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.

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.

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

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 :)

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

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

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.

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

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.