Well, that was in 2003. We are in 2013. Unfortunately ToI leadership - at least the ones who we have been communicating with for TSC - don't see much in puzzles. In any case, we can ask (and have asked earlier unsuccessfully) to print about IPC in ToI. However, since ToI is not involved in IPC, it is no harm trying to print in other news paper. If anyone has contacts with other news papers, they should try. (I know that Prasanna is getting something printed in Life365).

Also in 2005, some FM channels had advertised about IPC - that is how I came to know about it. Is there anyone who can try to get it advertised in a radio channel?

One more thing we can do (without much effort and with zero cost) is we can get it posted in different software companies' bulletin boards. I assume most big companies have their internal bulletin boards, and a post about IPC will be mostly welcome there... Any takers for that?

PS: The reason I created this thread for a bigger audience is that we expect that some more puzzlers can take responsibility and do some stuff. If all the suggestions we get are going to be like "this is how Amit/Deb should be doing it", the thread won't solve its purpose.

Edited by debmohanty 2013-06-21 10:54 AM

Other places we can post

-- facebook (different groups in facebook)
-- alumni groups
-- online forums (like LMI)

I'll link to it on all the main Facebook groups (puzzle related) and a few of my "friend" groups (including college/school/football-fan groups).

A few more routes we're going through, just in case people get ideas from it -

As Deb said, I wrote something to get published in life365 which is Pune based. Ravi is planning to post the same article/announcement in his office, which gave me an idea that I should ask my society folks to paste it on our building's notice board too (little step, but hey, if we all do something like that, that covers about 7-8 buildings/offices).

Additionally, me and Rohan have recently been working with a group called SportzConsult who're planning to host a bunch of offline events across 4 cities, one of which is already done. Anyway, I put a mail through to them too to try and add IPC related information when they're going to corporates and schools to promote their own events.

If anyone else thinks of different ways, do post here, so we can all see if we can apply that in some way as well.

I have done it on my blog, on facebook account, Indiblogger, Twitter so far :)

I have posted in my College Alumni at Facebook. It is a active group containing 4291 members, hope it will increase the participation this time.

Regards,
Ravi

Here is the facebook event page - https://www.facebook.com/events/394388790669950/

All the other countries seem to have done it this year, and "event" seems to work better than a "group" where people become members and then don't do anything. Either way, do join the event and share it around, along with the usual IPC shares.

In addition to sharing the event, invite your friends too if possible. Its fine even if they say no or maybe, or just a fake yes, its still going to show up on walls and news feeds unless they set it otherwise, which means we're maximizing the chance of it spreading.

I just had an idea, and I ran it by Deb and he liked it too. But we need some help for it. Basically, we're thinking of putting together a video. This video will consist a "How To Participate" Tutorial, maybe some IPC history/photos at the end. Once the video is done we can put it up on places like Youtube. The problem here is, we don't have / can't find a good video-making software. So if any of you have one, then we can talk about bringing this plan into action. So, please respond if you do.

Edit : The video should ideally have a real-time explanation of solving the test on the site, thats why we're looking for a bit more than a simple video maker. So by video maker, I mean, ideally, an On-Screen Recorder. ( Example - http://sudokucup.com/node/418 )

Does anyone have WPC 2010 Indian team photo ? If so please share it with me.

Regards,
Ravi

I have posted it on the Infosys bulletin board. It is quite active, lets hope some people get encouraged to participate from there. I am also coaxing some of my friends to participate :)

It is in http://www.worldpuzzle.org/files/17/2011.pdf

This is the best advertisement about IPC I have ever seen - http://www.life365.co/index.php?month=6&day=25&year=2013&pade_id=25...

(Goto page 13)

Well done PS.

Yes, I second that. It is a complete, apt and to-the-point article. Thanks Prasanna.

thanks for visiting the forum

Finally I have posted in my Company bulletin board.
The best part is people have already liked the post and I hope they will participate :)

Regards,
Ravi

Hey everyone,

With very limited tools, some nice effort put in by Ravi with minimal help from me, we've put together a video about navigating the the site for the IPC here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHEk9e7KH2w . Me and Ravi both agree that we can do better, and this shouldn't be the long-term promotion video for the IPC (we'll work on something better later for future contests, once we get better tools). However, this video's purpose is mainly to create awareness in the general youtube/other video watching population, so feel free to like/comment/share on other video sites. Or if you think it IS good enough, feel free to share on other spaces too.

