Actually on part 4 the penalty multiplier for submitting over 60 minutes works reasonably well, and arguably it could have been stricter. Given that almost no one completes this round in under 60 minutes, if there were no penalty multiplier everyone who's persistent enough would get the same score (120 points) (except for the happy few who finished under 60 minutes and got a bonus). Finishing the whole set in 61 minutes or in 5 hours would get you the same score. Instead, right now someone who finishes 8 of the 12 puzzles under 60 minutes does get ever slightly more points than someone who only finishes 4 of the 12 under 60 minutes, and in turn that person gets more than someone who didn't finish a single puzzle in 60 minutes.

Denis

Where I could claim for points?
In the Great Wall puzzle answer key says "enter the numbers from left to right". So did I for row "I" (I started from this corner) and got "wrong mark". Then I changed answer according to arrow direction and it was accepted.
Now the penalty mark is shown in the table. I don't know how it really affects on points, but think there is some lack of them.

In any case I like the construction of this puzzle, but it seems to be too easy.

Will check what is missing, and remove penalty if something is wrong at our end.
You can "Claim No penalty" from Submissions tab.

ETA : In your first answer, "I" is as "Left to right", but "J" is "bottom to top, in the direction of arrow". This is not listed as a valid answer.
In your second try, you entered both I&J as per the direction of the arrow. We allow that.

If you enter both I&J, as per the IB you get points. If you enter both as per direction of arrow, you still get points. If you swap I and J, you also get points.
Other combinations are not allowed.

Edited by debmohanty 2013-09-26 11:22 AM

Thanks a lot for clarification. I've got this.

What was your most favorite round?	Round 3 - Great Wall
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
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

For the moment, I greatly prefer the TVC scoring system to the one here :) Failing to mark off one clue left a much much harder puzzle than I wanted to finish.

Thanks for the puzzles.

Edited by motris 2013-09-27 3:59 AM

At the moment, Para is 780.8 and I am 780.6. Seems like we're going for a wild race now. *opens betting*

But seriously. Either not all the masters have participated yet, or I somehow shot much higher now, with me still fighting for Top 5.

@motris: I can't see why leaving a clue unmarked makes the puzzle difficult?

Edited by chaotic_iak 2013-09-27 7:55 AM

@chaotic_iak: I mean I didn't put its logic into the puzzle by not crossing out one segment (row 3 middle) and then never went back to seeing it as useful. Effectively I was blind to some info, like I was solving a puzzle with fewer clues but it was totally my fault.

Edited by motris 2013-09-27 8:10 AM

I like the format of the test most. Usually once the test time is over I used to forget about it. Here the extended time made me to solve more puzzles. I hope this kind of a format will make more people try to solve the puzzles. Any how a great experience.

hey can some one tell me in price tag
do numbers carry forward
i mean what if units places add up to like 3+5+5 = 13 where should 1 go into tens place or neglect it ?

Are you asking should 3+5+5 be 13 or 3?

yes got it now :)

Edited by swaroop2011 2013-09-27 10:33 AM

What was your most favorite round?	Round 2 - Pentominos Samurai
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
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
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Too few pages / too small grids

The only one remark for the contest - some grids are too small.
But in any case I really enjoyed it.

What was your most favorite round?	Round 4 - Black & White Matrix
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Very skewed
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
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

What was your most favorite round?	Round 4 - Black & White Matrix
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
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
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

(1) Penalties: After looking at the results, it is clear that the penalty for wrong submisions should have been more severe (and should have point penalty also). When 3 of the top 4 (as of now) have penalties, it means something is wrong.

(2) Bonus structure: My personal experience is that R1 and R3 were easier as compared to the other rounds. So, those who did well in R2 and R4 should have got more bonus. But the reality was different. If I look at the 10th place bonus, it is 105 and 103 for R1 and R3 respectively, while it is 79 and 48 for R2 and R4. Have we got it right?

(3) Puzzles: Very good mix of puzzles, specially the R4 puzzles.

What was your most favorite round?	Round 3 - Great Wall
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
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
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Too few pages / too small grids

I was annoyed that the instructions weren't printed on the puzzle pages. It meant a lot of flipping around for me to check on rules, especially because of the types (like Lakes) that were similar to puzzles I'm used to solving.

It would have been nice to know that some rounds were much longer than others -- at least, it seemed that way to me, and my ranking didn't vary that much.

I loved the Great Wall theme and the execution was quite nice there too. The linked black/white puzzles was also a neat idea, but I had a hard time finding a reasonable solving path (probably because I'm too unfamiliar with some of these types). I did a bunch of solving by intuition more than by logic -- the instant grading was a huge help to get that confirmation that my solutions were the right ones!

The solving paths on the price tags and pentominoes were quite nice. Overall I had tons of fun. Thanks to the authors and to LMI for hosting!

