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

Right, so my thoughts about individual Sudokus (in order of solving) -

Classic 1, 2 - Sprint. I didn't have any pause moments in either of these. Contrary to points, I finished 2nd one quicker, but I'm weird with classics.

Outside - Yeah, I jumped directly to the Outside Sudoku. This was absolutely beautiful and quite tough. Took me close to 15 minutes, had marked a lot of 7-8 doubles around the left half of the grid. The major break was the 1-2, 3-4 part at the top leftGr after all the obvious stuff I think. There were a few implied doubles and triples forming that were hard to spot.

Greater Than Consecutive - Sprint. The non-consecutive logic makes things very limiting.

Even Killer (try 1) - Disaster! Staring, staring, staring for 10 minutes and getting absolutely nothing. I don't know why, I think I just went blank here. Thankfully, I decided to jump away.

Smashed Sums - 10 minutes perhaps. There's a bit here around the middle 3 columns thats very limiting, once you figure out that either the top box or the bottom box needs to have X-6-X one below the other in the 6th column, its easy to limit where things go exactly. Again, this one would only be solved quickly if one marks circles for cells that can't be black as well.

Vudoku, then Thermo, then Arrow - Sprint. Just used the general sums/difference logic or increasing/decreasing logic, nothing fancy. The Arrow middle part with the 3-5 double for the 8 sum meaning 3-3 can't be there for the 6 is probably the only place where I took a minute to pause and think among all 3 of these.

Killer - Mega sprint. But I can understand it not being so for people not familiar with the in-out rule, as this got pretty obvious with all the 7-9 doubles forming. Nicely constructed and themed on that, I do like solving themes.

Renban Groups - A bit of a symmetric touch to this one, with most of the same logic being used for 1-3-5 and 2-4 to open it all up.

Pinocchio - Nice use of the rules. After getting the 3 in the middle box, you can immediately figure out that if the other 2 fours are true the middle 4 can't be false, so one of those 2 has to be false, and the middle 4 true. After that, pretty easy.

Diagonal - Sprint.

Shifted (try 1) - Mini disaster! spent 3 minutes, got stuck, thought I'd made a mistake, so jumped to Deficit.

Deficit - This was nice. These types are usually easy but this one certainly wasn't. There was a lot of, "ok, this number cannot be in this box so all the other numbers have to be there" and then using the in-outs of Irregular logic.

Shifted (try 2) - Turns out I hadn't made a mistake, but just entered a 5 as a 2 somehow! Thankfully spotted that quickly, and after that easy enough. Major suggestion here would be to focus on the shifted part (rows here) just a bit more than columns/boxes.

Classic 3 - Sprint.

Sudo-Kurve - Although just a slight tweak on the IB design, I've still never seen that exact design before. Was nice to work through, though easy.

Overlapping Sudoku - The part that really speeds the solve here is, from 4th to 9th row onwards and 4th to 9th column onwards, the 1st 3 numbers and last 3 numbers have to be same. Simple implied logic, but really speeds up the process.

Even Killer (try 2) - Not blank anymore! Spotted the 5 odds forming in the 1st column meaning that the rest all had to be evens, and went on quickly from there.

6x6s - Sprint sprint sprint, although I think I paused a little (too much) on the 5th and 6th ones.

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

Excellent Grids .Goes without saying given the quality of the authors involved.My personal favourites are
Outside sudoku and Killer .Outside sudoku was fun to solve and had some really hard deductions.Finding the hidden single 9 in that in R5C2 was super good.Killer was sweet and simple revolving around the 79 pair.

The curious thing about this test from my perspective is that i stumbled and had to take a guess in as many as 3 6 X 6 grids whereas i had no problems in solving logically the 9 X 9 grids.I intend to erase the 6X6 grids that i had guessed and find the missing logic sometime later.I wisely avoided the smashed sums sudoku which looks extremely hard and saved considerable time .
Thanks to the authors and the Organisers for a nice test and
94 mins to complete a 150 min test which means roughly 5mins spent for each Grid???Phenomenal !!!!.
Also Congrats to the trio Rishi ,PS and Rohan who have interchanged top Positions amongst themselves!

How did you come to know about Indian Sudoku Championship?	Others
Did the Instructions Booklet (IB) provide enough information about participating in ISC?	Yes, mostly.
Did you understand the Sudoku variations rules and examples from the IB?	I understood only a few of them.
Did you find enough easy Sudokus to solve during the championship?	Yes, there were many of them.
Did you find enough easy / familiar variations to solve during the championship?	Yes, some of them were familiar. I would have liked more familiar types.
After your experience in ISC, 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?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice

