge contest. I thought I was pretty good at Sudoku until starting the Grand Prix. I enjoy doing it but seem to be completely out-classed. Where can you get experience (try, fail, learn) on these type of 'non-standard' - at least compared to "expert" book/ newspaper puzzles without quitting my day job? This is not a complaint against any contest. I appreciate the challenge being offered - and obviously others do not find it too difficult. Keep up the good work challenging us.
Here on LMI there's been many such contests authored by various brilliant authors from around the world. Just access the monthly tests page. Also, you can check the links page for more sites/blogs where you can find Sudokus/other puzzles of such quality/difficulty. Hope that helps. |
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detuned
Posts: 152
Country : United Kingdom | detuned posted @ 2013-04-22 7:02 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Very skewed | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | I have a different complaint | |
Perhaps this feedback reflects the imeediate frustrations with my solving experience - so please take with a pinch of salt. I wonder what the point of having a competition with at least 3 puzzles which dwarf the rest in terms of difficulty and points distribution. It forces the solver to try the harder puzzles, and means that if you get stuck on just one of these harder puzzles it ruins the result of the solver. The easier, less weighted puzzles become neither here nor there in terms of their importance in the competition. I have strong feelings that if you are going to have more than 1 or 2 10, 20, 30 minute puzzles in a test, then all the puzzles shoud be of this much harder level. As a set of individual puzzles I feel they were all good quality puzzles and I enjoyed solving them in isolation. However I am quite frustrated solving them in the context of a competition. |
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detuned
Posts: 152
Country : United Kingdom | detuned posted @ 2013-04-22 7:10 PM I should also mention that I didn't attempt the shape puzzle due to ambiguities in the presentation. As it turned out, there were only 4 shapes, but this could easily be interpreted as having 8x L-triominoes and 4 x /-triominoes which obviously makes things far more complicated in theory.
I thought given the relatively low value of the puzzle it wasn't worth the time trying to work out that it was the easier option.
EDIT: the tennis racquet theme has become more apparent to me now. But I see I'm not the only one to have missed it so perhaps it is still a point still worthy of consideration. It wouldn't have been hard in this case to have provide an outline bordering the shapes to clear up the ambiguity.
Edited by detuned 2013-04-22 7:59 PM
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-22 7:13 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Very skewed | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Way too many puzzles (too little time) | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-22 7:16 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-22 7:40 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Way too many puzzles (too little time) | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Too few pages / too small grids | |
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kishy72
Posts: 419
Country : India | kishy72 posted @ 2013-04-22 9:29 PM I reply here so that my main poin of contention(a better points distribution) which is the focus of my entire feeback is not obscured by what people have replied here to my post.
I standby what i have said before that this test would have more better overall if the points had been distributed more judiciously and prudently.
Going by the reply that i see,the assumption is that the puzzle gets 10x the points corresponding to the minutes that a test solver takes to complete.Now while i know that there are not that many ways to possibly allott points accurately to a puzzle without having the test solver's time as basis ,but should it be the only possible criterion to determine how a puzzle is weighed?So if the
test solver had taken say 25 odd minutes on the same puzzle would the puzzle be given 250 points which would amount to 1 quarter of the total points allotted to just one puzzle??!
"I don't see why puzzles being worth more points means the test should go for longer".It is not on the basis of points that i was trying to put forth my point that the time duration must be close to 150 mins but rather on the difficulty level inherent in the 3 puzzles.I am sure that a majority of the solvers would agree with me if closing my eyes i were to say that the 3 puzzles that i mentioned
would surely have taken close to 1 hour(atleast) if not more if an average solver had gone about in solving these .
"But I didn't see why the test is imbalanced either. There's all kinds of points from 20, to 30s, to 40s, to 60s, to 70s, ".Here again you seem to misinterpret me.Just because a test has a 20 pointer ,a 30 pointer, a 40 pointer a 60 pointer etc --->does not lead to the test being termed "Balanced".You Will find 20 30 40 pointer ones etc in most of the tests if not all .Now do all the tests become balanced then?
On the other hand it has more to do with the difficulty of the puzzles present and how better they are distributed in terms of
A)Quantity
B)Weightage
My point is that it was not that good in this test whose impact could definitely have been minimized by a better point distribution.I see another top solver's feedback sharing my point of view.
Our discussion or our views on this issue is certainly not 1-way or can be concluded by doing this or that.It can only become better with more views and feedbacks on how ideally a test shoud be weighed and so on......... |
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gauravkorde
Posts: 27
Country : India | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Many puzzles were worth too much or too little | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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Ours brun
Posts: 148
Country : France | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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standupcanada
Posts: 11
Country : Canada | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-23 12:35 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Too many hard puzzles | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Way too many puzzles (too little time) | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | |
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purifire
Posts: 460
Country : India | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit easy | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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purifire
Posts: 460
Country : India | First of all Congrats to all the authors for the wonderful set of puzzles. My personal favourites would be Moveable, Killer, Frameless and Diagonally Consecutive. Most of the puzzles were weighted correctly but I felt few were over-rated. This in no way is an attempt to undermine the wonderful work done by the authors. The killer did not command such high points in my opinion, but then again that is just my opinion. The moment I saw the Little Killer, I simply skipped it knowing very well that it will be futile for me to waste time on that. From the looks even 200 points would be less given the time I would need to solve it. :)
One more thing that as an author I prefer doing is keeping the puzzles in ascending or descending order of difficulty. Even a person is solving on paper, then it becomes chaotic trying to jump from one sheet to another, which can cause a lot of frustrating moments.
Overall, it was a wonderful experience solving these sudokus.
Good job guys.
Rishi
Edited by purifire 2013-04-23 1:14 AM
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connect4
Posts: 7
Country : United States | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit easy | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2013-04-23 1:50 AM And so that my point was clear, as I said in my first line, I think solvers can question whether a puzzle as hard as Little Killer belongs in a test like this. (My view is it is ok.)
