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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.........

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.