Thanks again to Ravi for all editing and adding of comments, and making what started off as an extremely sloppy video into something coherent.

We see that the number of participants in IPC decreasing from last year. We could not reach out to more players with respect to IPC.

Partly my fault. Being the organizer, I should have promoted it better - it is just unfortunate my Kolkata + Mumbai trips made things a lot more hectic and uncomfortable in terms of net access.

I am hoping with Puzzle Ramayan giving a more beginner-friendly outlook than one contest with 35 puzzles, the participation increases gradually. For now it is sad (at least for me personally) to see the trend of India becoming more and more of a Sudoku Country, but that was bound to happen with ToI association, the WJSC/Sudoku Champs, and the fact that we started with a Sudoku Mahabharat before getting to/thinking of a Puzzle Ramayan, and now the release of Sudoku Mix. Eventually I feel it is going to help reach out by promoting Sudoku more, but in the short term that means Puzzles take more and more of a back seat.

Hi Prasanna. It is not the responsibility of one person. We need to find out ways to attract the Sudoku lovers (100+ in each LMI test) to check out Puzzles.

As you mentioned, Puzzle Ramayana will be a good way to start this. Additionally we can spread about Puzzles during our offline events like Sudoku Champs, college events etc.

The prime thing that I can think of, which prevents people from actively taking part in puzzle related events in LMI and in India in general is the lack of familiarity with puzzles,its solving strategies which consequently explains the lack of interest.I can atleast guarantee that,that is the reason in my case.Obviously, the craze for sudokus is another thing affecting the issue.

Unlike many websites which have online solving interface for sudokus,the number for puzzles is less in comparison.Apparently,it is difficult to create an interface for each kind of puzzle.So, even if one dedicatedly starts hunting for solving puzzles online for different genres,they are bound to hit a roadblock sooner or later.

To incite interest,we need people to be aware of puzzles,the intricacies and strategies for each particular genre.There is no other way that I can think of by which interest can be ensured.

To improve participation,I have a suggestion.Why don't we start a dedicated forum wherein someone posts a puzzle each week and we share the strategies and solving approach associated with that? We may start with familiar and loveable genres like Star Battle,Fillomino ,LITS etc.,and proceed to obscure genres.

The puzzle may be something which someone has difficulty in solving or something which is to be started entirely from scratch.We can continue this for a few months and see if participation is improving by keeping a tab on the same.Of course, this is entirely based on the assumption that there is still a mass of people in LMI to be tapped and who are yet to start considering puzzles seriously.

I would be interested to hear other's thoughts on this and if there is some other better idea we can continue on that stream of thinking too.

Kishore

Edited by kishy72 2015-08-12 7:02 PM

I want to add something in relevance to this. I see this as a mindset issue. It is definitely valid reasoning, and is true for the majority in India, even some of our top solvers, but I will say that it is the opposite of the mindset required to become a top player both in Sudoku Championships as well as Puzzle Championships. For pretty much all the top players I have talked to from USA, Germany, Japan (the big 3 in puzzles) and even the best Sudoku solvers like Tiit, Bastien, Jakub, (who, funnily enough, have all been regulars on the puzzle circuit too) etc. , the competitive streak is obviously there, but way more than that, is the fascination with figuring out new strategies, techniques, etc. Even if I take the examples of me and Rohan, I think when we see a new type, be it a new Sudoku variant or a new puzzle, we are excited with the possibilities and start thinking of those possibilities, whereas many other solvers get intimidated. I remember how we both shared a big sense of disappointment when the WSC 2014 IB didn't have new variants. This kind of mindset also helps us with common variants which have a new twist in the solve path, because we are always actively hoping for something new and keeping our minds open to new possibilities rather than streamlining towards a fixed set of strategies. I will always stress that the best development of a player comes in thinking of techniques/strategies on their own.

There is also the fear of failure. People are afraid that they will get low scores if they attempt puzzles outside their comfort zone. This is a weird issue to have for a hobby - you should start solving for the fun of it and then worry about competition IF you are good enough, whereas the majority worry about competition first before exploring their hobby. When I started on LMI contests I was getting really low scores but that didn't really bother me much, I just solved because I liked to. In 2012 some pressures of competition came in but till then I was just drifting along and competing for the fun of it. It may not have impact with me saying all this, but I will point out that this mindset of lack of or lesser fear of failure, isn't just limited to top solvers. There is a solver who corresponds with me through mail regularly, with doubts on variants, and an interest in learning more. He takes a few weeks at a time to finish Sudoku Contests here, and 1 month or so for ISC. He gets happiness just from solving the entire set, and has been doing so for the last 2 years or so at least. I see the purity of solving for the fun of it, with competition just being a bonus - we need to try to get that mindset across to more solvers. Even solvers with talent would benefit more from that kind of mentality in competitions.