The question though is not how many points the puzzle should be worth IF it appears. To make it worth less than 157 just so the scoring overall looks "balanced" would be to grossly misrepresent the challenge it presents and cause even more frustration from solvers. Say the Quadruple was worth 50 and the Little Killer was worth 100. This would be FAR worse for the competition because the scores are grossly wrong. When such a challenging puzzle appears, the solver takes a risk to go after very large prize because they could get 0. And when they do get 0, they might complain because the competitive energy feels like they have underperformed. A similar situation is that no matter how long a test runs, about 50% of solvers wish it were about 1 minute longer. This is one of the most common comments. It does not mean my next LMI test will be 2 hours and 1 minute. I understand what the disappointment of "almost submitting" is. |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2013-04-23 2:19 AM kishy72 - 2013-04-22 8:29 AM
So if the test solver had taken say 25 odd minutes on the same puzzle would the puzzle be given 250 points which would amount to 1 quarter of the total points allotted to just one puzzle??!
So yes, if this were the result and the puzzle was included, a 250 point value would be what I would argue for. But my test-solving comments would have been: "You know this puzzle is far too hard and you should make it easier, right?" And I would have certainly hoped the puzzle was edited before the competition.
The problem is not with the point distribution, but with the spread of puzzle difficulty. There is no use wondering if there are other ways to allot the points besides test-solving times as none will be as fair as the method that is used based on these times.
Provided the whole test can be finished -- and my testing and some of the results here shows that it can -- then having a 15-25 minute puzzle can be appropriate provided it is mentioned upfront with such a clear score. The Little Killer was one of the most memorable puzzles to me in this set because the tennis part of it leaped out so much and I can think of no other Little Killer that has ever themed its outside digits in such a surprising way.
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Realshaggy
Posts: 69
Country : Germany | Just a few words for the discussion. My personal feeling is, that the spread between 20 points and 157 points is too much for a contest for different reasons.
First, because it makes the easy puzzles feeling almost worthless, even if the point distribution is fair and mathematically correct based on the times of the test solvers. (But I also like one or two easy low pointers for the last minutes to not waste time,and they shouldnt be on the first sheet, because this is what I'm solving while my slow printer is busy with the rest of the test).
Second, it favours a special group of people, who are lucky enough that the hard puzzles fits their talents best. In this contest four of the high pointers were heavily math based.
Third it adds too much luck. I think the propability of breaking a hard puzzle or not seeing a crucial step is much higher than for an easy puzzle, but you get no reward for taking this risk. Most of these puzzles have one or more very hard steps, the rest is easier. So these are also the kind of puzzles where from my expirience the test solver times differ most and the final points are often heavily under- or overvalued. It's even more luck, if the hard step is hard because it's something odd, and some solvers have seen it before. (My breakthrough in the Killer Sudoku was when I decided to sum up all regions, something you normally wouldn't do. If you are used to this kind of global conclusion, you really feel its overrated. Otherwise you're stuck.)
And fourth, its a tough decision for the people who are in the range of possibly finishing all puzzles. (Thats not me, I'm one of the majority that can always choose the puzzles they like.) They dont know if they can finish or not, so what to do? Solve on personal preference? Solve from front to back? Back to front? What to do if the puzzles are not ordered in difficulty like in this test? I see some people on top of the score sheet with 15 minutes and only very hard puzzles left, they lost a lot of potential points. A puzzle contest should be about solving puzzles and not about gambling and mind games.
But all in all thank you very much again for a very nice contest. Looking forward to the next rounds.
Edited by Realshaggy 2013-04-23 3:51 AM
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prasanna16391
Posts: 1801
Country : India | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
I loved the Little Killer, as well as the Movable Digits, upon re-solving. Within the test, I really liked the Killer. The Tennis theme was put in wonderfully through the test, and it was nice that there were so many places where it kept coming up. Overall, I enjoyed the test quite a lot.
Coming to the general discussion, I'd just like to say, I think the points distribution was fair enough by my experience. By now, I have a fair idea of my own strengths and weaknesses and I believe thats necessary for every solver to learn. Based on my prior knowledge it pretty much went to expectations except for the 2 broken puzzles. And there was a mix of easy-medium-hard which qualifies as balanced for me because it gives enough to all categories of Solvers to have a go at.
However, I think the discussion of whether or not there should be such hard puzzles in a test is a bit more debatable. I think that, while its ok to have hard puzzles on a test, the 2 here in particular had a higher risk involved than the ideal case and thats the cause of most of the players' frustration. I believe its because, there are some variants where the rules themselves make the puzzle difficult to solve, like a Little Killer, Diagonally Consecutive (imagine ones with the converse rule coming into play a lot too ), Movable Digits, Frameless, etc. I think these are generally difficult, because they depend heavily on uncommon logic, like diagonal neighbours/lines, transferring to grids, determination of cells for sum and so on, and its easy to make a mistake in these even on easier examples. So, I think, in the general sense, if one of the more normal variants like say the Renban Groups or Extra Regions is made to be difficult, it won't be noticed as much as say a Little Killer or a Frameless being difficult. Its what I'd keep as a base plan anyway. But obviously that is dependent on each author, and thats what makes puzzling fun, its the constructor challenging the solver after giving a rough estimate of the difficulty he will face : ) |
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Black Tiger
Posts: 11
Country : Iran | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-23 4:54 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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FoxFireX
Posts: 35
Country : United States | Assuming the results hold, I'm just thrilled to have finally managed to get more than the participation point from one of the Grand Prix events. That's pretty much been my goal, so mission accomplished! And it's pretty much all thanks to Movable Digits. That was such an interesting variant that I couldn't pass it up, even with the huge points/difficulty, and for once the gamble paid off. I'll admit that I was completely oblivious to the theme while solving, but it is absolutely brilliant in hindsight. Enjoyed all of it I've done so far, and hope to at least approach the remainder later. |
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Administrator
Country : India | Sudoku GP - Serbian round is over. The results will be public in a while (after Branko has a final review ).
