Dear Organizers,
Thanks for a great IPC 2013.

Congrats to a well deserving Team India! Prasanna performed incredibly and raises our expectations for WPC 2013.
No surprises from Amit and Rajesh :)
Surprised to see Rohan's score but at the same time know that he'll come back strongly on the bigger stage.

It was a great test and seemed to be a shade more difficult than last year.
I am yet to try out the complete set.

As for the test:
I particularly liked "Black and White loop", "Star battle" and "Kakuro".
The multiple choice questions were interesting and should attract the beginners.
I feel there should be more puzzles on word search.

cheers,
Harmeet

Good that you touched upon that point. It is certainly more difficult than last year. Probably around 40% if you consider the top international player's time.
However, the set this year (and last year) were designed such that top Indian player should be able to complete just in time. Rohan couldn't complete the set last year, even though he had 8+ minutes for one skyscraper puzzle. But PS completed it this year. So from that point view, in my opinion, the set was fine. Given that the standards of Indian puzzlers will (hopefully) increase every year, I think the standard of puzzles will probably increase in IPC.

Now the question is the goal itself correct? The goal that "Only 1 or 2 top Indian player should be able to complete"? I will probably stick to that, unless there are some other ideas or opinions.

This, as one of the goals, is correct. And, its been close to being achieved last year, and was technically achieved this year as Deb said (lets just ignore my silly A1 goof for now). I think overall, the top 1 or 2 completing a test is ideal in any puzzle test. But a related question is, what are the other goals? I'll add a few more that I think are important -

1. Make parts of the test accessible to everyone, no matter how new they are to the world of puzzles.
Was this achieved?
I personally don't think so. Not other than A1 and A2 anyway. It is the only negative in terms of achieving goals, according to me. This is mainly because, experienced puzzlers tend to have a skewed perspective on exactly what is "easy" (myself included). We have been exposed to so many of these puzzles now that the techniques come naturally to us, whereas someone who's new will only have seen the puzzles that are vastly available on the main newspapers and magazines. A Sudoku in a newspaper, for example, has mainly just singles. So while this test had a Sudoku, which I found easy enough, its still on a heavy medium side by newspaper standards. A Kakuro without clues is never seen in newspapers.

Ways to fix this.
I think the easiest way to fix it is to make these "known" puzzles really easy. The puzzles like Nurikabe, Tapa, Corridors etc. can be made harder and experimented with, but keep the "known" ones like Kakuro, Sudoku, Slitherlink extremely easy. This ensures newcomers have the confidence that what they have seen in newspapers is still enough in itself to get to a certain score in the IPC, and there'll be enough of a confidence level to work on the other types from there.

2. Have a variety that'll challenge all aspects of puzzle solving.
Was this achieved?
Yes.

3. Make sure that the general points distribution, bonus structure, etc. is fair.
Was this achieved?
Yes. This one is always a bit dependent on opinion, and also a knowledge of one's strengths and weaknesses. Comparing points-wise, I took a lot more time on H1 and H2 (probably 15 minutes in total, 2 more if you include the error fixing at the end) than I did on I1 and I2 (probably 2.30 to 3 minutes in total) but I expected that even before the test. Considering my own solving abilities, the points reflected the difficulty well.

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 come to know about Indian Puzzle Championship?	I am a regular visitor at LMI forum.
Did the Instructions Booklet (IB) provide enough information about participating in IPC?	Yes, mostly.
Did you understand the puzzle rules, examples and answer keys from the IB?	I understood all of them.
Did you find enough easy puzzles to solve during the championship?	No, there were really few easy puzzles.
After your experience in IPC, are you going to participate in future championshiops or contests at LMI?	Most likely

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
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Firstly, Congratulations to PS(Dawn of another new era ?) and ofcourse other veterans Amit, Rajesh and Rohan ! Brilliant performances !
Swaroop, stars not right for you again man !
More importantly, Deb and the entire LMI admin team and the authors for creating such an enjoyable tournament !

I'm not a regular puzzle solver, so I attempted IPC with very little practice. I still thought I'd manage about 15 puzzles(Gosh what was I thinking). I could solve only 8. Some timer goofup and hence couldnt really submit my keys.

My take away points this time would be to not leave too many 75-80% solved puzzles and jump over to other puzzles. thinking that you'd come back to solve the finishing bits of the almost-solved puzzles later. Because someone like me who barely reaches the end of the test, can never come back to finish the almost-solved ones. So yeah If I'm close, solve it completely and then move ahead.