Also I'm still seeing tons of "restricted post" here even though I am logged in and have finished all four rounds. Weird.

WPMM is over. MellowMelon, xevs and motris take the top 3 positions.
In individual rounds, murat has the best time in Price Tag, while motris has best time in all other rounds.

149 players completed Price Tag in 60 minutes. The corresponding numbers are 46, 115, 21 for Pentomino Samurai, Great Wall and B&W Matrix. As noted by most, the four rounds were not equally matched, with Matrix and Pentomino being much harder than the other two. So the borrowed bonus mechanism from Marathon didn't work best here. I will have to admit that I didn't focus enough on the bonus mechanism, mainly trying to have this contest for practice for WPC. It is really difficult to normalize the rounds when they are not close to each other, in terms of difficulty.

Its been a pleasure to host WPMM and I'm sure everyone is thankful to the puzzle authors for putting in the effort to provide a practice test before the WPC.

Thank you everyone for participating.

What was your most favorite round?	Round 4 - Black & White Matrix
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
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
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

I had a lot of trouble with puzzle 4. Having to compete at 3am is already a problem but I think its also because of the IB/PB.
I solved the top right puzzle and end up with the same contradiction over and over, only to find out that I have been solving it as a Corral and not
Paint it Black.
And when I do solve the Corral, I convinced myself that it had multiple solutions.
I had to redownload the IB to see "black cells cannot surround white cells" -- is this rule usually in Corral?

Also half way through Pata, I saw the "1" clue and was like "whattt???"
I could be wrong, but isn't Pata where the clue works for both black cells and white cells?
Again, had to refer back to the IB and completely re-erase the whole puzzle.

To make matters worse, I also couldn't prove to myself how the Pentomino Blokus isn't broken.
Then I saw "some pentominoes". Ugh.

Its all my fault, but when you use familiar names of puzzles - I'm sure there are others who just don't read the IB that carefully.
Once my hour was up I just went to bed.

I really enjoy Price Tag and the first Pentomino Samurai (the one with a lot of 4s). Just beautiful.

I usually make the distinction by saying Corral for the Nikoli loop type and Coral for the type used here which is also quite common. Some others use the distinction of Cave and Corral respectively. But for these rules, with the outside clues, it is always that black cells cannot surround white cells, as far as I know.

Pata : The one you're referring to is probably Tapa Clones (see TVC XIV IB to confirm), and Pata has always been as the rules are here.

I know some people might not usually read the IB carefully, but when you have 12 connected puzzles, its best to read everything I think :P

I believe this puzzle is called Coral; Corral is the one with numbers inside the grid. That's one thing about puzzle names. Not sure though. In Corral, I know that the original version has a loop, so it's impossible to have white area enclosed inside a black area as the result will not be a loop.


You mistaken Pata for Tapa Clones :3 Don't worry, I also mistaken Windows' black cells as simply Tapa wall and not Corral.


To tell the truth, I also had the same problem, although I kept the IB and quickly checked it when I saw it's impossible to have all pentominoes.

---

Next up. Congratulations for the winners. Also congratulations for Para that pushed me down again (or more precisely I blame others that made Para's position better :P ), since I had been watching the positions of me and Para over time and I once won for like two days or so. Congratulations for murat, which even though he(?) is 31st, but he scores rank 1 in Round 1; congratulations for motris that scores rank 1 in everything else; congratulations for MellowMelon for topping the test as usual even though there's a slip up in Round 3 (you know MellowMelon has a slip up when an average (okay above than average but still not a master) solver like me beats his score :/ ) and without holding any rank 1's (even though he has three rank 2 :P ).

Edited by chaotic_iak 2013-09-30 7:49 PM

What was your most favorite round?	Round 4 - Black & White Matrix
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
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
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Too few pages / too small grids

@chaotic: With that rank and that company, it wasn't an average performance. You should be proud of yourself.

Regarding the bonus structure, it is true it had room to improve. Though, there is the somewhat appropriate distinction of having captured the feel of WPC playoffs (it puts the WP in WPMM!), where a top solver's hangup on one puzzle let someone else get ahead, and I did manage to get the lowest total time somehow. That said, I'm not sure how many other metrics besides the used bonus structure and total time would have put me ahead of motris's impressive triple 1s. I seem to be 2 for 2 on getting lucky with Marathon scoring systems this year...

Since it seems like no one put it down as their favorite, I did think the initial steps of the price tag puzzles were really nice; they just got a bit too arithmetic heavy when you needed to finish them out and ran out of row/column clues to use.

I'll add my thanks to the authors, the puzzles themselves were great!
As Zoltan mentioned earlier these were spare puzzles that could have just been published in a blog, but by making them into a little contest we all enjoyed them more (ignoring the scoring system).