Post #11023: It would be nice if you also specify the reasons for your opinion. Otherwise, I don't exactly know what to improve.

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Thanks! About Surveyors Heyawake, I did warn in this thread before that it's a difficult genre. But you should have asked here for clarifications. Oh well, you did an amazing performance either :)

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Actually the puzzle types are not exactly popular; I can only recall Liar Slitherlink and Cipher Fillomino that appear abundantly in the puzzling community, with Elimination Tapa and Domino Nurikabe trailing. I don't think the remaining five have much exposure. But they are indeed variations of popular types. If you say so, okay :)

Well, LMI put a limit of 120 minutes for a test. I should have asked Deb whether a longer time is allowed. But sure, I indeed think that I overshoot the difficulty and should have given a longer time to work 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
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
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?	Fairly Nice
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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

Great appearances, natural ways to solve.
I like this kind of puzzle set ;-)

My favorites are Masyu 1, Fillomino 2 and Tapa 2.

Edited by xevs 2013-05-19 9:42 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?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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

Was fun. A minute too little time, although that's because i wasted a lot of time on the second Liar Slitherlink as I missed something. Erased that one at least 5 times.

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
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Answer keys could have been better
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?	Very nice
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
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

If it's reassuring for deu, I also wasted about the same amount of time working with a different set of rules for Surveyor's. And as can probably be seen from my abysmal mistake record, I haven't been doing enough of these kinds of puzzles recently.

Great test. I'll have to figure out how on earth that second Nurikabe is proven to be unique later.

Edited by MellowMelon 2013-05-20 4:12 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?	Fairly Nice
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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

Interesting set of puzzles, although not all of them are on my most-favorite-list.
I wasted very much time on the first battleships, proving it had multiple solutions three times in a row, at the same place. After the test is over, I realised that the single dot underneath the 'S' is another ship. That didn't cross my mind during solving; I assumed it part of the S. I would have appreciated it when that ship was positioned next to the 'S', like the others in a row.

I found the cells in some of the puzzles a bit small, especially in the grids where digits or letters have to be written in the grids. I had problems writing in the domino and skyscraper puzzles. Especially in the case where half of the page is used to reproduce the instructions there was enough possible space to make the grids a bit larger.

All in all, I had an enjoyable morning, leaving me with a few interesting puzzles to try later. (As always.)

I kept glancing at the top of the page to see how many points the puzzles were worth. It usually said 30+40points, but the puzzles seemed harder than that... now I'm pleased to find I was reading the wrong numbers.

Grizix: Well, welcome to competitive puzzle solving. As you practice more, you will eventually pick up some speed. If you're fast enough, you can complete all puzzles with an ample amount of time remaining (13 minutes), as deu proved. Keep practicing and participating in contests, and you'll find that you can do faster and hence enough time for all puzzles. Thank you for your feedback!

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I'll release a complete solution (as in walkthrough, not only answer) for it soon, after the test.

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Another person complained that the O seems to be a part of the S. I didn't realize that people might confuse the ships' shapes. A mental note for my future puzzles to distinguish the ships more clearly. I might as well go and put lines to mark borders between ships next time. Thank you for your feedback!

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Well, this is my usual cell size (28px). I didn't think that it's too small. Besides, in the PB it looks like a 32px cell size will not fit two puzzles in the page (or if it is, the margins become too narrow). You should have said about that earlier, as I have warned (Visuals item 5). Thank you for your feedback!

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I should have differentiated the numbers more. Or just remove it altogether; all group bonuses are 30+40 anyway. Thank you for your feedback!

Edited by chaotic_iak 2013-05-20 6:04 PM

I too fall into the Battleship the same way as Richard did thinking that DOT is part of other battleship and found multiple solutions. Interesting for all multiple solutions were leading to same answer key which I tried to put but system showed that it is wrong. I tried to see error but could not find any error then at the end I thought that DOT may be separate and luckily could find and submit correct answer with just 5sec remaining on clock to get the bonus.
It was a surprise for me and as told earlier by Deb that not everyday we got surprises. I enjoyed this surprise but not sure about others.

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
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
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
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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

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I think most experienced competitive puzzle solvers on this forum would disagree with your statement. No matter how much you train and practice, most of us will never reach Hideaki's level or even be able to finish a really tough puzzle set like yours.

The test was fun as usual, but I think you are guilty of presuming a bit too much (as is common for new contest designers -- I've made such mistakes a lot): I've learned to love Surveyors Heyawake, but "excessively complicated rules" would be a more honest description than "difficult genre". Extra wrinkles such as the non-straight battleships in the top battleships puzzles were really unnecessary given the tricky rules to begin with.

