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