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?	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?	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

Denis - Enjoyed the puzzles very much, the ones I did not finish will help fill the time between football games tomorrow....
Thanks for putting these together, nice job!

Dave

Oh Wow ! :)
Seems to be tight schedule then.
And better way to get ready for Championships :)

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 hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Answer keys could have been better
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

Regarding difficulty, it's obvious. When the top players don't even finish in time, you know something is wrong. (There are still one or two days though.)

Regarding puzzle quality. The one that I can most remember is Hitori Fences. I solved the Hitori before I started working with Fences, so it's just putting two puzzles in one. Another one is the lack of interesting features of the puzzles. The aesthetics are just average (not even rotational symmetry), and the solutions to the puzzles (at least those I attempted) don't really have nice tricks. Perhaps there are a few, but it's much less than what I expect about puzzles that ignore aesthetics.

Regarding answer keys. Seems like a few answer keys are too weird and can be replaced by better ones, but might be only my rant. I'll try to review over them again first before deciding.

So, yeah. Not really enjoyable test. Not utterly terrible, but not great either.

Edited by chaotic_iak 2013-10-06 2:03 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?	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?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Great puzzles in second part!

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	A bit skewed
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Answer keys could have been better
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	A bit too many puzzles
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

The puzzles by themselves were great. But I'm not sure if these are suitable for a competition.
I think they require a lot of trying-out-all-the-combinations-type logic.

The second part was brutal, puzzles taking 30+ minutes.
I feel that I'd enjoy them if they were for leisure solving (some beautiful deductions needed),
but the competitive environment killed the puzzles.
Too many hard puzzles in too little time (even though the test was a lengthy 135 minutes).
The terrible answer keys didn't help either. We have 20 completely different types which makes too many different answer-keys formatting.

I'm not blaming the puzzles (I like a lot of them), but the way it is presented (in a timed condition) made it a harsh experience.
If these were in puzzle magazine or other casual-solving medium, I'd love them!

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?	Mostly 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

After going back and doing the rest of the puzzles, I agree with you strongly on some of the puzzles. The hitori slitherlink, magnetic kakuro, and star battle sudoku, and even the battleship minesweeper to a lesser extent felt a lot that way. The pentamino domino was nice, though.

Edited by achan1058 2013-10-07 2:05 AM

Did the scoring for Hex Dominos change? Suddenly I have a wrong answer on that, and the stats claim only one person correctly solved that puzzle.

FoxFireX and others: there was a bug in the scoring engine concerning the answer key for Hex Dominos; but I believe it's been fixed. In any case, don't worry, the correct answer is still considered correct, and hopefully the final scores table will reflect that properly. (Deb seems to be working on it.)
-- Denis

Score is now public.
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?	Answer keys could have been better
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

Thanks everyone for the feedback, and sorry that the test turned out to be harder than anticipated! I hope most of you still enjoyed the test. Lots of lessons to learn here as a new LMI test author... next time I'll try to do better!

Congratulations to Ulrich who nearly finished the test, and to Nikola and Palmer for taking the next two spots.

Denis

I'm used to not finishing in time, but I had a blast with this one. I actually had a little bit of an easier time with a couple of the Remixes than some of the Hexes. Makes me wish I could figure out ahead of time which ones I would find easier, then allocate my time after the fact. :)