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
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
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

You know, when I see "Prasanna only solved 12?", I immediately got to the "okay these puzzles are too hard" stance. Especially after seeing "Kota solved 17, uvo solved 14". I'm relieved after deu proved me wrong with 13 minutes to spare. :P

Heh, ya, I realize that the counting is really bad. I cannot help it though; I feel like almost every time I make Cipher Fillomino, I always have large polyominoes. The one that doesn't has been published before test. I suppose I should have published the Skymin one. (Also, yes, the Skymin theme is absolutely intentional.) However, I do want to toy with the possibility of large polyominoes actually don't come together (ABCD one), and it apparently also gives the chance for an implied number (2 in the middle).

Also, I suppose I should have told that I accept using letters as alternate answers, but then people complain about not knowing which letter should be used for the hidden 2 above. Luckily nobody used letters. Or at least seems so.

Thanks!

---

Really? If you know some of the types before, you like to browse logic puzzles. As I have mentioned before, only two can be claimed to appear a lot. If you state about the original genres (not the variations) though, I tried to pick well-known genres.

SM2? Wow, pretty unexpected.

Heh, probably not the same kind as in Deception 2, but most likely I'll use variations again. (I like variations; they give an equalizing factor to everyone as they are not common. :P )

Thanks!

---

CF2 is indeed difficult, using a rare theme (don't think I ever saw it before) where there are two large numbers and one of them is even split into three. (Raise your hand if you guessed that the A was the largest polyomino before you started solving.)

You should have done the other three Top puzzles (120 points). I'm not sure whether you'll do better (as in you can solve them faster than you can solve CF2), but why not.

Thanks!

Thank you for a nice contest, although I stopped solving after an hour, after I broke too many puzzles, and decided I would feel better if I stop rather than getting more frustrated in the next hour. Not my day. I solved some of the puzzles after the contest, all are nice.

I just wanted to comment on your "variations vs. standards" statement. I think there are different kinds of variations. Some are minor variations with an additional rule that can be used here or there (think of Diagonal Sudoku as an example). And some are variations where most of the solving involves the new rules (with your Masyus beeing a good example). For the later one, I dont see an "equalizing factor", I rather think the performance depends on the time for preparation you do in the week before. And since there are almost no examples, most of this preparation will be constructing.

And for "just do enough puzzles, then you can beat the top". Just forget it. If you can ever do it, you will know it after some months, or you will most likely never do it. I'm solving puzzles for some years now, some weeks with no puzzles, some with 40 hours+. I feel I'm still getting better slowly but constantly every year. But I also know, I will never ever be in Top10. Look where you are standing, and if you want to "compete" somehow, choose your goals for the next year accordingly to that. There are more than enough ratings and measurements to track progress. For example I'm doing sudokus at sudokucup.com. If I can beat the 50%-quantil on a single puzzle, I'm happy. If I can do that for all puzzles of a day, I'm very happy. Maybe it will be 40% in one or two years, assuming the player base stays the same. I never saw something below 25%, and I'm fine with that. I know there are some people that will beat me 98 times out of 100 puzzles, and for the other 2 they are doing a mistake. But does it matter? Or long sentence short, as a member of our german puzzle community said once: "There are worlds without bridges to them."

Edited by Realshaggy 2013-05-22 5:45 PM

Referring to the part about accepting letters, this is obviously in hindsight, but I think worth pointing out that maybe a note can just be added that says "In case of implied numbers, enter a different letter (thats not already been used) for each number that is implied". Could be worded better, but the point is, I don't think that gives away much, I mean I personally won't go away from the solve intended looking for implied polyominos just because the key says how to deal with them, just like I don't go looking for 10 shaded cells in a row if it says "in case of two digit number, enter only the units digit".

We couldn't have done this because of (limitations in) Instant Grading system. The system requires that all valid answers be listed before the test starts. (Ah, well, we could have listed all the 22 valid answers - only involving letters, ignoring case sensitivity - but that is still painful to handle).

So, although, ABAA22BDDA, ABAAEEBDDA and ABAAXXBDDA were listed as valid answers, we never made it public that letters will be accepted.