Here is the link to solution booklet |
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standupcanada
Posts: 11
Country : Canada | Loved the theme - though as usual I never fully catch on til after the fact (Canada v. Serbia this fall - we're just happy to be there). With respect to the points variance - my single voice/vote is I'm not a fan but can live with it when, as was the case here all the details are well known before the fact. For those who struggle with errors on killers (hand raised) it made this an easy test to decide what to skip. |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-23 9:15 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | All puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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Cyclone
Posts: 8
Country : Canada | Cyclone posted @ 2013-04-23 9:41 AM debmohanty - 2013-04-19 9:47 PM
Cyclone - 2013-04-20 7:40 AM
Additionally, I find it hilarious that my own posts are restricted from my view during the test. LMAO
I find it more hilarious that you still didn't understand the rule.
Oh, I understood the rule all right. I just would have thought your own posts would be exempt.
EDIT: All right, I get the puzzle now (my comment was regarding the hidden posts rule, and I only see the reply today ). I was under the impression that each clue was utilized once and only once for a different digit each. Therefore I was reading that, in the example of the 4, that column 1 was not solvable based on my perception of the rule, since no 4 was in the second column that could be moved. I just saw Para's post explaining it further and now understand that not every cell (on the right ) has a clue, but it must be determined which clues (on the left ) are shared by a cell (on the right ). Not sure I can solve that one, but I'll give it a try now that I understand that.
Ours brun - 2013-04-20 10:54 AM
Cyclone - 2013-04-20 3:40 AM
There is an error in the example. There is a 3 where there should be a 4 in the puzzle. I came upon this error when, in the first two columns, there was no 4. Therefore, because no 4 could be entered legally in the first column, the demo has no valid solution. This is confirmed with five 4s and seven 3s in the puzzle layout.
No, there is not. This was explained in a very concise and clear way a few messages ago. See in particular this sentence, which seems limpid to me:
Para - 2013-04-04 7:44 AM
This doesn't mean that every cell must be one of its given neighbours [...]
All digits which are given have to be in the final grid, but two given digits can correspond to the same definitive one; and a definitive digit does not necessarily have to correspond to a given one, since this is nowhere mentioned in the rules. The puzzle is perfectly valid, the explanations are just fine, the only problem here is the attitude you are showing despite the fact that you are wrong. So please learn to be slightly less arrogant and at the least, try to be respectful of the benevolent work of people who spend countless hours trying to help other players.
Attitude? It was my first post in the thread, and what I thought was an error. There was no attitude whatsoever. Please accept my apologies if I came across that way at all, as I simply came to the forum to report what I thought was an error.
And now I get what Deb meant by "rule" above (a puzzle rule ). Clearly I didn't get that rule, then, at the time. I've given it another read since; see my edit above.
Cyclone
Edited by Cyclone 2013-04-23 10:10 AM
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Richard
Posts: 191
Country : The Netherlands | Richard posted @ 2013-04-23 9:47 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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sanket
Posts: 17
Country : India | sanket posted @ 2013-04-23 10:15 AM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Many puzzles were worth too much or too little | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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Richard
Posts: 191
Country : The Netherlands | Richard posted @ 2013-04-23 10:54 AM Perhaps participating highly unprepared and tired after a long day working wasn't the best idea, but after I missed the German round (because of being an author to that test) already, I decided to give it a go. Unfortunately I messed up the diagonal consecutive and it took veeeeeery looooooong to finish the irregular and the frameless. But the puzzles as well as the theme were really nice, so I had a good evening in the end.
Thanks for a good quality set of puzzles with good, well worked out, ideas. |
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prasanna16391
Posts: 1801
Country : India | Cyclone - 2013-04-23 9:41 AM
Attitude? It was my first post in the thread, and what I thought was an error. There was no attitude whatsoever. Please accept my apologies if I came across that way at all, as I simply came to the forum to report what I thought was an error.
Cyclone
I think the main reason that your attitude was questioned is that you basically pointed out something thats been asked and clarified on this forum thread itself already. When there's multiple posts already in the topic its obvious you should read through in case your query's already been asked. Also, you didn't exactly ask or even address the possibility that you might be understanding the rules wrong, instead choosing to think that the authors and everyone else viewing the Instruction Booklet for the past few days missed all the easy-to-see contradictions you pointed out from your interpretation. |
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Administrator
Country : India | Link corrected.
Administrator - 2013-04-23 7:31 AM
Here is the link to solution booklet |
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skywalker
Posts: 42
Country : Serbia | Few months a go, Zoran gave a theme for our round. Tennis!
Nikola didn’t have problem with this theme and created 8 sudokus in a short time. Branko created three more in next weeks.
We had 11 sudokus with some similar patterns, but all looked well.
After some time, Cedomir created 2 sudokus, Zoran one, Nikola added two more.
And Movable Digits from Cedomir came in last days of competition booklet preparation, right on time.
We made a selection of 16 sudokus, tested each other sudokus, and Thomas was so kind to test all in ones.
We wanted to have enough easy sudokus, enough well-known sudokus and some challenging for best solvers. We hope that we achieved most of that.
Congratulations to Jan Novotny for clear victory and to Bastien, Tiit, Kota and Michael for solving 15 sudokus.
Once again, we want to say that we have excellent help from Thomas in testing and reviewing booklets and Deb in preparing contest.
We also want to say that we made manual corrections when we have good reason to do that and we tried to be fair to all players. We are also really sad that we couldn't help to Jan Mrozowski.