In the end, discussing strategies is definitely a way forward and I feel it is better to do that in a localized setting like the Sudoku meets, so I'd like to focus more on connecting the core solvers from each city and guiding them to hold meets, rather than having a discussion on the forum, because a lot of our solvers are going to be more in tune offline, and those who are enthusiastic enough to ask online (like yourself) will do so even without an official topic for it.

More than anything, I think the issue runs deeper than knowing strategies. There was never anything in the newspapers about Classic Sudoku strategies, yet people figured them out by themselves. The issue is more about awareness and mindset. But those are much more difficult problems to solve and go deeper than Sudokus & Puzzles. I think the book, if we can make it a series, will be a big benefit, because it is the first real effort which isn't from a purely competitive perspective. Eventually if we can get the LMI banner popular we can get some puzzle books out too. It is difficult to get across Sudoku & Puzzles as a hobby using competitions, but the moment you put them on a public website the competitive feeling is inevitable even without it being direct competition. Look at the Daily League. What started out as a co-operative blogging effort became more about competitive timings on Sudoku Cup. GM Puzzles is a web blog, but also describes timings for various competitive levels. Sometimes we can't help ourselves in adding the competitive element to everything. I wanted to put a 'time to beat' in Sudoku Mix too, but I am pretty happy that Deb talked me out of it. We need to build a base of promoting non-competitive activities. The books and the local meets are ways of doing that, along with promotional pre-competition workshops.

I beg to differ here.At the moment,the meets are happening in no more than 2 cities and a majority of the people attending the meets need no further push to start solving puzzles.The catch here is to incite more solvers into being regulars to puzzles too.



Here's the problem.Unless people start solving something or even know something exists,there is no question of anyone being enthusiastic enough to ask it online.During the meets in chennai, some of even our regular sudoku solvers were unaware of Fillominos, a common puzzle genre which has been seen across so many LMI tests. I started posting stuck sudokus in the forum because I was familiar with them,its basic strategies and I was curious to see if there was something further.Not to mention the fact that seeing the top solvers post ridiculously low times was another reason.Puzzles enjoy a low degree of popularity in India mainly because of its unfamiliarity and I think LMI is a place to start addressing that.After all ,all the sudoku and puzzle aficionados gather here.The forum discussion may not be an effective way but still it is a start.



Awareness and mindset.Now,you address the root of the issue.I suggested just one way of making people more aware i.e., by starting an online discussion of strategies and puzzles.This is validated by the fact that the thread ' stuck in this sudoku' has more views than any other.This just proves that people are more curious and interested to learn new things.All that is needed is a bit more thrust.

I would also like to add here that I have nothing against puzzles.To be candid ,I am trying my best to complete the puzzles that were left out in IPC.From the 16 that I completed in the actual test ,I have gone to a 32 with just 3 more to complete.I will be a regular in puzzle Ramayan which as already stated before has more beginner friendly puzzles.I try my best to include new lines of thinking which sometimes becomes exhausting and yield almost nothing .



I completely and totally agree with you here.Without arguing its effectiveness ,don't you think these things require much more investment of time than a simple online forum ?

I would like that to be the case - since as you mention at the end, a simple online forum is lesser investment. However, at the Bangalore TSC round, there was one common question - "I find it uncomfortable to discuss/be online for whatever reason, are there any offline meets?". I think at least 30+ people asked me this while purchasing the book. Now its another thing on whether they will turn up now when we announce the next meet, and I don't know if Varun had a different experience in Chennai, but for me at least, from that experience it is clear that the Indian audience is more likely to turn up the more we spread offline. As for it being in 2 cities, I agree, hence I said I plan to contact some core solvers in each city and encourage them to start their own meets - I am already in the process of a mailing list for Mumbai.

A forum is definitely easy and requires no effort at all. We can do it parallel to the meets. I just meant that in the long run I see more reach coming from the offline meets.