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

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

I agree ideally Hitori and Mastermind makes up more in the newspaper quotient, but I think accessibility beyond newspapers can be defined with two points -
1. Easy to understand rules.
2. Types with many examples available if one is willing to search.
Even assuming there were no dedicated practice sets, Nurikabe, Tapa, Tents, Battleships, Star Battle, Easy as ABC, Hidden Words fall under point 2. Corridors, MCQs, fall under 1. Sudoku, Kakuro, Slitherlink are newspaper puzzles. I'm only leaving Black and White Loop away from category 1, because there's a few tricks implied by the rules that aren't obvious.

So accessibility-wise, the "classic" half of IPC 2013 was very much accessible, at least in my opinion. I also don't think we should stray away from the Classic + Variant formula, because that is in fact suited for beginners, as they mainly need to look at 13 sets of rule-sets with a few tweaks (overwhelming in itself, when the newspaper puzzles can only cover up to 5 distinct types at most), instead of 26 different rule-sets. It is definitely more accessible than the USPC/UKPC I think, at least for an Indian. Puzzle backgrounds may differ and the USPC/UKPC may be more accessible to participants of their respective countries.

I'll say again that, more than accessibility the main problem is the fact that the classic puzzles themselves had twists and were a step above what newcomers were prepared for. The Sudoku was a notch higher than newspaper difficulty, the Kakuro had a few clueless cells, the Hidden words didn't have words, the Easy As ABC was huge, the Slitherlink was a complete twist. These being the first puzzles that any Indian newcomer would attempt (this much I'm pretty certain of), and having a bit more than usual would be the main turn-off.

The problem with Atril (the Evince fork for MATE) persists with the IB as well. However, the problem seems to be localised to specific pages.
IB: 6, 8, 11, 12, 13
PB: 6, 10, 11, 13
I thought I had located the culprit in the form of the labeled row- and column- pointing arrows used for keys. Alas, after looking at the IB, this seems to hold very roughly, so something else must be going on.

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?	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?	May be

Sudoku : The difficulty of the sudoku was higher than newspapers, but should not players be tested little more than what they solve everyday? And this was a sudoku, that still didn't need anything other than hiddens/singles. Although it had fewer clues compared to newspaper ones, it still had a wide solving path.
Kakuro : I didn't anticipate the problem that beginners might face. Otherwise I might have asked Serkan to add all the clues.
Hidden Words : Not sure if I agree here. A search is a search, whether letters or symbols. Agreed that, with letters it is easy, but the solving methods are pretty much same.
Slitherlink : Didn't we already have a classic Slitherlink in page 2?
Easy As ABC : It was huge, but it was easy. But yes, someone looking at this first time, they may not want to attempt it.

For a newcomer, the Sudoku having fewer givens is in itself intimidating. So is a Hidden Words having symbols. Note that a newcomer is someone who has probably never solved a word search with symbols, but has maybe solved a few word searches with letters. Slitherlink, I hope you're joking with that :P Easy As ABC as well, like Sudoku, intimidates with appearance itself.

The main point I'm trying to make here is that, the IB "features" (whether intentional or not) these puzzles as the ones that are familiar or easy to think about. A newcomer will go in thinking what they know from the newspapers is good enough to get some points, and then get intimidated at the starting steps itself. Thats never good. Make the common types really easy (easy by the definition of a newcomer and not an experienced puzzler), so that they can actually translate what they already know into some amount of points, instead of having to advance their thinking from the start itself.

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

With no more players participating at this time, IPC is over.

Official Results : http://logicmastersindia.com/2013/IPC/score.asp
Complete Results : http://logicmastersindia.com/2013/IPC/score.asp?mode=complete

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

My opinion applies to the Turkish GP as well.
If we all cater newcomers then there's no room for "surprise" innovations.
But we must also consider what is fair game and what is too much of a stretch.

The Turkish GP's only flaw I find is with the rotation of the photo in Spy Sudoku.
A player shouldn't be asking "hmm.. maybe this flips" during the competition.
I don't see how changing fonts on the first 3 puzzles is an enough excuse for one to complain about the entire test.

With this year's IPC, the puzzles are fantastic. The symbol word search, unclued Kakuro, few-clues sudoku shouldn't be a problem as the
rules aren't that much deviated. Heck, you might as well criticize the 16-submarine battleships too then.
But when the rules do bend by far: for example having Strange as ABC, the instructions of Easy as ABC - it didn't happen, but it
illustrates what isn't fair.