Score page: http://logicmastersindia.com/2013/04S/score.asp
Nikola, Zoran, Cedomir and Branko Edited by skywalker 2013-04-23 1:01 PM
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debmohanty
Country : India | Congratulations to Rishi for making to top 10. I hope this is the worst result for Prasanna and Rakesh.
And I am still waiting for Rohan to participate in this. I think his clock has stopped working. |
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misko
Posts: 11
Country : Germany | misko posted @ 2013-04-23 1:05 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Most puzzles were worth the right amount | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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KrtekHonza
Posts: 2
Country : Czech Republic | Thanks to the puzzlemakers! It was fun to discover thematic secrets - after the contest, of course.
Thanks to all the participants! It is a big pleasure to browse through the result list again and again. I haven't seen my name on the top for quite a long time.
Looking forward to the next sudoku competitons and to the next tennis battles between Serbia and Czech Republic in Davis Cup and Fed Cup...
Krtek |
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wgryciuk
Posts: 24
Country : Poland | | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | A bit hard | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Just right | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Many puzzles were worth too much or too little | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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rimodech
Posts: 7
Country : Serbia | Thanks to all contestants for the feedback, the praises and criticism alike (it will be silly to expect that one can make all of the people happy all of the time : ) ).
Nevertheless, I would like to mention two things.
Firstly, there is no such thing as an ideal competition. Secondly, the instruction booklet did read: "Points typically indicate difficulty of the sudokus and time required to solve them. While the organizers have made best efforts to match them, your personal experience and preference may differ." |
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kishy72
Posts: 419
Country : India | kishy72 posted @ 2013-04-23 8:13 PM Whether "To make it worth less than 157 just so the scoring overall looks "balanced" would be to grossly misrepresent the challenge it presents and cause even more frustration from solvers"is the case remains to be seen.In fact i feel that the real frustration creeps when knowing that after attempting 8 or more puzzles with full focus and concentration you get to know that
you are beaten by a person who has completed just 2 puzzles which might be his forte and which might incidentally have carried high points in the test.
Also i dont think the issue of point distribution needs to confused with the spread of difficulty at all.I dont think i have complained anywhere about the difficulty of the puzzles as such so far.The spectrum of our discussion is whether a puzzle deserves so much points because it is that much more difficult.I certainly dont think that just because a puzzle
might be X times more difficult than another puzzle in the same test it should be getting X times more points than that puzzle.This idea
seems absurd to me especially because going that way there is no CEILING LIMIT to the points that a particular puzzle can take.
Let me give a situation where the idea that a puzzle should get points corresponding to the difficulty that it has or corresponding to the time that a test solver takes without a ceiling limit to its total value is true.
Take the case of Puzzle marathon.The above idea might just hold true over here.This is because in such a scenario as this,
i)The Time factor is taken our of question with no fixed time limit under which you are supposed to solve a puzzle
ii)Each puzzle does not have any 'relative' or 'cascading' impact on any other puzzle.
iii)Each puzzle can be started,solved independently on its own and has the right to carry whatever points be it 200 or even 500 ,
depending on the presumed difficulty.
Now does any of these cases arise in a timed test such as the one in discussion?The short answer is a NO.If you get tripped on a puzzle you
are doomed .The time that you lose can never be obtained back.
WHEN the tests have a fixed TIME LIMIT and a DEFINITE TOTAL NUMBER OF POINTS,it just does not seem right to me that the puzzle can carry points in direct proportion to the time that a test solver takes or based on how many times it is more difficult compared to another puzzle without a LIMIT to the total points that it can carry.
Maybe it would not be a bad idea to have a survey asking participants about what they felt regarding the distribution of points in this test,
whether they see it fit to not have any restriction on the total points that a single puzzle or a small group of puzzles might carry.............................
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Cyclone
Posts: 8
Country : Canada | Cyclone posted @ 2013-04-23 8:25 PM prasanna16391 - 2013-04-23 1:34 AM
I think the main reason that your attitude was questioned is that you basically pointed out something thats been asked and clarified on this forum thread itself already. When there's multiple posts already in the topic its obvious you should read through in case your query's already been asked. Also, you didn't exactly ask or even address the possibility that you might be understanding the rules wrong, instead choosing to think that the authors and everyone else viewing the Instruction Booklet for the past few days missed all the easy-to-see contradictions you pointed out from your interpretation.
My error was that I had only reviewed the second page of posts. I did not review the first page. As I saw the puzzle addressed on page 2 and I still didn't understand the rule being conveyed (which I see now was on page 1 ), I took that as the information I used when posting. Clearly I was in error. I'll give both the sample and competition puzzles a shot today knowing the rules better now.
Cyclone
Edited by Cyclone 2013-04-23 8:25 PM
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greenhorn
Posts: 164
Country : Slovakia | kishy72 - 2013-04-23 8:13 PM
Maybe it would not be a bad idea to have a survey asking participants about what they felt regarding the distribution of points in this test,
whether they see it fit to not have any restriction on the total points that a single puzzle or a small group of puzzles might carry.............................
The points distribution was very near to reflect the real difficulty of these puzzles.
Puzzles with 20-30 points was solvable within 2-3 minutes, the harder puzzles needed a few more minutes. On the WSC there are also some harder puzzles and nobody is discussing it, because the goal is to sort out good/better/best solvers from the others. |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-23 9:26 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Fairly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Too many hard puzzles | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | Way too many puzzles (too little time) | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Many puzzles were worth too much or too little | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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prasanna16391
Posts: 1801
Country : India | kishy72 - 2013-04-23 8:13 PM
Whether "To make it worth less than 157 just so the scoring overall looks "balanced" would be to grossly misrepresent the challenge it presents and cause even more frustration from solvers"is the case remains to be seen.In fact i feel that the real frustration creeps when knowing that after attempting 8 or more puzzles with full focus and concentration you get to know that
you are beaten by a person who has completed just 2 puzzles which might be his forte and which might incidentally have carried high points in the test.
