Hi all sorry for late reply, last few days have not been so good for me. Anyways here it goes,
So it all started 3 months ago, when I approached LMI and asked I want author next Beginners Contest. They agreed to it and gave LITS and SKYSCRAPER to prepare. Then on 5th Dec I got the complete instructions of what should be the sizes of puzzles and info regarding exploratory side, First we thought of Wacky City or Skyscraper Sudoku as skyscraper variant. But then Deb provided with the new idea of clues shared by two rows. In LITS we thought of LITSO or LITS2. I felt LITS2 was more exciting than LITSO which of course is also good. Then I started making puzzles, starting with Skyscraper as they are little easy and fast to make as compared to LITS. Then I used to send bunch of puzzles each time to Prasanna for testing. Few would become hard, few would become non unique sometimes but none the less he was always co-operative and helped me throughout the process. I finally completed creating all puzzles by 30th Dec 2013. Funny thing is after one day I realized that I have not selected answer key rows, distributed points to the puzzles. May be because of 1st time it didn’t came into my mind. Anyways on 2nd Jan 2014 we completed that part as well and it was all set to go.
My favourites were
SKYSCRAPER: – 5, 6 and 8.
In skyscraper 7, the 4 clue on the right side edge was actually a dummy clue. I mean the puzzle could be solved even without that clue but I was told to provide more clues being beginners test.
LITS: - 2, 5, 7 and 8.
I remember the time I spent on making LITS 7, I made it and it was turning out to be non-unique. But I wanted to keep that same logic. No matter how hard I tried by changing shapes some or other problem would come. I was about to leave that puzzle and start a new, but then gave an attempt on a new morning and resolved. This was the last puzzle of my complete beginners set and a joy of relief.
I once again congratulate to the winners.
Thanks again to LMI for allowing authoring a test and helping me throughout the process.
I think this is just the beginning for me hope to have few more tests in future. :)

Thanks for the test, Swaroop. Some nice puzzles, especially in LITS.

In Spiral Galaxies, should each region definitely contain a circle? Or can there be regions whose point of symmetry is not shown?

In standard Spiral Galaxies all circles / central points will be given. That means, each region must contain exactly one of the given circles.

As noted in the IB, and as it had happened in the previous beginners' tests, some rules are deviated in the exploratory category. For those puzzles, you need to look at the given example to find out the deviation in rules, if any.

Thanks, that cleared my doubt. Where can I find solving techniques for Spiral Galaxies? There seems to be more than one way of proceeding with each puzzle, and I'm able to realize very late that I proceeded wrongly.

Basic deductions:
- Two circles that are in adjacent cells have walls between them. Note that a circle is included even if it's only partially inside a cell (at the edge or corner).
- When a circle has a wall adjacent to it, the symmetrically opposite border must also be wall.

Intermediate deductions:
- Keep track of what cells a circle contains. The above two rules apply even for non-circle cells, as long as they belong to different regions.
- Sometimes, a cell is just so far from other circles; try to figure out which circle holds this cell.
- Sometimes intuition helps scoring a quick time.

Beginners' contest is delayed - we will post a note when it starts.

Any pointers on how to proceed with this Spiral Galaxies puzzle after this?

http://oi59.tinypic.com/27zlzll.jpg

Cells C12-R8,9,10 are in the same region, for example.

also c14 r1 and r2 have only one choice .. basically find some cells which can go in unique way. :)

Okay got it, thanks to both of you for those tips :)

Edited by mathcrazy 2014-03-14 8:41 PM

How do cells C14R1 and C14R2 have only one choice?

ok think in this way to which galaxy does c14r2 cell can join, you will find only one way.

Personally, in a forty-minute contest, I think that good notation is going to make a huge difference. Every time I try a puzzle like this, I go back and forth between drawing the border and connecting the cells directly, wasting a lot of time and creating a real mess of lines across the puzzle. This may be one puzzle type where I need to break into my child's supply of color pencils...

When is this contest actually starting, since I am not seeing anything other than the instructions booklet.

Quite unusually, we have run into some issues here. I can't put an exact time right now, but it will take around 12 hours, as I post this.

Great puzzles, Serkan! I really enjoyed solving them. But from my view, discovering the twisted rules is too difficult, I am not sure, whether beginners will get through it. I solved Galaxies about 20 minutes and 8-10 minutes was just about guessing the proper rules.

Great puzzles indeed. The puzzles feel reasonable (also I now know I'm not particularly good in Galaxies). I feel the exploratory rules for Galaxies is a bit stretching it though. Black and white circles are good ideas, but gray circles just sound like throwing the symmetry part of Galaxies away. I have no particular comments, although I feel Tetromino should also have a puzzle or two without givens.

Also, for some reason I blazed through the first six Tetromino puzzles in 11 minutes (plus two stupid mistakes on the first puzzle), and the last two in 17 minutes.

Excellent job, Serkan. I particularly enjoyed SG # 6, which I thought was quite clever. Thanks for the contest!

Great puzzles!

However, I think I have an indication if my answer is right or wrong before I really submit it. Is this indicated? (The red border of the cell vanishes if my answer has the correct length of the entry string before I hit the button.)

The red border vanishes when the sum of digits that you enter is equal to the size the grid (excluding black cells in Tetrominoes). It does not check for correctness of the answer.

For example, in Spiral Galaxy 1 - which is a 6X6 puzzle, if you enter 123 or 321 or 1122 or any set of digits summing to 6 the red border will vanish. We use this to check and alert if the answer is not formatted properly. Additionally, there is no penalty on answers which are not formatted correctly.

Hope that clarifies.

Oh sorry. I didnt recognize you can use the sum of the digits as a check.

I recently reached the Seasoner level, but the test still says, "You have chosen to play as Beginner." Is there a way to change my level to Seasoner?