Ah yes, forgot momentarily about the Instant Grading restrictions. Listing 22 answers is definitely not a solution since there could be a puzzle with multiple implied numbers sometime in the future, increasing the possibilities. I suppose the format for accepting ABAA22BDDA can be made public though? The thing I see against it is its confusing having both letters and numerals, but might be preferable for some over counting, and the implied part is fixed.

Very well documented. Thank you for your effort and for sharing.

Edited by debmohanty 2013-05-23 5:33 AM

Ah, I missed some of those chain reactions on the right of the Domino Nurikabe... followed your Liar Slitherlink path almost exactly though.

On effort: there's not enough of the right kind of data to say anything certain about this, but here's two quick bits from my own opinions:
1. There's little to gain and a lot to lose by believing yourself incapable of reaching a certain level.
2. "If you do lots of puzzles, you get better" is wrong wrong wrong. After solving a puzzle, you must stop and think hard about all the things that you were slow on or that you missed entirely. Figure out how to not screw up the same ways again. I never made any nontrivial improvements without doing this.

Edited by MellowMelon 2013-05-23 9:19 AM

First of all, let me say the contest puzzles are, without exception, cool. Like, seriously cool. There is a surprising, and most welcome, rarity of workmanlike steps. Also, lots of big picture thinking. Congratulations.

Far as format goes: Instant grading is always nice; personally, it helped me eventually reread keying instructions I had radically misunderstood. Scoring was, in a word, unfun. Grouping bonuses are only useful in railroading a solver's path through the test, which can in no way make a contest more enjoyable. Page formating was a mixed bag. I liked the instruction column, but some grids felt cramped. I was particularly annoyed with Skyscrapers. Timing, well, let's just say this was no exception to my usual pattern of losing quite a few points by a few seconds. In this case, 70pts for 10 seconds.

'"If you do lots of puzzles, you get better" is wrong wrong wrong.' is kinda wrong in my experience. When you are first starting puzzles, disentangling things into digestible bits is a tall order. And later on, practice does make perfect. Locating the things I was looking for became a whole lot faster and more efficient with experience. Which is not to say that stop and think after the solve is not excellent advice: I have puzzle books filled with side notes on whatever caught my eye in that puzzle. I find the process of putting stuff to paper commits them to memory. And much longer notes on puzzles where I had to brute-force things the first time around. I'll admit that staring at a completed puzzle may not be everyone's idea of fun though. Another way of marked improvement is simply reading or seeing solutions and chat about particular puzzles, which occasionally happens across the many puzzle blogs around. Some times you'll pick up notation, and sometimes logical attack strategies you hadn't yet formulated. Again, to some this will feel like cheating.

Setting reasonable personal targets in competition settings may help with motivation, provided you keep them tight as you improve. For example, I currently tend to consider things under 33% of top score a failure, and gun for 40%. This wasn't always so, and the goalposts will be moved if keep scoring with ease. But, hey, "There are worlds without bridges to them." wins on style alone.

About group bonuses, I do think that they aren't that fitting in this test. But well, everything has been settled before I realized this, so, yeah. It's mostly to allow solvers to plan how they do the puzzles in order to maximize the bonuses.

I should have made Skyscrapers' grid larger. I'm too much used to binary and loop puzzles that I aim to make smaller grids (so that more can fit on the same page; it's wasteful if the PB has 18 pages IMO).

Thanks!

Thanks for the interesting walk through's for Nurikabe and Slitherlink. Learned some interesting new things!

I am still struggling with the second kropki skyscraper. Can someone write a few lines about the critical steps for this puzzle as well?

Thanks in advance!

It's somewhat trial and error at rows 2 and 6, or at least that's the best path I've found so far. I'll provide a walkthrough ASAP.

Heh, apparently not as terrible as I thought. Skyscrapers Kropki (Bottom)

Edited by chaotic_iak 2013-06-03 9:09 PM

Thanks a lot for this walkthrough. Much less T&E than I expected, so I learned a few interesting elimination steps again!