Hello Yuhei, nice seeing you partecipating in this competition. And thanks for the visual contribution!

Can the duration of this test be extended by 8+8+8+8 mins?

At least where possible on line solving be permitted

Having test solved it, I think 88 minutes is suitable for this one.

Unfortunately, time constraints play a part in these things too. We will certainly consider enabling partial online solving in the future, but it's a bit too late to prepare it for this test. Please make do this time.

In the first puzzle it has said, that there are highlighted 3x3 regions and then it says puzzle number 2 and 3 contains digits from 1 to 8. Do we need to keep one cell empty, do we have to expect 2x4 boxes or can we expect the highlighted areas to be irregular?

2x4 boxes. Normal 8x8 Classic. You're right, the rules aren't completely clear in the IB. Missed that.

In puzzle 16 there is a missing symbol, at the bottom, right side : 3-7 is not only odd but also prime

You're right, a symbol is missing. Sent an update for the IB. Thanks for your contribution.

Two puzzle booklets have been uploaded....which one to download????

You can download either one.
"16 pages test" contains 1 puzzle every page.
"9 pages test" contains 2 puzzles every page, and it's meant to save paper printing at the cost of cell dimensions. Arrow+8 and Symbols puzzles anyway are on a single sheet.

WARNING: correction needed to contest puzzle n.16
If you are going to solve puzzle nr 16 before the file is updated, please bear in mind this change.
A symbol was missing in 2nd row, right side. This is the correct layout:





Attachments
----------------
symbols8.jpg (9KB - 0 downloads)

What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?

I have a different complaint

I think including a (bit-map based) logo in every page of the password protected booklet slows down the printing.

It is better to have no additional frills in the passwod protected booklet, other than just the puzzles/instructions/points. After the test is over, we can put whatever else is desired.

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 easy puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
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 easy puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
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

i)Can someone give me the start in the example puzzle for symbols?I am just not able to see the breakthrough.It looks as though the puzzle requires a combination of strategies and not just one to rely on.

ii)In Really Latin square am i right in stating that the following are the conversions possible ? :
1 - 1234678
2 - 2378
3 - 38
4 - 4
5 - 45678
6 - 678
7 - 78
8 - 8

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?	Average
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?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

I don't know how about the others, but these symbols just were so confusing. Two of them are almost the same.

Thanks for the nice test.

the test has lot of funny innovations, I appreciated every sudoku. Strictly speaking, brickdoku and really latin square are not sudokus, but latin squares. But as a "sudoku specialist" I prefer to have a few latin squares variants than puzzlish sudoku variants. So it was not a problem for me.

My only small concern was with formatting. It's probably not a bad idea to have 2 pdf's and the player can chose to have 2 sudokus each page or only one bigger. For me it's ok to have 2 sudokus each page, so I opened the 9 pages pdf. But I found that the grids were too small. You can certainly enlarge the sudokus with a different layout (rules smaller, on the side of the sudokus, codes indications smaller, etc...).

I don't feel very competitive this month, so I just decided to take part and have fun, without giving me pressure. Looking at my result could make think that I'm not able to solve hard puzzles, as I missed the 3 high-pointers. I certainly had a very bad strategy as I just solved the sudokus in order of appearance. After 75 minutes, I had all but the arrows+8 and symbols, but I did a mistake at the end of toroidal dragons, inverting some 6's and 7's. Then I took around 1 minute to look at the symbols but didn't found the entrance, so I tried to solve the arrows+8. I was a bit slow, it took me ~15 minutes to solve it. After the test, I solved the symbols (around the same solving time as arrows+8) and it's perhaps my favorite of the set. Very nice logical solving path .

Thanks again !

Fred

i) Have you noticed that a converse rule applies?
ii) Yes.

Apart from being a personal perference, lesser # of pages will also print faster. Some recent examples of how to fit in 2 sudokus per page without sacrificing on grid size - Portrait layout (ISC 2013) OR Landscape layout (Best of LMI sudoku tests)

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
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

All right!I was waiting for my head to settle and that has finally happened!.I felt as if my head was going to explode during the test.
The throbbing and the pulsation have dropped now and the grey matter definitely got kicked around during the test!

I certainly tried to solve at a pace which I had never attempted before and would never try when I solve leisurely.So this sprint test did help me to try out something new .

While it would be interesting and innovative to have these kind of sprint tests once in a while,I am never really in favour of tests with a shorter duration continuously.Apart from killing the fun quotient to an extent(you never really get to remember what actually made you solve a difficult puzzle which is very essential to getting better or get a sense of completion) there is also the danger of getting stuck eternally on a single puzzle and never really be able to 'move on'.

For instance,I was close to going crazy after I got stuck in the Consecutive sudoku for about 15 mins.The panic level began to rise astronomically and my mind never really felt like proceeding to the next sudoku after spending so much time on that.But thankfully I gave up on it and tried the killer and came back on to the consecutive once again to make a guess and take it to completion.That single sudoku managed to eat up 25 mins i.e more than one fourth of the allotted time.But the risk was certainly there and I would have left 2 puzzles and thus lost 120 points in the process if I had not gone to the next.This would be even worse when the same scenario occurs much earlier in the test and when people are clueless whether to persist or to proceed.

Unfortunately these kind of sprint tests seem to be the order of the day as even the WPF Grand prix rounds favour 'shorter formats'and the sooner I get used to these sprint tests the better I think.

The test by itself was nice but just short on time and on a lighter note it looks as if only the Japanese would be completing the Japanese symbols sudoku!.

Lastly,Thanks to the Italian Authors for taking the pain to create this test!!

I prefer long tests too, but you're right about needing to get used to it. In addition to the GP which you have mentioned, the WSC is built on short duration rounds at a generally harder difficulty than the GP. This same contest might have been a 60 minute round (and that'd be one of the longer rounds) at most in a WSC, going by my own testing time on it and comparing that to my proportionate scoring in a WSC round in general (Obviously, this is only considering the last 3 years' WSCs which I have attended). Preferences go towards both short duration and long duration rounds so it's best for organizers to have a bit of both and for competitors to get used to both

Hello Kishy,
With these fragment-type puzzles (Digital Sudoku, Ikebana and so forth) you need to learn
which "givens" can end up as which numbers. The table you typed in was the case for this puzzle.

To solve puzzles of this genre you need good notes.
In extreme cases, just write out all the possible candidates in EVERY square.
With experience, you'll learn to find out which ones are worth notating.
Look for clusters like: 567, 57, 67 in a row or column. You can then cross out 5,6,7s in the
remaining squares of the same row/column.

If you want the run-down for this puzzle specifically:
I actually found it quite hard. 8s and 4s are automatic fill-ins. In some cases, 3s (III=3 or 8) 7s and 6s can
be deduced in rows/columns where you've filled in the 8.
Also helpful to keep in mind that 5 is just a V. Cells with I,II,III cannot take a 5.
There was one point where I had a grid with lots of cells with 2-possible outcomes, but no guessing was needed for me.
Eventually, with patience, the puzzle solves itself.

===
About the page format:
I'm going to say the same as Fred. A lot of each page is wasted where you can enlarge the grid, even when there's two puzzle per page.
The dragons puzzle was very affected by the limited notation space.

About the puzzles:
Nothing outstanding about the basic variants. I think consecutive was overvalued.
My favourite is the Toroidal Dragons. I thought it required some very good insights to make progress.

Thanks for the test!

Nice puzzles....ended up with one typo....hope my claim is admitted....thanks to the organisers and the authors