If I understand Tiit's point correctly, it isn't about the variants being new/innovative. Its mainly about the logic used, and I can see his point. A lot of these Sudokus had a non-Sudoku logic extensively used before letting the Sudoku logic come in. Something like Top Heavy, A or B, Sudoku Clocks, are all also innovative but they "merge" well with the Sudoku logic. Unlike this, a Psycho Killer for example (my favourite one from what I solved), requires you to do the "spread the region" logic coupled with arithmetic logic a lot before the Sudoku bits come into play. So, this 7th GP alone, is a bit "Puzzle-heavy".

However, I'll add that, over the 8 GPs, if you only take the percentage of puzzle-heavy ones, the overall percentage is close to being as high as what might appear over the length of a typical WSC. I personally don't mind that, since the point of having 8 different countries author these is to see the overall variety and to allow each country to bring their best to the mix. That coupled with the "Best 6 out of 8" ruling makes this Puzzle-heavy test fine as a part of the 8. Obviously opinions on balance can differ, but most importantly, as Tiit noted, the puzzle quality was superb, and the test was fun.

I skipped the test because of the "classics". Sorry.

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
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

I agree with Tiit's point of view:

After reading the instructions booklet, I thought that it was more a "puzzle test about sudoku" than a sudoku test.

Having 2 or 3 "puzzlish" sudoku is not wrong in a sudoku test (we sometimes met some of these in previous WPF GP tests), but here half of the points of the whole test was about puzzles. I think it's too much !

Also, what is the point of not publishing the point distribution before the test? I hardly see any advantage. And what is the point of playing with different layout on classic sudoku? Your classic sudokus were great, no need to try to hide something or to try to be funnier...

Finally, I have to say that each individual puzzle was nice and well constructed, and I thank you about the global work for this test.

Personnally: an inversion in the tripod sudoku will perhaps coast me a lot


Fred

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?	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?	I have a different complaint

Although puzzles are nice, but I was confused with the difference of font-style in classic sudokus. Especially it was rather hard for me to recognize digits in the grid no.1...

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 many pages / too large 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?	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?	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?	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?	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?	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
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?	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?	Average
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

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
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

I really enjoyed this test esp. solving Tripod and Physo Killer Sudoku.

I spent much time during the test on the snapshot sudoku without finding a solution.
After the end of my test, I tried to find a solution and finally I found one by rotating one of the snapshot. Perphaps I made mistakes but if snapshots could be rotated, it should have been written in the rules.
At this time, only 6 players found the solution of the snapshot sudoku ! I wonder if many other players had the same problem as me on this sudoku.

Sylvain

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?	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

There were bit too many previously unknown puzzles for me. Also, as an moderate solver I really would like to have the points distribution available beforehand in order to try to optimize my competition.

Thank you all the same! In overall, nice competition.

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
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?	Too many pages / too large grids

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?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

The formatting of the classics was a bit confusing.
The Instruction Booklet didn't mention that the constraints in Logidoku will differ in the Puzzle Booklet from the constraints in the Instruction Booklet. That's also my fault that I didn't ask about it beforehand, but I didn't expect to be able to participate in this contest so I didn't deal too much about the IB.
In general I enjoyed the test, the puzzles which I have solved were very nice.

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?	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?	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?	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

I can't believe it! The LMI server is normally super-reliable, but for the last 5 minutes of my allotted time I tried frantically and desperately to submit my last 2 answers... never succeeded to reconnect to the site before the end of my time (sometime around 21:35 French time = 19:35 GMT Sunday -- did anyone else experience an outage around that time? if not perhaps the problem was on my end, though other websites were loading fine). I lost 28 points (clock and odd lab) in the process. Grrr..... Oh well, at least I didn't wait until the last minute to submit all my answers, otherwise I'd have ended up with a beautiful zero...

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?	Just right

@auroux, please check your PM.

Hi,

when I wanted to submit my answers suddenly the website was not reachable. After I tried to refresh it, I could not see anything anymore. Since my home network worked well, I went to logic masters Germany and submitted my answers to Yureklis by personal message (Serkan Yürekli). Since I had only my roughly timed music, I am not sure if I was on time. (But maybe you are generous since I also lost some minutes trying to submit answers in the answer form).

Now the site is back working, so I came here to post this message. The timer says it is over (which is correct since also my music is over ).

Greetings, Nola

PS: I take part regularly on your site, and this never happend before. Hopefully, it was the last time, since I like beeing here.

Hi Nola, we have accepted your answers. You can now check the score page at http://logicmastersindia.com/2013/06S/score.asp

Hi again, thank you very much!!! I liked the sudoku variants very much, since there were really new and nice ideas!

It was a little difficult to get an overview on the points, a table would have been nice (in the PB) or puzzles sorted by point value. Normally I am not able to solve all puzzles but choose the ones I like most, which have mean point value. (I have an idea about why it was done, but still would be thankful about the point information - and not distributed on 21 pages.)

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?	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?	Too many pages / too large grids

Yes, I had the same problem where I had solves one with 2 minutes to spare, but it wouldn't allow me to submit in those last few minutes ... it kept saying I had unsubmitted puzzles, but clicking on submit only showed a little clock for the mouse-cursor. This was around 3:30pm Eastern Time.

Oh well, I was doing very badly anyway