Although my performance was below my abilities, I would not have been able to make Niulang and Zhinv meeting. I'll be surprised if more than 2 people can achieve this goal.

P.S.: I like surprises

I agree with you Fred.

I had no problem to identify puzzles in matchmaker (7-8 minutes for all eight), but some of them were really hard to solve and I lost a lot of time on them. Classics were as always from Chinese authors, beautiful & tough.
I enjoyed after the test solving puzzles not solved during the test.
Thanks for great puzzles

Branko

Wow Branko, That was fast.... It took me 20 mins to identify puzzles in Matchmaker :)

Rishi

I had only doubts about diagonal and 3 in a row (E/O) after about 5 minutes, but with small guess i resolved that. I was not well prepared for this competition, I haven't seen points table before the contest and I spent most of the time solving some difficult MatchMakers puzzles and not solving classic relay.
But, anyway, excellent and enjoyable test.

Branko

I said 'I like Match-Makers', I didn't say 'I found them easy' :P

Today is the Qixi festival and according to the story Niulang and Zhinv should meet today. For that to happen, someone needs to complete all 17 sudokus today.

This was a wonderful set and a nice treat to celebrate the Qixi Festival. Thank you to everyone responsible for such a great competition!

For those, who have struggled to match the MatchMakers, Lin Min Fang has prepared a chart on how to match the grids with rules. She will upload soon after the test is over.

I'm sure there will be lot of oohs and aahs after the chart is posted.

Very fun (but difficult) competition. Thanks to the organizers. I at least learned this time that I don't need to type in the whole answers but with so much typing at the end I forgot to hit submit on my nonconsecutive :(. Off to finish the last puzzle.

Urgghhh..this one make my brain damaged...

Wonderful Sudokus... couldn't finish the bunch but enjoyed the difficulty level... Looking forward to more :-)

Thank you for every participant and your feedback, it help us to do better in the future.

We will show you some design idea in Qixi:
First, the classic relay part, please have a look at every puzzle's clues, they're from 20 to 27. but when solve them, you will find they become more and more difficult. In many people's concept, more clues mean much easier. In fact, count of clues and difficulty are not equal. We don't tell you the correct position of every stick digit, but you can determine them by logic. There are many players become puzzle designer, and the process of determine stick digit is also a design, no matter if you had tried design a sudoku, in this test, you had tried. Fulfill the puzzle, then solve it. That's why many players like the classic part. And we also do some thing about this: if you put digits to the wrong place, you will find no solution for the puzzle, or if you haven't decide all marked cells, you will find multiple solution. To the puzzles themselves(i mean when you put all stick digits in right place), when solve P01 from 1 to 9, you can get all 1, then all 2...all 9, maybe you never find solving sudoku is so happy. P02 - P06 are puzzles can be solved only by singles, but we make them difficulty in observing. P07 - P08 need intersection, pairs and x-wing, they are all basic advance techniques.

To variants match part, at first you will find that you can't solve any number by clues, it's like mock test 11 last year. Then you must determine every situation's rule first, it's mostly like a sudoku, and hints are from eight situation. We make a diagram for you:



(They are all from clues, no guessing or trying to solve one situation for finding a mistake.)

There is a trap in P09, you can try to solve it by diagnol, it has unique solution, but it's a very tough puzzle and you will find another situation don't have rule to correspond. P13 and P15 have the same pattern, it's only for fun :-)

By previous 16 puzzles effort, a "heart" bridge is built. In this twins suoku, you can only solve few cells in single grid, but when make them together(same meaning of "17" in Chinese), can be solved by single. It also means one need to support others.

At the end, thanks for LogicMastersIndia give us the chance, and all you spend the wonderful Qixi time together.

TTHsieh&Leafcard

Congratulations to the top 20. 600+ in this test is indeed a great score.

I thought that Diagonal should be the easiest variant (as it is the most common variant) but after looking at the results, it (along with Touchy) proved to be the toughest of the lot.

Was the 2-hr timing enough? The scores suggest it was not.

Looking at scores and when I see that no one including Snyder or Janoslaw could complete it, its evident that 2 hrs was not enough

Congratulations to Jakub Hrazdira, Thomas Snyder, Rodolphe Hurel, Chen Cen and Wu dong yi for topping in LMI Qixi Special Sudoku Test

There were 141 participants out of which 102 got non-zero scores.

Thank you all for participating and making this a success.

Click here for the solution booklet

Sudoku tests take a break now.

Next 2 tests will be Puzzle tests and then we've IPC planned.

Many thanks to Lin Min Fang and her team for this wonderful set of Sudokus.
I'm sure they have lot of time designing the Sudokus (e.g. in all MatchMaker puzzles it was not possible to solve a single digit without determining its type) [ That probably made it tough :-) and Niulang and Zhinv could not meet )

2:30 hours test would have ensured that at least a couple, if not many, players would have got the bonus points.

Thank you again.

Deb: Actually, 102 participants got non-zero scores.

Did anyone manage to get all 8 matchmaker variants correctly ?

Ouchh... Thanks for correcting me.

one of the toughest but most interesting competition........
All the puzzles were 5*..

2 players (zorko and nikola) got all the Match Makers correct. [ Interesting that zorko has submitted only one classic ]
janoslaw got 7 correct.
4 more got 6 correct.

As many as 29 players got all Classics correct.

Check here for the split - http://logicmastersindia.com/M201008S2/ScoreSplit.asp

Thanks Deb. So, most participants did not get enough time for matchmakers as only 56 participants got points as against 101 in classics.The testing of the sudokus and the duration of the test could have been better designed. For example, diagonal, touchy, and no three odd/even could have had more points than the rest of the variants. Also, having the test for 2.5 hours is not correct (its too long). We could have dropped one classic and one variation perhaps for a 2 hr test.

well..when i completed the classics i found that i had 6 mins left for the variants. :P, i am really slow , i don't know what the standard advanced techniques are...is there some place where i can learn or in that case even the basic ones :P