I hadn't realized the way to avoid the contradiction that I found during the test on the snapshot! So it's good that finally I learn this idea. I was too fixed in my thinking. That was a very clever twist. I agree with the commenter who suggested that having one twist like that in a test is a nice spice, but having many such twists may just overload us, especially if we're expecting zero twists going in.

I enjoyed the test, though I felt it was overall too hard/long. For me it felt unsatisfying to only solve 7 of 21 puzzles during the test, even if I did spend my time trying to solve the higher point value ones for the most part. I certainly look forward to spending some time on the remaining puzzles later! There is a lot of beauty to be found in these puzzles; none of them are boring, that's for sure!

I enjoyed the puzzles tho' for many of the reasons mentioned above (as well as being sick), I got bogged down and did not submit any answers.
I did not figure out the snapshot puzzle trick (would not have considered that within the description) and have wasted way too much time on it in interim! Glad to learn what I did wrong. Will have to look again. Tho' if rotation is allowed, then that opens up so many more possibilities that I probably wouldn't even have attempted it during the test.
Did manage to solve most of the others by the end of the day.
Good job. Thanks for the effort

Actually, if I understand it correctly, the 6-9 snapshot is the only one that can be rotated because the numbers still stay valid upon rotation.

Results are now public.

I do not like this snapshot twist at all. It was not mentioned that snapshots can be rotated. I spent much time to verify that something wrong in my logic and lost time. Those hidden tricks should not be allowed on that level of competion.

On another note, it will be nice to have standartized fonts.

Overall, the test was really nice. Thanks to authors and administrators.

Congratulations to Hideaki, Daisuke and Bastien for having the top three positions.
The grand prix format let more solvers participate to online competitions. I am a loyal solver of them and this was my first one as an author. Thanks to Deb and LMI for the organization of the test, and also thanks to all participants of the test.
I would like to express my extra thanks to the nine solvers who solved the snapshot sudoku. I was sure that I will receive some bad comments for that sudoku. Serkan came with the idea of rotating of a snapshot with a single digit at a corner. I applied the idea using two digits, assuming this will make it much obvious. Apparently, it didn’t work as I expected. I hope this twist will not cause any discourage for sudoku solvers.
Salih

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?	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

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?	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?	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?	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)

I have two main complaints. One being that there simply wasn't enough time to dig into these puzzles. I don't mind that they were hard and I quite enjoyed completing them after the contest was over. (Except for Snapshot Sudoku that either has an error in the setup of the puzzle or I just can't figure out how to do it.) My other complaint is that the example puzzles in the instruction booklet were often smaller puzzles than the puzzles presented in the contest. Since a lot of these puzzles were novel to me, I didn't get enough practice with the smaller versions to feel prepared for the full-size puzzles in the contest.

See the earlier posts for discussion on this. :)

Also, Instruction booklets aren't given for the sake of practice but to understand the rules. For practice, if you are unsure of where to go for a particular type, just post on the topic before the test starts, and someone will give you some links.