In the Scale Sudoku example, shouldn't A be heavier than B?

It should not. Actually B should contain digits 3 5 and 4. The last digit is written wrong in the solution. So, the sum of digits in both A and B are 12.

I have a question concerning the puzzle N°19 Psycho Killer:

Will the competition puzzle be a 9*9 classic (with 3*3 boxes) sudoku? The boxes are not shown in the example, and as it's a 6*6 sudoku, it's ambiguous: boxes can be 2*3 or 3*2. Is it part of solving to determine the boxes?

Fred

Edit: in fact boxes are wrong in the solution of the example (some digits are repeated): is it supposed to be an irregular sudoku or a latin square???

Edited by Fred76 2013-06-09 11:17 PM

The instruction is correct. But the example is not approriate for this instruction. You can find an appropriate example in this link: http://www.logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Raetsel/zeigen.php?id=000...

Thanks

Ah right, I just saw A-F to understand the added rule and didn't check the Sudoku bit.

Here are some of the practice puzzles for this contest. These are the puzzles I created during OAPC Contest long back.

Tripod Sudoku
http://www.funwithpuzzles.com/search/label/Tripod%20Sudoku?max-resu...
Psycho Killer
http://www.funwithpuzzles.com/search/label/Psycho%20Killer?max-resu...
Snail Sudoku
http://www.funwithpuzzles.com/2010/05/snail-sudoku.html

For puzzle 5 - One Digit Unique Solution

From instructions: ...place a digit into the grey CELLS...

So there will be more grey cells in the grid? Or just one cell?

Only one gray cell will be

For puzzle 6, logidoku, constraint #2 is ambiguous. Please clarify which is intended
- neither A nor E is odd
- the sum of A + E is not odd

It would also have been less confusing if the definitions underneath the sample didn't include the digits 7,8, 9!

Thanks

Constraint 2 in the example states that neither A nor E is odd.

The definitions include digits 1 to 9, because the competition puzzle will be 1 to 9.

Will you publish the point distribution for the puzzles beforehand?

The points distribution will not be published before the contest. It will be only available in the competition pdf.
Related note : LMI's submission page will not display points for the puzzles.

Thanks for the info.

Link to score page : http://logicmastersindia.com/2013/06S/score.asp

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?	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?	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

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?	Too many pages / too large grids

We have another event for that - The Puzzle World Championship...

:)

Can you please specify the Sudoku names, which you think is more of a puzzle than a Sudoku?

Logidoku, Tripod, Searchdoku, Snapshot sudoku, Psycho killer, Irregular sudoku bands, Sudoku blocks. In all of them you first had to solve another puzzle, and then solve sudoku.
Don't get me wrong - these puzzles were great, but just no very suitable in here. We have like 500 solvers in here, but about 30 are able to solve them. But that's just my opinion, which might also be wrong.

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?	Too few pages / too small grids

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?	A bit hard
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Below Average
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

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?	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

Very nice test.

Only little minus point: I dont like it, if the difficulty is raised via unusual/inconvinient presentation of puzzles (as in the classic sudokus).


Edit: Just wanted to add something regarding Tiits comment. I think he is right up to a point. Many types of puzzles were very innovative and unusual variants, some of them involving more general puzzle solving skill than usually needed in the other tests. Tiit might be right, that this are only solvable by about 30-50 people (during the contest). But the other 450 solvers (and even most of the 30-50) usually have the freedom of choice, which puzzles they do, because they cant solve all of them anyway. (There might be exceptations.) I'm totally fine with the mix and enjoyed the fresh variants.

Edited by Realshaggy 2013-06-22 7:48 PM

Testing
1
2
3

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?	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?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	I have a different complaint

