I have a question concerning the puzzle N°19 Psycho Killer:

Will the competition puzzle be a 9*9 classic (with 3*3 boxes) sudoku? The boxes are not shown in the example, and as it's a 6*6 sudoku, it's ambiguous: boxes can be 2*3 or 3*2. Is it part of solving to determine the boxes?

Fred

Edit: in fact boxes are wrong in the solution of the example (some digits are repeated): is it supposed to be an irregular sudoku or a latin square???

Edited by Fred76 2013-06-09 11:17 PM

The instruction is correct. But the example is not approriate for this instruction. You can find an appropriate example in this link: http://www.logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Raetsel/zeigen.php?id=000...

Thanks

Ah right, I just saw A-F to understand the added rule and didn't check the Sudoku bit.

Here are some of the practice puzzles for this contest. These are the puzzles I created during OAPC Contest long back.

Tripod Sudoku
http://www.funwithpuzzles.com/search/label/Tripod%20Sudoku?max-resu...
Psycho Killer
http://www.funwithpuzzles.com/search/label/Psycho%20Killer?max-resu...
Snail Sudoku
http://www.funwithpuzzles.com/2010/05/snail-sudoku.html

For puzzle 5 - One Digit Unique Solution

From instructions: ...place a digit into the grey CELLS...

So there will be more grey cells in the grid? Or just one cell?

Only one gray cell will be

For puzzle 6, logidoku, constraint #2 is ambiguous. Please clarify which is intended
- neither A nor E is odd
- the sum of A + E is not odd

It would also have been less confusing if the definitions underneath the sample didn't include the digits 7,8, 9!

Thanks

Constraint 2 in the example states that neither A nor E is odd.

The definitions include digits 1 to 9, because the competition puzzle will be 1 to 9.

Will you publish the point distribution for the puzzles beforehand?

The points distribution will not be published before the contest. It will be only available in the competition pdf.
Related note : LMI's submission page will not display points for the puzzles.

Thanks for the info.

Link to score page : http://logicmastersindia.com/2013/06S/score.asp

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Very skewed
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
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?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little
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
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 many pages / too large grids

We have another event for that - The Puzzle World Championship...

:)

Can you please specify the Sudoku names, which you think is more of a puzzle than a Sudoku?

Logidoku, Tripod, Searchdoku, Snapshot sudoku, Psycho killer, Irregular sudoku bands, Sudoku blocks. In all of them you first had to solve another puzzle, and then solve sudoku.
Don't get me wrong - these puzzles were great, but just no very suitable in here. We have like 500 solvers in here, but about 30 are able to solve them. But that's just my opinion, which might also be wrong.

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
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?	Too few pages / too small grids

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	A bit skewed
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?	Below Average
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

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	A bit skewed
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
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

Very nice test.

Only little minus point: I dont like it, if the difficulty is raised via unusual/inconvinient presentation of puzzles (as in the classic sudokus).


Edit: Just wanted to add something regarding Tiits comment. I think he is right up to a point. Many types of puzzles were very innovative and unusual variants, some of them involving more general puzzle solving skill than usually needed in the other tests. Tiit might be right, that this are only solvable by about 30-50 people (during the contest). But the other 450 solvers (and even most of the 30-50) usually have the freedom of choice, which puzzles they do, because they cant solve all of them anyway. (There might be exceptations.) I'm totally fine with the mix and enjoyed the fresh variants.

Edited by Realshaggy 2013-06-22 7:48 PM

Testing
1
2
3

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Very skewed
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?	Very nice
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?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	I have a different complaint

Clearly the toughest of the Grand prix rounds so far.I had a disappointing start with over 25 mins wasted in the 36 point classic.In addition to the strong puzzling touch that most of the sudokus had there is something else that i would like to direct attention to.
First the font of the classics kept changing and i had a hard time getting used to it.The first Classic had a typical Italian touch to it and the second had a more conventional look which was repeated in most other sudokus.The third Classic was quite a shocker.It was appalling to say the least.I still cant think of a good reason as to why the given numbers in that were printed as big as the cells themselves.Believe me .It found it very hard to adjust to it.Then the last one was more than twice in size than the previous.Now i have seen solvers been taken by surprise by the puzzles but for the first time i was taken by surprise by the grid sizes of the puzzles!. I am not sure if that was intented or not , dis-settling the solvers first and trying to see how confident and strongly they solve the rest.But i felt a more uniform font and grid size would have more appealing and better.
Second and the most important is the puzzle link that most of the sudokus had.While i m not against such a concept,i dont think it should be in such a way that it takes the identity of the sudoku .By identity i mean the free flowing logic associated with each sudoku which does not require anything else but pure sudoku solving skills(like how fast u spot numbers,how fast you use the variant logic in addition to the normal classic rules etc.)It was as though there was a barrier to start a sudoku and the barrier is in the form of a puzzle.Solve the puzzle and start the sudoku.If not forget about getting points.Sudoku Bands ,Psycho killer ,Logidoku,Tripod sudoku,Snap shot(in which i got broken twice) etc..were created in the above mentioned way and were way above my reach.
I was moving from sudoku to sudoku (or should i say puzzle to puzzle) looking for sudokus that was completely devoid of the puzzling touch and there were not many that i could find and solve.This test is bound to favour solvers who have a strong puzzle solving skill since the big pointer ones are designed that way.If i m not very wrong,i dont see anyone beating Hideaki 's score.A test tailor made for someone like him.I wont be surprised if he finishes this test at the top .
To conclude ,i would say that this is a nice test which had good quality Grids inspite of the hiccups.Thnks to the authors for giving a nice testBut certainly this is NOT a 2 hr test.Like in the just concluded US Round ,the test should have been for 2 hrs 30 mins.But then again it looks like the test solvers must have completed the set in just under 2 and hence the case.