Also, personally speaking, I believe some of the common variants could have been simpler. Some newbies would have got terribly shocked looking at the clue-less kakuro or the scary slitherlink. So, maybe, the IBs should be a little closer to the actual puzzles coming in(Leave the surprises for the pros). Otherwise, It just makes you feel really dumb during the test. Not a feel-good experience :)

Also, I totally respect the fact that, IPC has to make sure that only the best qualify from India(C'mon some powerful brains you're gonna be up against at the WPC).
Hence, I'm very sure the entire process is very deeply thought by Deb and his team before implementing it.

Overall, I had a great time and looking forward to more of such well-organized tournaments.

Finally, Team India All the very best for the WPC '13.
A bit filmy, but yeah, Chak De India ;)

This was the first time I faced technical difficulties with the site. The .PDF would absolutely not print from my regular viewer (Atril 1.4.0 under 64-bit Mint Nadia MATE). Enter lots of troubleshooting of working things, until I concluded the problem was between this one file and this particular viewer. Using the horrible .pdf support within Firefox, I finally got something printed; this being Firefox, some grid details were replaced with random characters (mostly damaging Battleships).

Then there was the stuck warning on E2, which kept on complaining about a compliant answer key, and eventually resulted in an odd partial score. In that vein, the multiple choice instructions seemed to ask me to insert X for unanswered questions, then rejected the answer when I did.

After that I could fail all on my own: fill in the very last Kakuro digit wrong, rotate between a few too many worked on puzzles, that sort of thing.

With my foul mood in mind, on the puzzles:
M1 was wonderful. Pretty, and a very clean path to solution scratching both the connectivity and the pattern recognition itches. It was also very easy, and, at 60 points, it felt like Xmas morning.
M2 was a bit of a disappointment. Crosslinks are a fun type I was excited to see another of. The funnest thing about crosslinks is having to keep track of where all segment ends wind up, and having to keep that in mind when deciding if a point is visited by 2 or 4 segments. We got none of that, as it solved almost entirely from patterns.
Variant wordsearches! Yay! No convincing but wrong choices! Um, I'll still like them.
A2: Every now and then, tests want to give us something of the proctor experience. It is never fun.
D2: Star Battle is either brilliant, very fiddly, or I'm just being my usual blind self. My money's on the latter, but I'd like to know.

Sorry to hear about multiple problems.
Do you know if the IB printed well? Did it print at all? The IB and PB are made exactly using the same technology (Microsoft Word + Encapsulated Post Script being used for images). So I will be interested to know that.

The red warning stuck on E2 because you were entering 3rd column, instead of the marked 2nd column. The submission system just checked that the last digit is not 3 and warned.
Most answers for A1 - Multiple choices need to be manually reviewed.
Will post after IPC (i.e. when I get to create the images :-))

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
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

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?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Maybe I am just not familiar with some of the types of the puzzles used, but this felt much harder than the USPC and UKPC.

By the way, why is it that some people have different survey questions?

Edited by achan1058 2013-07-09 8:43 AM

I will let some of the solvers reply to the first part.

There are 2 types feedback questions
type 1) for players who are playing for first time or have played few tests at LMI, but are mostly beginners
type 2) for players who have been playing at LMI for a while OR have secured high points in current or previous contests

Well, I'll wait for the UKPC results, but personally I think, even without the few submission issues I had mid-test, I would've just completed only the 22 puzzles (the other 4 were written by me) within time. USPC, the results themselves show Palmer not being able to finish a test with 21 puzzles, and Hideaki was even further away (and was the top International ranker). Hideaki finished IPC (26 puzzles) 25 minutes before time. So going by that, and a few other general stats I'd say USPC was definitely more difficult. Obviously, personal opinions and preferences can vary though.

How did you come to know about Indian Puzzle Championship?	Word of mouth
Did the Instructions Booklet (IB) provide enough information about participating in IPC?	Yes, mostly.
Did you understand the puzzle rules, examples and answer keys from the IB?	I understood most of them.
Did you find enough easy puzzles to solve during the championship?	Yes, some of them were easy. I would have liked more easy puzzles.
After your experience in IPC, are you going to participate in future championshiops or contests at LMI?	Most likely

Well, seeing that I am not as strong as the top competitors, my standard of judgement is rather different. It felt that there are more approachable puzzles on the other 2 tests compared to the IPC, though that might have to do with my particular puzzle experiences as well. Objectively though, in the percentage of points department, I actually did quite a bit worse on the USPC than the IPC, even though it didn't feel that way.

Edited by achan1058 2013-07-09 10:11 AM

Thanks to all authors for some super puzzles. A few notes:

A1 - As I am among the minority who solve puzzle contests using paint, I am aware that a maze can be easily solved using paint by using 'fill colour'. Hence, in my personal opinion, mazes should never be part of online contests. They can be part of offline contests definitely.