Clearly the toughest of the Grand prix rounds so far.I had a disappointing start with over 25 mins wasted in the 36 point classic.In addition to the strong puzzling touch that most of the sudokus had there is something else that i would like to direct attention to.
First the font of the classics kept changing and i had a hard time getting used to it.The first Classic had a typical Italian touch to it and the second had a more conventional look which was repeated in most other sudokus.The third Classic was quite a shocker.It was appalling to say the least.I still cant think of a good reason as to why the given numbers in that were printed as big as the cells themselves.Believe me .It found it very hard to adjust to it.Then the last one was more than twice in size than the previous.Now i have seen solvers been taken by surprise by the puzzles but for the first time i was taken by surprise by the grid sizes of the puzzles!. I am not sure if that was intented or not , dis-settling the solvers first and trying to see how confident and strongly they solve the rest.But i felt a more uniform font and grid size would have more appealing and better.
Second and the most important is the puzzle link that most of the sudokus had.While i m not against such a concept,i dont think it should be in such a way that it takes the identity of the sudoku .By identity i mean the free flowing logic associated with each sudoku which does not require anything else but pure sudoku solving skills(like how fast u spot numbers,how fast you use the variant logic in addition to the normal classic rules etc.)It was as though there was a barrier to start a sudoku and the barrier is in the form of a puzzle.Solve the puzzle and start the sudoku.If not forget about getting points.Sudoku Bands ,Psycho killer ,Logidoku,Tripod sudoku,Snap shot(in which i got broken twice) etc..were created in the above mentioned way and were way above my reach.
I was moving from sudoku to sudoku (or should i say puzzle to puzzle) looking for sudokus that was completely devoid of the puzzling touch and there were not many that i could find and solve.This test is bound to favour solvers who have a strong puzzle solving skill since the big pointer ones are designed that way.If i m not very wrong,i dont see anyone beating Hideaki 's score.A test tailor made for someone like him.I wont be surprised if he finishes this test at the top .
To conclude ,i would say that this is a nice test which had good quality Grids inspite of the hiccups.Thnks to the authors for giving a nice testBut certainly this is NOT a 2 hr test.Like in the just concluded US Round ,the test should have been for 2 hrs 30 mins.But then again it looks like the test solvers must have completed the set in just under 2 and hence the case.

If I understand Tiit's point correctly, it isn't about the variants being new/innovative. Its mainly about the logic used, and I can see his point. A lot of these Sudokus had a non-Sudoku logic extensively used before letting the Sudoku logic come in. Something like Top Heavy, A or B, Sudoku Clocks, are all also innovative but they "merge" well with the Sudoku logic. Unlike this, a Psycho Killer for example (my favourite one from what I solved), requires you to do the "spread the region" logic coupled with arithmetic logic a lot before the Sudoku bits come into play. So, this 7th GP alone, is a bit "Puzzle-heavy".

However, I'll add that, over the 8 GPs, if you only take the percentage of puzzle-heavy ones, the overall percentage is close to being as high as what might appear over the length of a typical WSC. I personally don't mind that, since the point of having 8 different countries author these is to see the overall variety and to allow each country to bring their best to the mix. That coupled with the "Best 6 out of 8" ruling makes this Puzzle-heavy test fine as a part of the 8. Obviously opinions on balance can differ, but most importantly, as Tiit noted, the puzzle quality was superb, and the test was fun.

I skipped the test because of the "classics". Sorry.

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?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

I agree with Tiit's point of view:

After reading the instructions booklet, I thought that it was more a "puzzle test about sudoku" than a sudoku test.

Having 2 or 3 "puzzlish" sudoku is not wrong in a sudoku test (we sometimes met some of these in previous WPF GP tests), but here half of the points of the whole test was about puzzles. I think it's too much !

Also, what is the point of not publishing the point distribution before the test? I hardly see any advantage. And what is the point of playing with different layout on classic sudoku? Your classic sudokus were great, no need to try to hide something or to try to be funnier...

Finally, I have to say that each individual puzzle was nice and well constructed, and I thank you about the global work for this test.

Personnally: an inversion in the tripod sudoku will perhaps coast me a lot


Fred

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?	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?	I have a different complaint

Although puzzles are nice, but I was confused with the difference of font-style in classic sudokus. Especially it was rather hard for me to recognize digits in the grid no.1...

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?	A bit hard
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Below Average
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 many pages / too large grids

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?	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?	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

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?	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?	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

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?	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

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?	A bit hard
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
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?	I have a different complaint

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?	All puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

I really enjoyed this test esp. solving Tripod and Physo Killer Sudoku.

I spent much time during the test on the snapshot sudoku without finding a solution.
After the end of my test, I tried to find a solution and finally I found one by rotating one of the snapshot. Perphaps I made mistakes but if snapshots could be rotated, it should have been written in the rules.
At this time, only 6 players found the solution of the snapshot sudoku ! I wonder if many other players had the same problem as me on this sudoku.