I don't think you're considering everyone here, you are only considering "I completed 8 puzzles with full focus and concentration", which is completely disregarding the population of solvers who will feel "I completed this Little Killer by taking 20-30 minutes on it, within which time I could've easily solved 6-7 puzzles" or even "I took 30-40 minutes and couldn't solve this Little Killer and couldn't get time to attempt others either". All 3 situations have merit, and there will always be people falling in numerous categories of things going wrong in a long test. The solution is not to make things suit one group or the other, but just make sure that practically, the points are distributed fairly. And the testers' timings method is the most practical way. So thats not going to change to suit one side of the argument. So again, I'd say the topic of whether such difficult puzzles should be in a competition format is debatable, but the way the points are distributed is as accurate as can be.
Also, from the last line I can derive that you might have the opinion that people strong at some variants can solve any instance of that variant in a short time. This is not the case. speaking from my perspective, I'd say Little Killer falls roughly in my strong variants. I still took 25 minutes on it before breaking it (I've now found that a typo mid solve cost me and I was solving the right way ). I think I solved about 6-7 of the lower pointers in the same time span early on in the test, but this 25 minute expenditure not only cost me directly, I also felt the effects of it while going forward in the test. Now say, I'd solved it right, but the points total was just 120 or so, would I not feel even more frustrated? My point here is, please take a second and consider the enormous risk a person takes attempting these puzzles and the amount of focus and concentration needed to solve these. |
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detuned
Posts: 152
Country : United Kingdom | detuned posted @ 2013-04-24 6:41 AM So I don't think anyone addressed my post directly, although I think my thoughts are broadly represented by what motris said. The issue is not points allocation, which can only be done sensibly in the one way everyone has already outlined. The issue is the appropriate inclusion of puzzles. And I think it is an issue that hasn't really been discussed seriously before - and I believe this is certainly something that has been got wrong at previous WSC's.
The issue comes down to variation in puzzle difficulty. Shorter, easier puzzles will have much less variation in solving times than longer, more difficult puzzles. Basically this comes down to a couple of factors. First is the fact that you can go wrong in far more exotic and long-winded fashion on a harder puzzle than with an easier one, so often you have no idea that you've gone wrong if you've made a typo or whatever. Second is the fact that a harder puzzle might require one specific deduction that you have to get, and if you miss it for a while then you are going nowhere. I have lots and lots of data to show this is an observable phenomenon with harder puzzles.
Managing the risk of taking on a big pointer is a complex issue. For example, my last correct submission was 35 minutes before the end, at which point I decided to take on the 118 point moveable digits. I broke it after about 15 minutes and then couldn't quite get it finished before the end. In that same time there were 146 points spread across 3 puzzles I'd have got without any problem if I'd attempted them, with perhaps a long shot at the higher variance 108 point killer to boot. Put in context, that decision cost me certainly 33% of what I could have got, and about 30-40 places in the table.
The solution seems obvious right - stick to the safer low variance puzzles for your points right? The problem, especially for a one round format where there is a good chance to finish most if not all of the puzzles on a good day, is that ultimately you'll have to have a go at the harder puzzles, and given they are harder puzzles you need to make sure that you've left sufficient time to have a go at them otherwise again you are left with the problem of having say 10-15 minutes of solving time where you run out of time trying to finish a puzzle. This brings me to the point I was trying to get across, in terms of the difficulty of the test being massively skewed. When you have relatively few puzzles commanding a relatively large proportion of the points, then the lesser pointed puzzles start to lose relevance and the test is exposed more than usual to the elements of chance with the inherently higher associated variance.
Perhaps the proof is in the pudding. Looking at the results there are more solvers (I'm not going to name names) than I'd expect who are way below where they "usually" are. Applying the risk variance thesis gives an explanation: a test with more "risk" than normal is inevitably going to throw up more casualties to variance.
Of course that's not to say managing the harder puzzles is not a skill in itself. It is also no coincidence that there are certain solvers who seem to fare consistently well with more difficult puzzles... |
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2013-04-24 8:15 AM I didn't want to respond directly to your comments detuned because I would have asked if you'd finally come around from my complaints after your last Nikoli Selection test where you forced the large and under-valued "marathon" puzzles to be solved at the very end. I found your criticism a little ironic in that light since in the past you've wielded the severely hard puzzle weapon against all of us.
Managing puzzle difficulty is a very hard thing. I am one of a very small number of LMI test authors that has tried to write a test without any meaningful spread. My Decathlon tests had 10 categories and a consistent "easy" and "hard" puzzle score. So if you wanted a 20-point or 50-point puzzle, you simply found one in every section. This took a lot of puzzle editing to get the difficulties to match a set of testers and not have a large outlier. I'm still not convinced it is easy enough to achieve in practice to encourage it as a goal. It is knowing how difficult this is to do that I have to challenge kishy on the suggestion you can just apply such scoring to any test and not have a revolt on the site from clearly unfair scoring.
So let's say you do allow a spread. How wide should it be? I think it is ok for puzzles to be about 2-3 times above or below the "average" value. A 400 point USPC might have about two dozen puzzles; some are 5 points and a few might be 30 or 40. So a 7x or 8x difference between the easiest and hardest puzzles is ok in my mind. This is matched in this test, but with slightly shorter time and slightly less puzzles, perhaps only a 5x difference would have been better?
Edited by motris 2013-04-24 8:16 AM
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f4han
Posts: 7
Country : Malaysia | f4han posted @ 2013-04-24 9:33 AM |
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joshuazucker
Posts: 31
Country : United States | There was definitely more time from me spent on deciding which puzzles to try when, some in advance of the contest and some during, compared with a lower-variance contest.