A2 - The multiple choices did not have the original clue cells filled in the solutions and this made it a little more difficult in sudoku as well as slitherlink. I would have preferred all cells to be filled in the sudoku solutions and also the boundaries, and the existing clues to be included in the slitherlink solutions. Or, maybe this was intentionally done to make players uncomfortable.

E2 - I solved the skyscrapers sudoku two times, as I made an error the first time. In the end, this solved fairly elegantly, with the 3s first, then all 6s, followed by all 5s.

G2 - Pentomino Kakuro started so well that I was wondering if it really deserved 65 points. In the end, I solved it three times to ultimately end up with zero points. If this puzzle had gone well, I might have finished at my regular (fourth) position, as I wasted a lot of time and lost a lot of points here.

G1, G2 - I liked the use of the boundary rows/columns in both puzzles.

H1 - This was the first surprise and was a little painful. Letters are anytime preferable to circles.

H2 - The LMI theme was prominently at play here, in the clues as well as the gray part.

M1 - I have not solved this, but this design is visually disturbing again, in my opinion. Maybe good for a leisurely solve but not as a competition puzzle.

I have still not tried F2 (B&W loop variant), J2 (Happy dots), M1 (slitherlink). But the other high pointers which I did not touch during the contest solved fairly smoothly later.

Top 3 enjoyed puzzles (so far): J1, K2, L2

As already voiced multiple times already, beginners hardly had anything (except A1, A2, E1) which they could solve realistically.

So, maybe, a section with mini versions (easier kakuro, loop, abc, sudoku, tents, tapa, word search). Plus some other types which come in newspaper like mastermind, hitori can be introduced. This can form a set of 8-10 starters which seasoners can solve quickly and beginners can solve over the test duration.

(Adding to Deb/Prasanna's points)

Test goal? - I think this should be "To select the best possible team who can represent the country at WPC." and not "Only 1 or 2 top Indian player should be able to complete."

For this, these could be some of the factors to be considered -

1. Coverage

Reach out to a larger community than current reach-out. There is always a chance that there are individuals who are talented but are not even aware of IPC/WPC.

2. Test duration/difficulty

I think this needs to align with the objective we set. So, if we set a target for a Top 25 finish in the WPC, the test duration/difficulty can be designed/finetuned based on a benchmark of the 25th WPC rank holder's performance of last year. It should not matter if 0 or 1 or 10 Indian players are able to finish.

3. Puzzle selection

Ideally an offline contest takes care. But since that is unlikely, prepare a test with
(a) 8-10 starters (newspaper types)
(b) 10-12 main course (WPC regular types)
(c) 4-6 challenging ones (WPC tough rounds/new unknown types)

In brief, I am probably suggesting an IPC similar in structure/flow to USPC/UKPC - to cover a larger spectrum of puzzles and have more accessible puzzles. (instead of having multiple similar puzzles, and very few accessible puzzles)

I was aware that players might try to solve the Maze using "Fill Colour". But the image was created such that Fill Colour won't work. I used 3 different software to test that (mspaint, Paint.Net, PicPick) and Fill Colour simply won't work with the maze image. Did you find it otherwise? If yes, using which software?

Well, it was done intentionally (even putting dots instead of digits). Otherwise, both the puzzles should have been only 5 points each.

This year's IPC seems to be very successful as it has selected 4 names who are arguably the Top four in the country. With the experience and talent in this team, we can expect extremely good results this year.

I obviously did not use this during the test
But I just created an image in ms paint, closed the entry points and filled with colour.

Bad testing on my part. Luckily, it was not a whole lot of points. Thank you for bringing it up.

Edited by debmohanty 2013-07-09 12:38 PM

I solved this maze during printing the PB. It was the first page, so I had it still on the screen and it was pretty easy to solve it just by eyes. However, the idea by Rakesh is very smart although it is slower than honest solving.

Edited by greenhorn 2013-07-09 1:35 PM

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
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

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?	Fairly Nice
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

As others have said, too few easy and standard puzzles. Online National Championships and WPC qualifications are the competitions that are most likely to attract new/nonregular solvers, and they should not be frustrated.

Also I did not prepare, and so I stumbeled across some unusually wordings in the puzzle booklet during solving.

For example in Easy as ABC, it is not said, that each letter has to be used in each row/column. Actually, the wording is different from the instruction booklet, which is a no-go for me.

And in Kakuro it is only stated, that digits can not repeat in words with a clue. Experienced solvers might see such wording as a "hint" for a twist in the puzzle, which could cost much time.

Edited by Realshaggy 2013-07-09 2:34 PM

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?	Fairly Nice
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right