Sylvain

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

There were bit too many previously unknown puzzles for me. Also, as an moderate solver I really would like to have the points distribution available beforehand in order to try to optimize my competition.

Thank you all the same! In overall, nice competition.

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?	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?	Too many pages / too large grids

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

The formatting of the classics was a bit confusing.
The Instruction Booklet didn't mention that the constraints in Logidoku will differ in the Puzzle Booklet from the constraints in the Instruction Booklet. That's also my fault that I didn't ask about it beforehand, but I didn't expect to be able to participate in this contest so I didn't deal too much about the IB.
In general I enjoyed the test, the puzzles which I have solved were very nice.

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

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

I can't believe it! The LMI server is normally super-reliable, but for the last 5 minutes of my allotted time I tried frantically and desperately to submit my last 2 answers... never succeeded to reconnect to the site before the end of my time (sometime around 21:35 French time = 19:35 GMT Sunday -- did anyone else experience an outage around that time? if not perhaps the problem was on my end, though other websites were loading fine). I lost 28 points (clock and odd lab) in the process. Grrr..... Oh well, at least I didn't wait until the last minute to submit all my answers, otherwise I'd have ended up with a beautiful zero...

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

@auroux, please check your PM.

Hi,

when I wanted to submit my answers suddenly the website was not reachable. After I tried to refresh it, I could not see anything anymore. Since my home network worked well, I went to logic masters Germany and submitted my answers to Yureklis by personal message (Serkan Yürekli). Since I had only my roughly timed music, I am not sure if I was on time. (But maybe you are generous since I also lost some minutes trying to submit answers in the answer form).

Now the site is back working, so I came here to post this message. The timer says it is over (which is correct since also my music is over ).

Greetings, Nola

PS: I take part regularly on your site, and this never happend before. Hopefully, it was the last time, since I like beeing here.

Hi Nola, we have accepted your answers. You can now check the score page at http://logicmastersindia.com/2013/06S/score.asp

Hi again, thank you very much!!! I liked the sudoku variants very much, since there were really new and nice ideas!

It was a little difficult to get an overview on the points, a table would have been nice (in the PB) or puzzles sorted by point value. Normally I am not able to solve all puzzles but choose the ones I like most, which have mean point value. (I have an idea about why it was done, but still would be thankful about the point information - and not distributed on 21 pages.)

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 many pages / too large grids

Yes, I had the same problem where I had solves one with 2 minutes to spare, but it wouldn't allow me to submit in those last few minutes ... it kept saying I had unsubmitted puzzles, but clicking on submit only showed a little clock for the mouse-cursor. This was around 3:30pm Eastern Time.

Oh well, I was doing very badly anyway

I also had a submitting problem at the end, but reloading the page let me submit *just* before time expired.

I thought this was a very hard test, and making a few mistakes along the way didn't help. Some of the puzzles were really pretty though! I look forward to finding the time to solve the rest of them.

I felt sure that the logidoku led to a contradiction; I really want to figure out what was going on there! I'm very confused right now. I also somehow managed to cause myself problems in the snapshot and didn't have time to go back and try to fix.

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?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

The Irregular Bands was very fast for me compared with the point value, but then maybe I guessed a little lucky about which band should go where. The islands also seemed a lot easier than Tripod and Psycho, and I feel like I'm pretty much of a killer specialist anyway. The A or B also felt a little overvalued ... or maybe it's just that the Tripod and Psycho were undervalued.

Quite a lot of hard puzzles, but they certainly look beautiful and had some lovely steps in finding the solutions!

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?	I have a different complaint

While not a major complaint and put a contest together is difficult, using consistent formatting - grid size, font type/size, etc. - would be preferred. But think for the effort and the interesting puzzle types.

