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.

Well, all the authors have been kind enough to send me solution images for all puzzles. I need to put them together and publish. But it has not happened yet.

Link to Solutions Booklet

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