Denis

Hm... There are four perfect scorers (solved all puzzles, even though getting several penalties) so far. If I recall correctly, so far all regular contests are of around this difficulty; only a few people (generally around 0-10) can finish all puzzles. (Best of LMI 2012 has none, 8th Open Moscow Puzzle Cup 2012 has none, forsmarts 10th Anniversary Contest has none, Word Show has none, Fillomino-Fillia 2 has 7. I think that supports my argument.)

Yes, you might not be able to reach Hideaki's level; some people might be born with some talent and hence has a head start. But if your target is an absolute one, like finishing twelve tests in a row, as opposed to a relative one, like topping twelve tests in a row (which is affected by how the others do), I'm pretty sure that's possible given enough practice.

For Surveyors Heyawake, okay, "excessively complicated rules". I might have fared better with only the inner clues (Heyawake + an extra rule borrowed from Minesweeper).

I don't agree with Battleships Yajilin being complicated though. It's a rather obvious crossover between Battleships and Yajilin, and if you at least know both genres, this genre isn't tricky. I think it's more of being unfamiliar to the genre, as it's not a common variation.

Edited by chaotic_iak 2013-05-21 8:52 PM

This test was timed pretty well. The target is to try to ensure that the top 3-4 finish the test, and this is the standard target in WPC and National Championships too as far as I know. So, on that front, I agree with the author.

About practice = finishing, I disagree. While practice makes you better, I don't think its that easy/common for someone to practice and get to the level of finishing tests. For one thing, you need a lot of things to go right. I mean, deu and Melon both are talented enough to finish the set in 90 odd minutes ideally, but it isn't ideal for them either. Also, everyone has their limitations. There are solvers who I see active on every single place possible online for solving puzzles, and still struggle to finish tests/improve beyond a certain level. I'd suggest, rather than taking that line of argument and trying to guarantee practice = substantial improvement, its important to just note that not everyone needs to compete for the top 2-3 places, and not everyone needs to target finishing the test, the main objective for majority of the solvers should be to have a fun 2 hours + of solving. If there is potential for improvement, it'll come on its own.

Also, I don't agree about Yajilin-Battleships being a problem. I get the dot separation argument, I'm referring more to the twisted ships. Twisted ships/twisted shapes and dimensions have been used in many tests and in WPCs too. I see that as a nice surprise thats a part of puzzling.

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
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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 few pages / too small grids

Excellent puzzles. Thanks for really nice test, Ivan.

Branko

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
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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

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
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
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
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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

Thanks for everyone participating, and I hope you enjoyed the puzzles. The following post is long. I know.

Participation
There were 137 participants, 132 of them officially participating. Among these 132 official participants, 107 (81.06%) submitted something, and 104 of them (97.20%) got a non-zero score. Among the 5 unofficial participants, one participant submitted something, which also ranked 40th if said person participated officially.

Top Scorers
Congratulations to deu for perfecting the test, with 18 correct answers and no incorrect answers. deu also completed the test in the fastest amount of time, with 13 minutes remaining, topping the scoreboard.

Next, congratulations to MellowMelon (2nd), xevs (3rd), and EKBM (4th) for completing all puzzles. It might worth mentioning that MellowMelon lost 14 points due to penalty but made it up by the 4 minutes margin over xevs (which lost only 7 points by penalty).

It might also worth mentioning that except for motris which is not participating, all Top 10 of the current ratings standing are in Top 12 of the test. Congratulations for rob (7th), daisuke_t (10th), and Valezius (11th) for beating some of the Top 10 rated people.

Puzzles
All nine Top puzzles were attempted more times than the Bottom puzzles, with Semi-Liar Masyu (Top) topping at 117 attempts and Skyscrapers Kropki (Bottom) as the least-attempted puzzle with only 22 attempts. Similarly, all nine Top puzzles had more correct submissions than the Bottom puzzles; the most correct answers was again held by Semi-Liar Masyu (Top) with 90 correct answers and the least correct answers was again held by Skyscrapers Kropki (Bottom) with 19 correct answers. However, the percentage of correct answers didn't have this property: Surveyors Heyawake (Bottom) had 96.66% correct answers (29 of 30), the highest, and Domino Nurikabe (Bottom) had only 60.00% correct answers (27 of 45), the lowest.

The most favorited puzzles were precisely what I expected, although not in the exact order. Domino Nurikabe (Bottom) was rated 8.72 as the highest, Liar Slitherlink (Bottom) with 8.32 followed, Cipher Fillomino (Bottom) with 8.09 was next, and Battleships Yajilin (Top) with 8.07 came fourth. The other puzzles garnered less than 8/10 rating. (My expected order was Liar Slitherlink (Bottom), Battleships Yajilin (Top), Cipher Fillomino (Bottom), and Domino Nurikabe (Bottom).)