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?	A bit hard
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
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?	I have a different complaint

All puzzles in the booklet should be in the same form (e.g. same size, same font)

Edited by An LMI player 2013-06-24 3:18 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?	Fairly 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

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?	Too many pages / too large grids

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?	A bit hard
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
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 many pages / too large grids

I already had the opinion when reading the Instruction Booklet that it would be fairly puzzly. And it was a bit like I expected. I think that just because a latin square has regions, doesn't make it a Sudoku. That's why I would call certain puzzle Regional Skyscraper and Regional Easy as ABC and not Skyscraper Sudoku and Easy as ABC Sudoku.
I have not much a problem with the scores not being known in advance, but if that is the case I feel there should at least be a cover page which has all scores mentioned, so you can find easier/harder puzzles at the moment you want to solve them.
I felt the same as Joshua on the scores for Islands and Bands, while some others took far more effort for their value.
I dropped doing any classics after the first one and realised all of them were weirdly formatted. Honestly, it made me afraid the whole test would be in the first Sudoku's font and I almost stopped solving because of that, as that really didn't work for me and I spend far too much time because I kept not seeing the digits correctly.
I also hope I'll get my points for the half squares sudoku as I hadn't noticed the 0's for empty half squares were supposed to be put in and I don't exactly understand why we would have to. My numbers are in the right squares, so my solution is clearly matching the intended solution.

I do think that all puzzles I solved were really nice to solve, but maybe not all for a Sudoku competition. Half the puzzles I've written for the Daily League I would never suggest putting in a Sudoku competition, but for one time they should still be fun to solve.

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?	Average
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 many pages / too large grids

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?	A bit hard
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
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

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?	Fairly 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?	I have a different complaint

Fun fact: when you make your mouse go over a player's timing in the results list, this player's global ranking is displayed. As usual.

Just, it is not the sudoku ranking that is displayed, but the puzzle ranking.

Edited by Ours brun 2013-06-24 8:37 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?	Average
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

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?	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 many pages / too large grids

Many points about this test have been discussed, I'll try to post my opinions on each of them.

First, the points not being released. I generally don't do strategy well. Ok, I'm downright horrible. :P So from my perspective this was actually a good thing, because I didn't have to think about what puzzles to solve, and basically just went on what I feel like doing at that moment of the test. I definitely had a better test choice-wise than usual. However, I do believe the average solvers get affected badly by the lack of a points table. Its not good when you have just 3-4 favourites and need to pick the rest and don't know your picks pre-test.

Next, the Classics. I agree this was a bit problematic, but I do believe that, more than the changing font, the problem that should be addressed is the clarity of givens. Changing the font and size is fine as a surprise/adaptability tester, but the basic clarity should be there for the solver to have no problems. I personally had no clarity issues though, so again, from my side at least, I have no problems with this part of the test. Also, I trust that the author team had a good reason for doing this and I'd like to hear that reason before commenting further.

Then, the puzzly variations. Like I said before, over the course of the 8 GPs, I believe it evens out. However, this one as a stand-alone, was definitely dependent on non-Sudoku logic a bit more than usual. I think, it depends on the construction of variants too. The Logidoku for instance, I believe, can become an acceptable Sudoku variation for everyone if it has some givens and say just 5-6 operations. Don't get me wrong, the variants were all beautifully constructed, with some nice logic to them, and were indeed some of my personal favourites, but what I suggest is simply a way to make it more suited for a test targeted at a large Sudoku-loving audience.

Lastly, the Snapshot Sudoku's rotation surprise. I like surprises. I even expressed my support for a surprise in a previous GP. Also, I have no frustration related to this Sudoku because I solved it at leisure and enjoyed it (on the 2nd try anyway). Still, I'm quite certain I'd have been frustrated if I'd done it during the competition. The main reason being, me, and maybe a lot of other people, would've used the "obvious" 9-6 snapshot to start the Sudoku. While in a competition mindset, it certainly would look obvious to most people. Once you place that at the start, you still need the placement of the 2 big snapshots among others to reach a contradiction. So you're basically starting with "oh cool, this is so easy" and then you reach a contradiction, where you either think back, or just leave it. If you think back, you've basically done some unintentional guesswork, and if you leave it, you've lost out on the points here, neither being a desirable result. I really believe that releasing in the rules "Rotation of pieces is allowed" wouldn't have reduced the fun value of this puzzle at all, and would've kept away all criticism, because using the 2 big snapshots is a pretty nice start.

