Best of luck to all the participants!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so many points to lose..aiyoyo...but overall i like ur puzzles.. thanks

Thankyou for these nice puzzles.

David thanks for this nice set. But anyone who wish to deal with it must be very careful. Otherwise he/she can make silly mistakes just like me In one of the puzzles I entered two same digits in a 3x3 region and lost points of a successfully soved puzzle while entering the solution. My other mistake was seeing a sign (greater that) wrong Anyway the whole set was fascinating. Where you're using different tools to obtain a solution. What can I say, this sampler platter really tastes good

Regards

Edited by zhergan 2010-08-07 6:15 PM

Zafer, Good points.
Comparatively, I see many scores between 400 and 500. But only a handful getting bonus points.

Many thanks for these very nice puzzles with a good mix of rules.
I ask: puzzle n° 13 (the first of stage four) has a double solution, even if out of answer area?
I think that two "3" can be exchanged with two "9", but it is not important for tha answer.

Remember this rule:
In Stage 4 : if Odd-Sum-circle is present, their sum has to be Odd, but they can't be consecutive.

Ah, yes! Thak you very much, Amnon!

well this was my first attempt at solving puzzles and sudoku...i scored extra low...but i loved the experience.....thanks...looking forward to learning puzzle solving admist some great guys..:)

Hm, I should read forum posts more carefully next time.
That costs me time in some puzzles, but at least it makes 6x6 puzzles little more challenging

David, thanks for nice competition (4th and 5th stage - very nice puzzles)

cool puzzles

Very, very nice puzzles. I like how the logic flowed in the latter stages even though it looked like it shouldn't.

A feature suggestion for the online submission: give a warning when you haven't filled all the cells you need to (all cells pre-"show cells to fill" time, highlighted cells after clicking "show cells to fill"). I almost missed a region of cells to fill in one of the 6x6 puzzles!

Will not be difficult to implement. but do we really need this feature?
in an actual competition, you are never going get this kind of helping tools.

Congratulations to jaku111, Hideaki Jo and Fred Stalder for topping in LMI August Sudoku Test - Sampler Platter.

There were 138 participants out of which 122 got non-zero scores and 20 of them got bonus points.

Thank you all for participating and making this a success.

Thanks to David for authoring Sampler Platter. It was a very different test at LMI, with lot of the players hitting the 500 mark.

Thanks to Rishi for pre-testing the puzzles. He would have definitely got the bonus points had he taken the test.
Thanks to Neeraj and Rohan for pre-testing the submission site and updated results page.

Hope everyone enjoyed the test. Please leave your feedback about Sampler Platter here and / or rate the Sudokus, if you have not done so yet.

Thanks to everyone who tried my puzzles this competition! I appreciate all of you taking the time to enter and solve my puzzles.

Regarding round 4: I'm sorry about the unusual rules in this round. Because I wanted to use all rule types but have separate sections, I thought combining the odd-sum pair and consecutive clues in that way would be the easiest and most logical way to combine the clue types. Now looking back I can see it caused a lot of confusion. If I ever do a similar puzzle set in the future I'll be sure to exclude any confusing rules like this one.

Please also let me know if there is any additional feedback anyone has - I always aim to improve the way I create puzzles to make the best experience for puzzle solvers.

David

Sampler Platter discussions outside LMI forum

http://www.sudokuxtra.com/forum/read.php?2,439
http://forum.ukpuzzles.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=36
http://sudokuvariante.forumactif.com/tournois-officiels-f19/lmi-aug... (in French)

Hi Chris,

The warning feture has not been added on purpose. The purpose is not for a player to only solve it but also to input the answer correctly... If in an actual competition I submit a sudoku with a few blank cells (Which in reality has happened with me plenty of times, including the Indian National Championship this year ), nobody gives me a warning to fill up the blank parts. So in a way we are tying to make people double chk the puzzle to ensure completeness in solving as well as submission.

Rishi, Good point.
By the way, for those who don't know, Rishi left one cell blank, which cost him the title.

David, thanks for creating grids and preparing tournament. I enjoy this !

Especially grids of stage 4 and 5 were nice and it was interesting to solve them.

In my opinion, it could have been 2 or 3 more difficult grids to settle best players otherwise than bonus time.

Fred