I am not able to see the results. It brings me back to the contest page.

Sorry Matus, it is not ready. Will take a while before its ready. You are ranked 3rd now with Prasanna16391 and EoHeongMat finishing in around 50 minutes.

Thank you.

Hi Matus,
Thanks for your participation.
Before the score page gets ready you can give your feedback on the contest. :D

Regards,
Ravi

Thank you Ravi, I enjoy your contest a lot. I am glad, that you prepare also some harder puzzles, which were really tricky. The design of your puzzles is great, you did a good job. For me, the hardest puzzle was H, but I can explain why, maybe I missed something during solving :)
The only negative from my view is the lenght of the contest. I am not sure, if beginners are patient enough to solve such a huge number of puzzles. In my opinion 10 puzzles within 45 minutes will be ideal. But it is just my view, other solvers may have different feelings.

Matus

I am very happy that you enjoyed and liked the contest. Thanks!
H, yes it is difficult, the 4 Black circles in the bottom, that pattern I found when solving a Nikoli Masyu (not sure if they intentionally put that pattern or just a coincidence). Whatever is the case that patten can be used to make the puzzle slightly tricky.
As we mentioned this is still a trail phase for the Beginners' Puzzle contests, we gave a lot of thought about the competition format. The initial discussions included 20 + 1 puzzles but the number was too high and reduced it to 16 + 1. I tried my best to make 4 easy, 8 medium and 4 hard puzzles along with one 20 X 20 grid. Anyway depending on this competition feedback LMI will do its best for the next contest.

Regards,
Ravi

I had a blast with this one. It was one of the few times I've felt like I actually had a chance (albeit a small one) to claim a time bonus. H gave me trouble, as did O; the rest of the smaller ones seemed to flow pretty well, and didn't hang me up too long. I will admit to using uniqueness logic at a couple of points, and I'd have preferred to find the purely logical path, but hey, clock's ticking! :)

The bigger one definitely had me stumped for longer than I would have liked, and my ten or so minutes remaining wasn't nearly enough for me to solve it. Unfortunately, I had to do a little trial and error to figure that one out; I may try to revisit it later to see what I missed, but I just couldn't find a good way to start linking up the edge bits that came in easily, or to even really get started in the middle. Making a couple of well placed assumptions, I eventually massaged it into shape, but I want to figure out how that one ticks.

Great fun, regardless; I've never felt Masyu was a very strong category for me, but this assortment of puzzles (and preparing for them) have really helped me feel like I've got a stronger grasp of it now. Right up until a variant gets thrown at me next time. ;)

Thanks Ravi!
I REALLY enjoyed this comtest.

This is the first time to solve completely on LMI.

Edited by totoron8655 2013-04-26 10:51 PM

Hi Ono san,
I am really glad that you enjoyed my contest. Thanks for your participation.
You get to complete a whole set at LMI, It never happened to me ;(

Regards,
Ravi

Edited by macherlakumar 2013-04-27 7:33 AM

H, I have already mentioned so regarding O, it starts with very easy steps, only the top right 2 black circles are crucial to finish it.
Using uniqueness logic, in my opinion it is not a bad idea, I do use it sometimes, but that would be my last option.
some people may be good at one puzzle type so contests like this are perfect way to show their skills
Thanks for your particiaption.

Regards,
Ravi

It was a great contest. Few puzzles where very tricky and i did took time there. Did some mistake while solving the big one but fortunately found the mistake immediately.
For the first time ever i was able to grab the bonus. Thanks for the great puzzles. Njoyed a lot :) .

Happy to hear that you enjoyed the contest
Yes few puzzles are tricky else there won't be any fun, right ?
Thanks for your participation.

Regards,
Ravi

Edited by macherlakumar 2013-04-27 4:24 PM

With my competitive hat on, I really ought to have been at least 10 minutes quicker... I tripped myself up on A E and H - stupidly the thing with H was not the nice configuration with 4 black circles, which is the sort of thing I also save for harder puzzles (actually, you only need 2 black circles and white to set up that trick).

I didn't solve the big puzzle remotely cleanly - I'll have to try solving again to see if there was a more pleasing solution. Was the idea to fiddle around with the loop section from the middle-left to top-left and work from there?

I think of the set, M was my favourite - although the standard overall was pretty good! If I was really nitpicking I'd say maybe some of the puzzles were a little tough for a beginner, but otherwise a really fun race against the clock!

This was constructed at my early days as a puzzle designer. I felt using 4 black would be good and did so.
Middle-left to top-left is one part and then you have to work on the center.
M is very nice design although I could have put a white circle at R10C5 to make it symmetrical, but that would decrease the difficulty. I am happy that you liked the overall standard.
Since the idea is still in trail phase, depending on this competition the future Beginners' puzzle competitions may be changed.

Regards,
Ravi

I don't know why, but I feel like the puzzles are somewhat repetitive. There are just so many tricks that are used over and over. Well, perhaps it's due to the fact that I solved it when half-asleep, so I can't quite remember things...heh.

Nice puzzles and contest!

The simple entry format (easy to count, not prone to errors) was a real pleasure.

The beginner sudoku contest format, with two short 40 min segments and a break between segments, is nice. That would also have been nice here (select 2 groups of puzzles, even though the rules are the same). For that matter, I'd be happy to see multiple shorter segments even in non-beginner contests :)

Enjoyed the puzzles. I also found H to be hard. I resorted to uniqueness logic in various puzzles several times (unsatisfying), and also some guesses (even less satisfying).

I do most of my masyu solving on nikoli. Overall these puzzles seemed on the hard side, especially for a beginner contest. I notice several beginners have already placed well. Congratulations!

This contest taught me quite a bit more about Masyu patterns. Well done.

Had my internet not cut out temporarily, I think I would have finished sometime around the 68-minute mark, as opposed to the 74-and-a-half-minute mark. I really need to have a word with my ISP about these problems.

Not prone to errors? And I missed one empty cell at one time... Either I have to use a thicker brush or this claim is not exactly correct.

A method that I think more error-proof is to count the numbers of horizontal line segments in the rows instead. Should be fairly easy to count too, and more visible...I don't know.

Perhaps another method would be placing the arrows so they point along gridlines, and count the number of times the line is cut. This way, it also serves as a double-check; because there must be an even number of cuts, if you get an odd result then you know something is wrong, and it should be really visible. But this method gives the same answer a rather large portion of the time, so it might not be able to check some incorrectly solved areas.

...Answer key problem. Always one of the most bugging problems for test makers. That said, this choice is fairly nice too; only that it's still more error-prone than what is expected.

Disagree. Counting the empty cells is probably the easiest answer format ever. This was the best puzzle contest for me from the view of submiting answers. I really apreciate this idea and hope that there will be more contests with such an easy and clear answer format.

Edited by greenhorn 2013-04-29 7:08 PM

Probably not. This has been used in multiple tests after 2011. Each and every time, I have seen players claiming they made a typo.

Thanks Ravi for the great puzzles. Enjoyed all the puzzles. For me I made mistake twice while solving L. Only third time I could find my mistake. Thanks to LMI for this great initiative.

Congratulations to: All of Japan! Currently in the top 9 places - Sugoi!

Many thanks to Ravi, great set of puzzles.
I like the answer keys. Counting 5 digits is quick enough.
I would have prefered the points for each puzzle to be printed too.

Even the easy 4 were still "clever" puzzles.
I was wondering if this test could be given to people that are new to puzzling, but I think not. A little experience in Masyu is still needed.

It is perfect 10 now.