Also, it is important to consider the target audience here. Experimentation and puzzle-like variations are, I think, better to try with an audience that is mostly just people who have been at a WSC/WPC and had a lot of puzzling experience before. But these GPs have attracted many newcomers, and have been planned to attract solvers who are new to this level. Most of these are general thoughts, because within the duration alloted, I actually had fun on this test, which probably had a lot to do with avoiding the Snapshot and not having any clarity issues on the Classics, but still, I had fun. Thanks to the authors for that.

I tried reloading the page, but that had no effect. For those keeping score: I lost 11 points for the Odd Lab.

A great test with great puzzles.
I think it is necessary to have points-distribution before hand, if not, at least have it at a front cover
since I, and likely others, use it as a checklist to see which puzzle should be done next.

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?	Too many pages / too large grids

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?	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?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	I have a different complaint

When I was little, after completing a painful test, my mother used to tell me "Don't worry, if it is hard for you, then it is hard for everyone" :)

First, I want to say that all these points that have been criticized were our personal choice, we wanted to do something different, but it was not appreciated. I'm sorry for that. I have been preparing puzzles for many years and I've often tried to make some innovative efforts in order to enrich the puzzle culture. These different efforts are generally criticized at first, but some of them are eventually accepted.

Months before, when the date of our GP was set, I had already made my mind that it would be something different and I mentioned those to Deb. So the types were selected according to that. We could build the set with many familiar types that everyone would be satisfied, but we chose not to.

About the fonts: Our starting point was the "check the puzzles" round in WSC 2011. Sudokus were built with many different fonts and the purpose was to challenge the visual perception. We used different fonts in classic Sudokus, based on this purpose. There are two points of view here: Solver's point of view and designer's point of view. The solver dislikes any feature that makes solving harder for them. The designer wants to do something different. That round in WSC 2011 was hard for me, I'm not a good solver and those fonts made everyting harder. I did not like that round as a solver. But when I put on my designer hat, I think it's a great idea. So in this test, we thought as a designer and personally I don't regret this choice.

Overall, in this test, there were many features that were deliberately put in order to deform the usual structure. I suppose too many of them came together and that caused so many reactions. Maybe we should not put them altogether, we're sorry for that.

Thanks for your comments,

Serkan

I agree with most of the criticisms that have been said here but at the same time I want to support Serkan, proven innovator in the world of logic. I suppose he and his team member Salih wanted to bring something new again. Good job!

I'm doing fine in logic sudoku variants. When I saw different fonts in first few grids, I thought the whole test is with such crazy fonts. I told myself, "get used to it!" Once I came out of the classics, the font has become normal . Then I quickly flew to see the point distribution and decided to solve in order, as usual. I am personally very happy that I was able to solve snapshot sudoku in the last 10 minutes of the test, which is not in my case with such tricky puzzles. Last week I failed on duello. Zero was completely out of my mind and author's obvious intention was not to show it in the example. The question for discussion is should samples clearly demonstrate all aspects of the rules of the puzzle? Of course, this reduces the author's maneuver for surprising factor, but I think there is still a lot of "legal" ways for good surprise.

And it seems we have 7 different GP winners. That will be a great final round in Beijing!

Nikola

Edited by Nikola 2013-06-25 3:13 AM

Hi Serkan, thank you for your explanation.
I really love Turkish-style puzzles (WPC 2009 was the best WPC ever) and they are still the best from my view. I had no problem with the non-sudoku logic sudokus, but I was really dissapointed when I saw the unusual classics. I asked to myself: "What a hell, why Serkan made such a madness? Is it a shot into a dark, just to catch attention? I do not understand." This moment surprised me so much, that I was not able to continue solving. Before then I have solved some harded puzzles (maybe three and skipped "unsolvable" snapshot sudoku) and consider them very nice, however I have no motivation to continue competing.
Another thing is the huge puzzle booklet. As I complain before (atfer Fugitive Warrant), I still think, that 21 pages are so much for a contest, that wants to invite new competitors. To save some papers and nerves I printed 2 pages per sheet, but some numbers were too small. Please, don´t think that I am looking for another complaints, but I have always dilemma how to deal with such a puzzle booklet.

Thank you for a nice contest, great puzzles (also prefer the term "puzzles") and also valuable experiences :)

Matus

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?	A bit hard
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
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?	Too many pages / too large grids

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?	I have a different complaint

Personally loved it (except for the hard to read numbers on the early grids) though I can't argue with those who felt it was as much puzzle as sudoku.