I've found that doing one or two medium puzzles at the beginning gets me warmed up, but on this test I first looked at the two hard puzzles that I planned to finish (little killer and killer), went over to solve a couple of easier puzzles to get my confidence up, and then after some bad decisions along the way eventually came out with solutions for the two hard ones. Then I tried some more medium-pointers and at the end wasted most of my last 15 minutes working on puzzles that I didn't finish in the given time -- 5+ minutes on the irregular, and then when I felt nowhere near the solution, quickly stomped out the classic and then started but didn't finish the Quad which still seems to me to be worth more points than it was assigned -- which probably means I'm missing an important deduction!
Certainly having the big-point-value puzzles increases the variance (if you spend a lot of time but then break the puzzle, or just get stuck hunting for a difficult logic step, for instance) and it also increases the "metagame" strategy of which puzzles to attempt at what points in the two hours.
I'm sure I'd feel different about this if I were strong enough to hope to solve all or almost all the puzzles in the given time. Still, one thing that surprised me in motris's USPC reports is how often even he will set a puzzle aside for a while, move on to other things, and come back later.
I also wonder about that in the context of things like WPC playoffs -- how different would they be if there was a packet to finish rather than puzzles that had to be done one at a time?
Anyway, I greatly enjoyed this test, and not only because I did well on it! The 15-30-40 theme was beautifully carried out.
I do feel like with the time pressure there were too many places where it was faster to bifurcate instead of using more elegant logic, though. At least, those are the steps that I found led me to reasonably quick solutions on some of the puzzles. Yes, bifurcating carefully is perfectly valid logic, but it's still not as pretty as the logic that I could find later without the time pressure. I wonder if that's a danger of high-point-value puzzles, that bifurcating is too commonly a way to get to the result more quickly. |
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f4han
Posts: 7
Country : Malaysia | f4han posted @ 2013-04-24 9:47 AM Will author or anyone please teach how to solve little killer, moveable digits, placement shape, killer and word search for this competition? I need help.. |
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Mahyar
Posts: 8
Country : Iran | Mahyar posted @ 2013-04-24 11:28 AM Just one sentence for this Round is suitable: Tennis Round !!
I really enjoyed this round puzzles and they were really wonderful.
I really like tennis and Djokovic and Tipsarevic are both my favorite tensors and I really enjoy while seeing their palyanig.
Thank you to designers and thanks Deb for handling this round on his site.
I just want to say one thing:
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If anybody continue the news about tennis, He should know that last few months which Djokovic was Injured. All Tennis cups and tournaments were less interesting because Djokovic couldn't participate in.
In each game if we don't have all the powerful players, the competitions will have less interesting. Consider that we don't Spain in football!
Here, in the world of Sudoku we have two great champions with Triple Championships (motris ans janoslaw ).
But know, one of them (I think ) is satisfied in Sudoku Championship and doesn't participate in Sudoku cups and tournaments and other competitions related to Sudoku!
In tennis, by coming back of Djokovic, The Tournaments will be more interesting in the competitions of Nadal and Federer with him.
Now in Sudoku, my dreams is seeing both of (the Lord of Sudoku ) in the next WSC and finding more interesting competitions.
This is my dream but my feeling says that it will happen..........!!
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Just one sentence to Jan Mrozowski for this round:
We have a proverb in the world of Sudoku:
Each puzzle has only one solution but there is more than one way to solve it!!
Maybe the competition should have more ways for sending the solutions.
Of course you know that this tournament is 6 of 8, and you still have the chance to be the first.
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Mahyar Asadi
http://bia2sudoku.blogfa.com/post/170 |
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f4han
Posts: 7
Country : Malaysia | f4han posted @ 2013-04-24 1:48 PM I am more like to see myself be in competition rather seen both 'great champions'..  Edited by f4han 2013-04-24 1:49 PM
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2013-04-24 2:44 PM | How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? | Perfectly balanced | | | What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? | Just right | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Very nice | | | How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? | A bit too many puzzles | | | Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? | Many puzzles were worth too much or too little | | | What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? | Just right | |
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detuned
Posts: 152
Country : United Kingdom | detuned posted @ 2013-04-24 4:04 PM i'll respond only briefly re NS, but I'd suggest firstly that is different for a few reasons. firstly, and most importantly in my eyes, the monthly test format gives licence to more creative rules and procedures. secondly, the hard marathon puzzle dilemma was specifically engineered so as not to be a dilemma at all - you were supposed to do the main section first. thirdly even if no marathon puzzles were solved, top solvers were still effectively ranked by how quickly they finished the regular set via bonus points for each minute saved. fourth, i'd argue there is much less "variance" attached to larger, harder nikoli puzzles than to things like the little killer here.
Ultimately, the gimmick with the marathon puzzles was that the points in the bonus section were not equivalent to the points in the main section. Given that this would affect a tiny minority of solvers, together with the fact that this tiny minority of solvers were still effectively rewarded and separated from those who didn't finish the main section, or did finish the main section but in a slower time, there was no qualitative difference in the results. Would I use such a gimmick in a more serious competition? No. Why not attempt to make the points in both sections match up? Because I wanted the 90-95% of solvers to stay on the main section and not be drawn to the marathon section - knowing full well that this group of solvers would at best only just finish the main section if that's all they focused on. In effect, I was removing the option of the big point, high risk, larger and more difficult puzzles. The guiding philosophy were that these were bonus puzzles for "after" the test for the majority of solvers, and something else to really challenge the top solvers who otherwise blasted through the main section in about half the time.
