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?	Fairly Nice
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
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?	Too many medium difficult puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Looks like the spiral city construction was solvable without the loop part... I was quite confused when the form wanted the number of angles. :)

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 about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	A bit too many puzzles
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
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 about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
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?	Too many medium difficult puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

A good test, but hard to prepare for. It was 16 unusual types, some with rather specific rules. The LMD practice material helped a little, but some of the LMD puzzles used subtly different rules from the test. Despite doing all of them, I still felt shaky going into the test.

I am not aware of subtly different rules, maybe apart from the Filled Loop. I think I didn't use the non-diagonal touching of pentos when I created the first puzzles of this type a few years ago.

For the other types I think the rules in the portal are the same as in the test. Please point out if not so.

When the test is over I will post some notes and considerations about the test and selection of puzzles.

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 about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Way too many puzzles (too little time)
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
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 about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
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?	Fairly Nice
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Thanks a lot Richard. Your puzzles were lovely. Whole test was smooth for me except the Spiral City C. I forgot the loop thing, probably the reason is that I solved the puzzle as Spiral Battleships. Also I assumed that we must use all numbers from 1-32, I didn't count all segments of the city. So I experienced difficulty in the middle of the grid because of this. I erased, I repeated, but the result didn't change. But last ten minutes I remembered there was a loop :) Then I did it. So I could be much better if I hadn't done this stupidity. Anyway, thanks a lot!

What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
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 about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
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 about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
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 about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	A bit too many puzzles
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Had no time to prepare and jumped right in.

I've made enough Capsules to know that a puzzle with nothing but pentominoes = hell to construct.
It must have taken you ages. I remember tweaking for hours to get pentomino-only Capsules.

I really like Blackout Domino. 5 stars!

I find Prime Domino a bit "un-domino". Once you take out the adjacent cell has to be equal rule, you're
left with a shopping list. I think it took longer keeping track of the pieces than actually solving the puzzle.
Even longer, with that answer format.

Lovely set of 20 puzzles. Thanks, Richard.

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 about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	A bit too many puzzles
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

"Prime Domino" is actually based on the German(?) puzzle type "Domino Hunt" (e.g. http://www.janko.at/Raetsel/Dominos/index.htm, also it was round 1 at 2012 WPC), which is a much different sort of puzzle to the domino joining types.
It has its own rules that speed up solving. Quickly, the best ones are:
1): There are two ways that two dominoes can fill a 2x2 square. If both ways would use the same two dominoes (i.e. when a digit repeats on one of the two diagonals) then there would not be a unique solution, and so the 2x2 square must be covered in another way.
e.g. If the top-left corner is:
13
36
There are two ways to draw a 1-3 domino and a 3-6 domino in these 4 cells, therefore if we expect there is a unique solution then neither can be used - the 6-domino must go down or right. Draw in two edges between the 6 and the 3s.
2) If you locate a (e.g.) 4-5 domino, then you can draw lines between all other 4-5 pairs. For uniqueness reasons, this also works for blanks. If you find a 2-blank domino, then you can rule out all other 2-blanks (as long as they have the same grey/not-grey status), even before you know what the blank will contain.

If anyone is interested, I also wrote down some ideas and diagrams for how to solve three of the other types in the attached apreadsheet:

Regional Yajilin
Blackout Domino
Domino Loop

Edited by kiwijam 2013-09-10 4:12 AM




Attachments
----------------
DTGT - LMI Sep 2013 Theory.xls (42KB - 9 downloads)

I thought Capsules puzzles always had all pentomino regions. At least the ones I've seen and made always do. Maybe I've just seen many of Richard's.


Edited by Para 2013-09-10 5:47 AM

Password removed from puzzle booklet.

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 about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Way too many puzzles (too little time)
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Too few pages / too small grids

My first puzzle test for LMI is now over. It was an exciting weekend for me to watch players from all over the world being busy solving at lightning speed.
Congratulations to deu, MellowMelon and uvo for taking the podium positions!

Later I will write some notes about the test and puzzle selection.

Thank you all for participating and the (mostly) positive feed back so far!

Unfortunately I missed the test, but am looking forward to doing it in my own time. Thanks for the puzzles.

I discovered Capsules a long while back. Maybe around 2007, when I first started
solving WPF-style puzzles.
It was under the name "Capsules", so it must be from the same origin.
I can't remember exactly where but I'm suspecting the 24HPC.
I'm certain there were 1-cell, 2-cell regions and what not.

Perhaps someone can enlighten us.

This was a test with most of my weaknesses. I'm not too great with puzzles that use numbers without using the row/column restrictions, and so kept making silly errors in Capsules. I'm not that good with Loop/placement puzzles with empty grids and outside clues either. Dominos is one of those broad genres that I've always struggled at, and even my Japanese Sums base isn't great.

In short, the majority of this test contained types I usually skip during other tests, and some of them, 5 months or so ago, I wouldn't even have attempted after the test. But I pretty much had to "face my fears" for this one, and then I liked the puzzles so much that I solved them all afterwards. Thanks Richard, both for making me face my fears and for the beautiful puzzles I got to solve because of that

My example was WPC Belarus 2008. Puzzle 13 in round 2 were two Capsules puzzles of the type that was also in DTGT test; pento-shapes to fill with digits 1~5 and no touching.
Few years after that WPC the editor of Breinbrekers asked me to make a couple of these puzzles. At the same time I made one for the puzzle portal with minimal clues (10); it's linked in the forum as practice material.
These puzzles are not really hard to construct if you use a lot of P-pentominos. For the test I used the complete pentomino set once in the small grid and twice in the large grid (of course with exception of the U and V pentomino. )