I thought it was good to think on your feet, since it is required at the WPC.
Remind yourself that this test's goal is to select the best Indian team members, not making newcomers too comfortable.

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

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

The sudoku I think is actually ok, and the kakuro wasn't too bad neither. The Nurikabe on the other hand, especially for someone who is used to the Nikoli style, was awfully hard for 20 points. The slitherlink I think is ok in a twisted sort of way, since the point value and the geometry made it clear enough that I should skip. (and I would imagine it to do the same for new solvers as well) Coming from someone of my skill level at least, there's nothing more frustrating than diving into a problem that you think you can solve due to type/point value, but it turns out that you can't, or that it takes a large amount of time.

Edited by achan1058 2013-07-09 10:16 PM

Thanks Rakesh, Prasanna and others for bringing up the point that the set was not really best for beginners. It took me a lot of time to understand why you are saying that, and now I realize that I was defining beginners differently. A beginner in my opinion is someone who has strong sense of logical reasoning with a desire to solve challenging problems (not necessarily the puzzles at IPC). I thought those are the kind of players who can take us forward in world puzzle map. That is the main reason for having puzzles with simpler instructions so that they don't feel uncomfortable with the rule itself. But here we are discussing about beginners who have exposure to puzzles, have solved newspaper puzzles (and might shy away if they see a 20-clue sudoku).

However, since the general feeling that it was tough for beginners - by either of the definitions, we will need to include easier puzzles in future IPCs.

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

Thanks to all authors for such wonderful puzzles, they were really more tricky rather than hard.
It was sad that i missed again this time. It took me two days to consume my result. But anyways i was happy thinking there would be some year made for me :). Well regarding puzzle types,

A1 - I felt this was good for beginners. Except that odd man out created confusion to some of them and then flaw in maze as pointed out by rakesh.
A2- Slitherlink was fine with logic that we either need to eliminate options or solve and match it. But for sudoku i thought borders of regions must have been present because its just mechanical to redraw it on each grid and nothing logical think about it. Though few of them can imagine the border and eliminate the options. So at the same time giving borders would reduce mechanical work and if required points could have been reduced and allotted to some other type.
b1, b2 - They were little tricky and easy but for beginners seeing the huge size grids must have surely created problem.
c1,c2 - i personally don't like battleships. c1 was nice and c2 i haven't solved yet.
D - Both star battles were nice and i guess practice puzzles had similar types so most of people must have attempted this.
Sudoku - i felt it was little difficult for beginners to attempt with fewer clues.
e2 - it was easy and worth for 30 points.
G1 - I felt it could have been little easier one. As we already had g2 to think of.
K - They were really my favorites. But was not able to solve during tests. They were real real tricky in terms of logic.
M1 - Well i want highlight upon this one. I was surprised looking at this kind of Slitherlink. I feel the lines could have been much darker. It was so light in my print outs that once used erasor the lines get erased and then i had to take print outs again and again. So if those lines would have been darker then it would have been helpful.

My favourites were - crosslink, BWG loop, tapa difference. Kakuro + pento kakuro were also awesome (solved it later)
I felt sudoku and its variant could have been avoided as we already have ISC for that and instead two other puzzles could have been kept.

Overall i really enjoyed the puzzles and quality were good. I felt it could have been balanced such that more easy puzzles and few with much difficulty so that for beginner it could have been more enjoyable and also for top solvers to compete in their zone. I also think that like beginners sudoku we can have some beginners puzzle tests which will attract beginners and get hands on few puzzle types Or like we have CTC going for month we can have different puzzle types but instead of month at least a week. I know organizing all this is difficult but i am ready to help in any way i could do it :)

Edited by swaroop2011 2013-07-10 12:41 PM

Ah, it seems I'd have done a much better job of guessing the authors this year compared to last year. My only mistakes would've been giving Nikola Missing Letters, Zoltan Easy As ABC, and Deb the classic Tents. Ah well.

It good that we've been discussing a lot of points for general improvement, but there are certain existent factors that need to be valued. This list shows the amount of time and effort it must've taken to organize this championship, especially when I note that there are some variants that aren't by the same author who wrote the classics. A big thanks to all the authors and test solvers for putting it all together. Also, I thank Deb for co-ordinating all of this and for authoring A1, A2, D1, D2, E1, E2, H1 himself, unless these puzzles appeared out of nowhere

Where do we get to see the answers to the IPC 13

Probably nowhere. If you want to ask about a puzzle's solution, just ask here and someone will definitely help you.