Anyhow, I fully stand by the experiment, and I think there are several reasons why it was suitable for those particular sorts of puzzles rather than sudoku. Bringing the discussion back to the Serbian test, and the spread in points difference. Lets explore your your USPC example. The mean puzzle score there is very roughly 16, and the vast majority of the puzzles are generally worth 10, 15 or 20 points, so the standard deviation isn't hugely high, although I've not taken the time to go into the details. Now take this test. The mean puzzles score is 62.5. You have 7 puzzles from 20-43, significantly lower than the mean, 6 puzzles from 51-72 roughly around the mean and the 3 skewing puzzles from 108-157.
Now I'd agree, trying to edit the difficulties of different puzzle types is going to be a pretty unforgiving task, but I think a think a good test has broadly a consistent level of puzzle, together with a few warm-up puzzles and maybe one or two more challenging puzzles. I think my reaction to my bad result has probably tempered some of my opinion, but there are certainly things worth discussing here, and I'd stand by my observation that difficulty balance was somewhat skewed for this test. Great if you had a good day, but the chances of having a bad day were also increased.
Edited by detuned 2013-04-24 4:20 PM
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f4han
Posts: 7
Country : Malaysia | f4han posted @ 2013-04-24 5:43 PM That's very true!! |
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f4han
Posts: 7
Country : Malaysia | f4han posted @ 2013-04-25 4:24 PM f4han - 2013-04-24 9:47 AM
Will author or anyone please teach how to solve little killer, moveable digits, placement shape, killer and word search for this competition? I need help..
So, no one really kind enough to teach me how to solve all these? I'm begging one more time for help please..  |
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Fred76
Posts: 337
Country : Switzerland | Fred76 posted @ 2013-04-25 5:19 PM detuned - 2013-04-24 6:41 AM
Looking at the results there are more solvers (I'm not going to name names) than I'd expect who are way below where they "usually" are. Applying the risk variance thesis gives an explanation: a test with more "risk" than normal is inevitably going to throw up more casualties to variance.
I don't know who you are talking about  .
I preferred not to react immediately after the tournament, as I was a bit like Tom just after competing: frustrated of my very poor performance.
It was not a good day for me (I could argue that musicians do sometimes excess, like playing in a jam-session until 4 am while drinking too many beers, when they know they have a rehearsal at 8 am, and they'll be very tired the rest of the weekend, including monday... sometimes clichés are not far from reality ).
I started quite well and fast with the first easy sudokus: classic, quadruple, tennis, extra-regions. Then the 1rst mistake arrived in the arrow sudoku, almost at the end, which I was not able not fix. I gave up this sudoku, left the word search, as I don't really like this variant. I solved the irregular and the little killer, which took me lot of time, at least I had this impression. Then, like the arrow sudoku, I broke the frameless, almost at the end, without being able to fix the mistake. I solved the renban and submitted my codes. It was quite a good surprise to see that it remained 55 minutes. I made 397 points in 65 minutes, should have been 518 without having broken 2 sudokus. But even with 397 points, I realized after the tournament that if I had gone on this way, I could theoretically have reached the 13th rank...
Then came the second hour. I solved the even sudoku (I realize just now that I forgot to submit it !!!  ), the diagonal consecutive, and the thermo (I didn't break it, not like during the 2 last LMI tournament ), then I started the killer, but I was stuck (my analysis in the upper right of the grid was not complete ), so I switched to the movable. And then it was a black hole: I was repeatedly stuck. I missed lot of (subtle ) steps, I realized that I should have worked more on this variant before the tournament (just solved the example ). I was so obstinated that I almost forgot to submit the 2 (3 in reality ) sudokus I solved. When I decided to submit, there were only 2 minutes left, it could also have been possible that the tournament was finished...
So in the last 55 minutes, I only scored 111 points. I lost my concentration and my motivation, too. I was frustrated, I thought that sudokus were too hard...
But after a while, I finished the set, realized that all sudokus, if hard, can be solved without guessing. Also have seen the beautiful theme and realized that the problem was not in the set of sudokus, but in my performance.
I also would like to say, as contribution to the discussion "hard/easy sudoku, balanced set,...", that some players really don't like when all sudokus are too easy, or when there are lot of classic sudokus, and they know plenty solvers will be faster than them. We had sudokucup 9, and also german tournament, which had this profile, and I know some players who were not very comfortable with this. So I think it's good to have some tournaments with 3-4 really hard sudokus, so these players can also show us that they are strong players, perhaps a bit slower, but really consistent on hard variants.
Fred |
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prasanna16391
Posts: 1801
Country : India | f4han - 2013-04-25 4:24 PM
f4han - 2013-04-24 9:47 AM
Will author or anyone please teach how to solve little killer, moveable digits, placement shape, killer and word search for this competition? I need help..
So, no one really kind enough to teach me how to solve all these? I'm begging one more time for help please..
Do you mean teach how to solve from the start? Is it possible for you to upload images with the progress you have made? We can then take it one at a time. Authors might be busy processing results, etc., and its a lot of typing to write full solves for 5 Sudokus. |
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skywalker
Posts: 42
Country : Serbia | f4han - 2013-04-25 4:24 PM
f4han - 2013-04-24 9:47 AM
Will author or anyone please teach how to solve little killer, moveable digits, placement shape, killer and word search for this competition? I need help..
So, no one really kind enough to teach me how to solve all these? I'm begging one more time for help please..
Here are some notes about two of these sudokus (I hope this will be enough for you to solve ).
Placement:
There are 4 figures and they overlap in center. You can place 5 in center and note that in other 4 circles in central square are 1,2,6,7.
Look at head of 4 rackets. They are need to be placed in one of corner squares. When you look at givens it is obvious that it is best to start with bottom left racket.
This racket can't be placed in corners with 3 and 4 because he has those numbers in head. This racket also can't be placed in corner with 2 (problem with duplicate number in some row/column - find ).
When you place this bottom left racket and transfer numbers in appropriate circles continue with similar logic.
Killer:
First look at top left corner. You have area that sums to 14, one area with ? and single number. ? = 15,30,40 and it gives that R3C3 must be 1.
