Hi Kumaresan. as of now, there is no Beginners' test announced, but they are held regularly, so keep a lookout on this forum for such an announcement. In the meantime, check out the topic of the Indian Sudoku Championship, which will be on 11th August (click on the link of the same on the top right to get to the discussion topic for that).

I am a beginner, and I want to have exposure to the different sudoku variations. Can anybody suggest any links with rules & examples/techniques for this?

Thanks

Hi,
This may help you in what you are looking for
List of Sudoku contests held so far: http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/downloads.asp?puzzleTypes=S
List of Sudoku/Puzzle sites/blogs: http://logicmastersindia.com/home/?g=links

Regards,
Ravi

This sounds really great. I took my first shot at Sudokus seriously in the Times Sudoku Championship and then tried to solve at the ISC held on 11th Aug' 2013. I really enjoyed it though I stumbled a lot since this was my first participation in an online championship like this. Couldnt crack through in the beginning and lost lot of precious moments. It took quite some time for the puzzles to appear and I thought I was making some mistakes and kept going back to instruction booklet again and again.

Just a request......It would be great if you could handhold a bit in the steps to play the championship online without a printer. The instruction needed little more elaboration. Again only a request, since there could be more people like me who are interested in participating but not quite going past the steps quickly. Thanks again for starting the beginners championship. Looking forward to it...will participate definitely.

Hi
Can you go to http://logicmastersindia.com/BeginnersSudoku/ ?
Login, and click on "Start Classics".
The Sudokus take a while to load, but not more than 10-15 seconds. Does it take more time for you? You need to scroll a bit to see the sudokus.


Online solving takes a while to get used to. That is reason we had enabled some examples to be solved online.
The key board / mouse controls are described here. Other than that it is more of practice than anything else. If you have any specific question / request, please post here again and one of us will help you out.

Thanks Deb....I did go to the link provided by you above which led to the instructions and steps provided for June Beginners Championship. I have one more question...In step 3, it says using the password provided below the timer, the Sudoku booklet can be unlocked. Now how to use this passwork, click on it or paste it somewhere....Actually on Aug 11th, I was frantically clicking on it and a couple of other tabs not knowing exactly what to do with it. And lo! it just worked....but didn't know how...hence now this question to you, so I don't repeat this again. Thanks in advance again.

Password is not to be used by players who are solving online. You can simply ignore it.

If you are solving on paper, you need to download the "Sudoku Booklet", which is a password protected pdf file. When you click on "Start Classics" (or Start ISC), we display the password. Using this password, you can open the pdf file and print and start solving on paper.

So, to repeat, if you are solving online, you don't need to do anything with the password.

Some of the documentation may be little out-dated or may not be clear enough. We have been running these tests for so long that everything just seems natural to us. So, feel free to point out any oddity that you notice anywhere, and we will rectify it as needed.

Thanks Ravi for the links

Thanks again Deb and one more request! Can you put me on some links where I can practice online solving. I came across a lot of archives with sample sudokus in PDF form....but I guess practicing online would be better in terms of pre-preparation prior to the ensuing Beginner's Championship on 21st Aug, 2013. Thanks again in advance.

You are right that all the archived tests are only in pdf-form. As of now, the June Beginners Test and ISC 2013 are available for practicing online. But I guess you have practiced both of them already.

We did put lot of interactively solvable sudokus here - http://logicmastersindia.com/puzzles/ but it has been a while since anything new was added there.

First time I've managed to actually submit all 8 in the beginner's contest before time, so hooray for that! Question, though; according to the results, it looks like I migrated into the Seasoners category at some point recently. The beginner/seasoner label doesn't really mean a whole lot to me, but I didn't think I had met any of the criteria for promotion yet, plus I don't seem to be on the list of seasoners. Is that where I'm supposed to be now, or was there a glitch in the categories?

Edited by FoxFireX 2013-08-21 9:00 AM

Looks like some glitch... Will look into it.
We have already found few glitches after we had the Beginners Masyu contest.

Hi! I managed to submit all 8 sudokus correcty but not within time! I am still happy participating in the beginner's championship. Just wanted to know how the points are calculated. Thanks.

Each sudoku has fixed number of points. If you submit it before 40 minutes, you get full points. Otherwise, you get half of the points. That is the reason you have got full points for Classic 1,2,3, Diagonal, Irregular, but half points of Classic 4, Odd Even, Trio.
Also, you get 1 minute penalty for every wrong attempt (which you didn't have)

Thanks Deb. I really appreciate your patience to explain each and every query raised!! It was great fun playing the contest. Hope the next one is organised soon. Waiting eagerly for the same!!

Can I ask you to logout in the Beginners page, and login again? It should ask if you are a Beginner or Seasoner.
The database somehow has lost the record of you being Beginner or Seasoner. If you logout and login again, it would repeat the question.

Done. Looks like it's set up correctly again now. Thanks! (Now I just have to repeat that performance and I get bumped up anyway.)

Hello Deb

It's not really important but why I am never on the list of the participants ?

I can see your name. Are you able to view the score page, but your name is not there?

August Beginners' Sudoku Contest is over. Password removed from the booklet. Prasanna will post a summary soon.

The August Edition of the Beginners' Sudoku Contests had 364 participants, including 179 Indians. It seems that the high number of Indians could be due to all the offline contests happening here recently. We hope everyone, newcomers and regulars alike, had a good time of it.

The Top 3 Beginners are Regina (Estonia), sa3664 (Shalini Arora) (India) and beartan (Seunro Joo) (South Korea).

The Top 3 Seasoners are TiiT (Estonia), jaku111 (Czech Republic) and Gotroch (Czech Republic).

Congrats to all the winners, and thank you all for participating!

On a personal note, I was a test solver for this Beginners' Contest. I noted that the Trio is harder than most Trios out there, and I thought thats a good thing, because concentrating on 2-3 numbers at a time is one of the best ways to learn new techniques for a Beginner (in my opinion). If anyone does want to know how to finish off the Trio or any other of the 8 Sudokus, feel free to post in the forum, one of us will help you out.

Oh and of course, Thanks to Jan Mrozowski for preparing these two quality sets :)

Vunk family monopolized the 1rst place in both category, haha !