I agree with this point mainly. Each twist on its own would've been only a "little twist" that some liked and some didn't while all together, there was some different thing each individual didn't like which stayed in mind even if they liked the rest. You gave the WSC example, and the point value there was very less compared to the rest of the WSC.

I also agree with, and like the idea of enriching the Sudoku/Puzzle culture. Any new idea/innovative test will always be a risk once provided to the large audience, especially in a test-series trying to get new competitors in. So I respect the fact that you take these risks, and I can understand how bad it must feel when you take a risk and it's not well received. Once again, from my own perspective, thank you and the other authors for a fun test :)

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?	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?	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?	I have a different complaint

Interesting test. I liked the logic/puzzling emphasis that gave it a fresh feel. I'll echo other commenters that a points summary would have been nice and the change in fonts was distracting.

I like the A or B puzzle type; this particular one was probably overrated for points.
I didn't get to the Bands or Blocks (#20 and #21) during the time limit but enjoyed both of them post test, particularly the Blocks.

GP7 is over. Password removed from Sudoku booklet. Here is the link to solution booklet.

The score page will be public in a while.

I hadn't realized the way to avoid the contradiction that I found during the test on the snapshot! So it's good that finally I learn this idea. I was too fixed in my thinking. That was a very clever twist. I agree with the commenter who suggested that having one twist like that in a test is a nice spice, but having many such twists may just overload us, especially if we're expecting zero twists going in.

I enjoyed the test, though I felt it was overall too hard/long. For me it felt unsatisfying to only solve 7 of 21 puzzles during the test, even if I did spend my time trying to solve the higher point value ones for the most part. I certainly look forward to spending some time on the remaining puzzles later! There is a lot of beauty to be found in these puzzles; none of them are boring, that's for sure!

I enjoyed the puzzles tho' for many of the reasons mentioned above (as well as being sick), I got bogged down and did not submit any answers.
I did not figure out the snapshot puzzle trick (would not have considered that within the description) and have wasted way too much time on it in interim! Glad to learn what I did wrong. Will have to look again. Tho' if rotation is allowed, then that opens up so many more possibilities that I probably wouldn't even have attempted it during the test.
Did manage to solve most of the others by the end of the day.
Good job. Thanks for the effort

Actually, if I understand it correctly, the 6-9 snapshot is the only one that can be rotated because the numbers still stay valid upon rotation.

Results are now public.

I do not like this snapshot twist at all. It was not mentioned that snapshots can be rotated. I spent much time to verify that something wrong in my logic and lost time. Those hidden tricks should not be allowed on that level of competion.

On another note, it will be nice to have standartized fonts.

Overall, the test was really nice. Thanks to authors and administrators.

Congratulations to Hideaki, Daisuke and Bastien for having the top three positions.
The grand prix format let more solvers participate to online competitions. I am a loyal solver of them and this was my first one as an author. Thanks to Deb and LMI for the organization of the test, and also thanks to all participants of the test.
I would like to express my extra thanks to the nine solvers who solved the snapshot sudoku. I was sure that I will receive some bad comments for that sudoku. Serkan came with the idea of rotating of a snapshot with a single digit at a corner. I applied the idea using two digits, assuming this will make it much obvious. Apparently, it didn’t work as I expected. I hope this twist will not cause any discourage for sudoku solvers.
Salih

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?	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

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?	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

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)

I have two main complaints. One being that there simply wasn't enough time to dig into these puzzles. I don't mind that they were hard and I quite enjoyed completing them after the contest was over. (Except for Snapshot Sudoku that either has an error in the setup of the puzzle or I just can't figure out how to do it.) My other complaint is that the example puzzles in the instruction booklet were often smaller puzzles than the puzzles presented in the contest. Since a lot of these puzzles were novel to me, I didn't get enough practice with the smaller versions to feel prepared for the full-size puzzles in the contest.

See the earlier posts for discussion on this. :)

Also, Instruction booklets aren't given for the sake of practice but to understand the rules. For practice, if you are unsure of where to go for a particular type, just post on the topic before the test starts, and someone will give you some links.