With similar logic in bottom right corner R7C7 must be 7.
All regions with 3 cells marked with ? must sum to 15. So, with 1 is 5,9 or 6,8. With 7 could be 2,6 or 3,5. Now you look upper to 5 in 6th column.
Two cells in region with 7 must include 2 or 3, so 5=1+4.
Try to identify some more sums and count on that, if you have region with 5 cells that sums to 15 numbers must be small: 1-5, and if you have region with 4 cells that sums to 30 numbers must be big: 6-9
Branko |
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f4han
Posts: 7
Country : Malaysia | f4han posted @ 2013-04-26 9:54 AM for placement one..I miss to look properly of each shape..and I thought it is unsolvable when I overlap the last circle for each shape in the center of puzzle.. 
For killer, I get it..I just don't try that logic that's why I don't get it.. 
Now I already get moveable digit and word search.. (after try to understand the rules properly and use logic like killer in word search ) except little killer.. I just put all possibilities for all cells with clues outside and don't get any number yet..I think it's an embarrassment for me to show my working grid because it just like I never start anywhere..
maybe I should ask where is the first cell or group of cells that can be filled by correct number and it's reason..
Now I know this round is very good except if I still don't know how to solve little killer.. so please tell me asap because I want to know it first before I can rate this competition here..   Edited by f4han 2013-04-26 10:22 AM
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motris
Posts: 199
Country : United States | motris posted @ 2013-04-27 12:13 AM detuned - 2013-04-24 3:04 AM
i'll respond only briefly re NS, but I'd suggest firstly that is different for a few reasons. firstly, and most importantly in my eyes, the monthly test format gives licence to more creative rules and procedures. secondly, the hard marathon puzzle dilemma was specifically engineered so as not to be a dilemma at all - you were supposed to do the main section first. thirdly even if no marathon puzzles were solved, top solvers were still effectively ranked by how quickly they finished the regular set via bonus points for each minute saved. fourth, i'd argue there is much less "variance" attached to larger, harder nikoli puzzles than to things like the little killer here.
I strongly disagree that the situations are different. Is there some contract or set of guidelines for Grand Prix authors that doesn't give them some license to experiment where monthly LMI puzzle test authors can? Are you implying the LMI Puzzle Ratings are less meaningful than the GP ratings? That being "fair" is more important in one context and not the other? I appreciate experiments but I think there are lessons to learn and reconsider.
If anything, what separates the two situations is that at least here solvers could start the hard puzzles before the last 20-30 minutes of the test, and therefore had a better chance to finish them and properly use the test time. There is nothing more frustrating than having 15 minutes left at the end of a test to do a 20 minute puzzle. Good test-takers do not leave themselves this situation, but you as a designer still seem to consider it a "feature" (point two ). And the scoring of the marathons did affect the top 10 significantly, particularly on the LMI Puzzle Ratings system. So whether solver 100 and 105 are well rated by only being on the main test, the NS was an example of how not to use long puzzles (whether variance was high or not, and this too is debatable ). |
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detuned
Posts: 152
Country : United Kingdom | detuned posted @ 2013-04-27 8:12 AM I suppose that's what I'm exactly what I'm implying re the ratings. The WPF GP has much larger participation and comes with prizes at the end of the road. It was a fair old while since I've done the test, but I can almost certainly guarantee that I wasn't paying much attention to the LMI puzzle ratings when I put together that test.
Looking back at the NS results, what seemed to affect things more than anything else was submitting a wrong answer and losing the time bonus. Ignoring those results with a mistake, those who finished early and didn't get a marathon out were very effectively separated by the time bonus, and I don't think there can be any complaints with the qualitative results (i.e. the rankings).
But I get the feeling we are looking at this from very different perspectives. I have to say I don't fully understand the nature of your complaint. I don't know whether you are saying 1) there should have been no significantly longer and harder puzzles at all or 2) significantly longer and harder puzzles should not have been kept separate from the main section. In case 1) - fair enough. This is pretty much my point of view regarding significantly longer and harder puzzles that aren't separated from the main section of a test. In case 1) my only defence is that of experimentation.
If it's case 2) you are arguing, then I'd appreciate some clarification.
To say a solver who finished the main section wasn't rewarded when placed in the situation of having 15 minutes left in which to solve a 20 minute puzzle isn't true because of the time bonus awarded for finishing the main section. Now, the test valued a minute at ~3 points and the time bonus valued a minute at 1 point, and so there is a quantitative issue if you didn't happen to get a marathon puzzle out. This wouldn't change the rankings unless a solver behind you in the main section got more marathon puzzles out than you did. In which case, if there was freedom to choose to do the marathon puzzles then this other solver would still be finishing ahead of you in the rankings, although perhaps not by as many points.
For better or for worse I was not, and am not, so worried by this quantitative issue. My main aim with the marathon system was to give top solvers something to do after finishing the test, whilst keeping the original rankings in place and possibly allowing for small perturbations in those rankings if something exceptional happened. No-one can (or should) legislate for mistakes wiping out bonuses, so I don't think you can say that the scoring system didn't achieve what it set out to do.
To bring things back to this test then the difference here is that the issue of significantly longer and harder puzzles only affected the top 17, and did so in way so as to minimise the effect on the rankings. By not separating the significantly longer and harder puzzles, the variance issue was exposed to everyone, and had much greater effect on the rankings. |
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detuned
Posts: 152
Country : United Kingdom | detuned posted @ 2013-04-27 8:31 AM I'd also like to repeat to the Serbian authors that I very much enjoyed the puzzles on this test, and much like Fred the frustrations I had with my own performance have faded. With good reason, the issue of how to balance the relative difficulties and timings (timings are a significant factor I haven't mentioned in my discussion with motris) have been weighing on my mind greatly in the last week or so! |