The least favorited puzzles were Smullyanic Dynasty (Top) with 6.13, Skyscrapers Kropki (Bottom) with 6.50, Liar Slitherlink (Top) with 6.58, and Smullyanic Dynasty (Bottom) with 6.92. The rest had a larger than 7/10 rating. Apparently the participants in this test didn't like Smullyanic Dynasty :P

Feedback
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were? 52.1% answered "Fairly balanced". Indeed, according to Dr. Sudoku, I didn't include enough puzzles from Number Placement (Skyscrapers Kropki), Object Placement (Battleships Yajilin), and Region Division (Cipher Fillomino), putting too many puzzles on the other two genres: Shading (Smullyanic Dynasty, Elimination Tapa, Surveyors Heyawake, Domino Nurikabe) and Loop (Liar Slitherlink, Semi-Liar Masyu, Battleships Yajilin).

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles? 65.1% answered "Just right". However, there are still some people (11.5%) that answered "Too many hard puzzles". While I was originally aiming for an easy test, I apparently was incapable of producing easy puzzles on demand; I just began making the puzzles without too much attention to difficulty, and eventually they came out. Apparently they were still too hard. Even the Top puzzles, which were supposed to be easy, had 40-pointers (and the Bottom puzzles also had 40-pointers) and I believe Cipher Fillomino (Top) should have 50 points. A note to make the puzzles easier. And to ensure Bottom puzzles are indeed harder.

What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? 61.0% answered "Very nice", and 36.1% answered "Fairly nice". I don't have any comment for this.

What was your opinion about the answer key extraction? 73.2% answered "Perfect answer keys", but 20.3% answered "Mostly perfect answer keys" and 6.5% answered "Answer keys could have been better". I do agree with this. As it's Instant Grading-enabled, Deb suggested that the answer keys should be of fixed length (or something checkable), so that added or missed one number is detectable. But Deb told that it's okay, so... I also realize that there were many typos and several claims about this. I do realize that this test is counting-intensive (in particular Cipher Fillomino puzzles and Domino Nurikabe (Bottom), but most of the answer key methods also require counting to some extent).

How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test? 75.9% answered "Just right", but there is 21.0% that answered "A bit too many puzzles" and 3.1% that answered "Way too many puzzles". I do agree with this to some extent. The point value for a puzzle is approximately 8-10 times the number of minutes of the second best test solver (out of 3) time, although many were adjusted downwards. So in total, I think the test requires approximately 120 minutes to finish, if you're at least experienced with each genre. Precisely the time given, so "too many puzzles" is certainly a valid claim.

Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did their point values reflect the difficulty/time spent? 72.4% answered "Most puzzles were worth the right amount". Well, this is the above discussion. Many puzzles have their values adjusted downwards to keep the 90-total for Top and 170-total for Bottom.

What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing? 88.4% answered "Just right", but I think the 8.7% that answered "Too few pages / Too small grids" had a valid reason. A 28px cell is too small for writing numbers in, especially when you're doing it quick. I never printed the pages (because I mostly solve on computer, with MS Paint, anyway), so I didn't realize this. Might be my fault.

What was your overall opinion of the test? 67.9% answered "3 stars". Thanks for the positive feedback of my first ever authored test.

Finally
If you really read through them all, congratulations. :P

Anyway. Domino Nurikabe (Bottom) is a rather tricky puzzle, with the 43-island. Even MellowMelon hasn't figured out the uniqueness proof. Here is a detailed solution of it.

Similarly, Liar Slitherlink (Bottom) is the highest-valued puzzle, which also proves to be difficult (second least correct answers). Here is a detailed solution of it.

The remaining 16 solutions will be made on demand, although I do plan on releasing the solutions of Cipher Fillomino (Bottom) and Battleships Yajilin (Top) soon.

And lastly, I do plan to author another test ;)

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
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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

My experience during the test was quite bad, but that was more down to me making stupid goofs in every single puzzle. But, I liked what I solved, during and after the test. My favorites have to be the 2 Fillominos. However, I didn't like the part where I had to count to 22/27/14 to get the keys right. I guess without Instant grading it'd be even more annoying, to get a mistake for counting errors. From the solving perspective big numbers forced in a Cipher Fillomino are great fun, but I'm just unsure on whether its ideal in an online contest scenario. The Surveyors Heyawake didn't cause me much trouble, I just thought I'd mention that since I seem to be alone on that feeling. I agree it had lengthy rules, but I guess I'm just good at lengthy rules when its all combinations of other puzzle types.

All in all, a fun test. Thanks Ivan!