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 did you come to know about Indian Sudoku Championship?	SMS from LMI
Did the Instructions Booklet (IB) provide enough information about participating in ISC?	Yes, mostly.
Did you understand the Sudoku variations rules and examples from the IB?	I understood most of them.
Did you find enough easy Sudokus to solve during the championship?	Yes, some of them were easy. I would have liked more easy puzzles.
Did you find enough easy / familiar variations to solve during the championship?	Yes, there were many of them.
After your experience in ISC, 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?	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?	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?	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?	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 did you come to know about Indian Sudoku Championship?	I am a regular visitor at LMI forum.
Did the Instructions Booklet (IB) provide enough information about participating in ISC?	Yes, mostly.
Did you understand the Sudoku variations rules and examples from the IB?	I understood most of them.
Did you find enough easy Sudokus to solve during the championship?	Yes, there were many of them.
Did you find enough easy / familiar variations to solve during the championship?	Yes, there were many of them.
After your experience in ISC, are you going to participate in future championshiops or contests at LMI?	Most likely

I enjoyed the session very much. Lost a couple of minutes at the start because firstly, I forgot to click the online button, and also the puzzles took a while to load on the screen. I seem to have made some mistakes, there is a claim message, how does this work ? I don't attempt the other puzzles that appear on this forum, so I do hope the monthly sudoku contests continue in a regular fashion. I would like to give more stars but three seems to be the max.

Edited by vijaya_rajan 2013-08-12 2:54 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?	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

How did you come to know about Indian Sudoku Championship?	LMI email
Did the Instructions Booklet (IB) provide enough information about participating in ISC?	Yes, mostly.
Did you understand the Sudoku variations rules and examples from the IB?	I understood all of them.
Did you find enough easy Sudokus to solve during the championship?	Yes, some of them were easy. I would have liked more easy puzzles.
Did you find enough easy / familiar variations to solve during the championship?	Yes, some of them were familiar. I would have liked more familiar types.
After your experience in ISC, are you going to participate in future championshiops or contests at LMI?	Most likely

First query - claim message. If you think your mistake is just a typo, like say you've probably just entered 1 number wrong while entering the key, or swapped rows somehow, then it is a means to bring that to the notice of the organizers. In the end, it is up to the organizers themselves to decide if your claim is valid or not of course.

Second query - Sudoku Contests do continue in a regular fashion. Visit the forum regularly, and you'll know when the next one is. Also, you can always give the past tests a try as a leisure time solve/practice

How did you come to know about Indian Sudoku Championship?	I am a regular visitor at LMI forum.
Did the Instructions Booklet (IB) provide enough information about participating in ISC?	Yes, mostly.
Did you understand the Sudoku variations rules and examples from the IB?	I understood most of them.
Did you find enough easy Sudokus to solve during the championship?	Yes, there were many of them.
Did you find enough easy / familiar variations to solve during the championship?	Yes, there were many of them.
After your experience in ISC, 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?	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 did you come to know about Indian Sudoku Championship?	I am a regular visitor at LMI forum.
Did the Instructions Booklet (IB) provide enough information about participating in ISC?	Yes, mostly.
Did you understand the Sudoku variations rules and examples from the IB?	I understood all of them.
Did you find enough easy Sudokus to solve during the championship?	Yes, there were many of them.
Did you find enough easy / familiar variations to solve during the championship?	Yes, there were many of them.
After your experience in ISC, 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?	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 only complaint in an otherwise perfect test was that the 6X6 puzzles which were expected to be most accessible were a bit tricky.

The points suggested that they would be difficult, and I used trial to get past them quickly, but that is something which newcomers are not accustomed/keen to do.

I totally agree with amit, 6x6 were really tricky but it is justified to have spent some 20 plus mins on 100 points.. Overall a wonderful contest.

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

After a long time I was a competitor on the sudoku test that Deb organize and I really enjoyed...
Congratulations to Prasanna for excellent performance and good luck to Indians in Beijing.

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 easy
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 did you come to know about Indian Sudoku Championship?	I am a regular visitor at LMI forum.
Did the Instructions Booklet (IB) provide enough information about participating in ISC?	Yes, mostly.
Did you understand the Sudoku variations rules and examples from the IB?	I understood most of them.
Did you find enough easy Sudokus to solve during the championship?	Yes, some of them were easy. I would have liked more easy puzzles.
Did you find enough easy / familiar variations to solve during the championship?	Yes, some of them were familiar. I would have liked more familiar types.
After your experience in ISC, are you going to participate in future championshiops or contests at LMI?	Most likely

Ignoring the Screen Test, I think we have to go back 3 years (Mastermind Twins) which I organized and you participated.
You had spent so much time on Times Sudoku that I really didn't want to ask you to pre-test this one. Thank you so much for being there all the time.

I take this opportunity to thank the authors for providing some wonderful Sudokus.

Classic Sudokus, Sudo-Kurve, Thermo Sudoku, Arrow Sudoku - Thomas Snyder
Pinocchio Sudoku, Diagonal Sudoku, Killer Sudoku, Renban Sudoku - Bastien Vial-Jaime
Smashed Sums Sudoku, Vudoku - Serkan Yurekli

I am indebted to the test solvers - Bram, Gotroch, Matus, Nikola - who gave very significant input and feedback in a really short amount of time.

Thank you everyone for your kind help.