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

Nice Puzzle, thanks for the test

PS. I am very blur in one puzzle (Irregular), I answer row A same row B. TT
Can I claim this puzzle?

Are there 2 solutions to the Symbols puzzle? Didn't affect the answer codes but I had deduced there were going to be at least 2 solutions from early on and thought I must have made a mistake.

I started at the end of the puzzle set because that's the way my printer is set up. Those last two puzzles were really tough - especially the Arrows.

David, the rules are saying that Symbols outside the grid indicates the attributes of the first two numbers in that direction (odd/even, big/small or prime). If there's no symbol, the first two numbers don't share the corresponding attribute. I also had 46 and 64 in the first two rows in my solution but afterwards I figured out where is the problem by reading the rules. Although I'm not completely sure if my solution is correct.

TiiT

It has only one solution. Like Tiit said, you probably forgot the rule "If there's no symbol, the first two numbers don't share the corresponding attribute", it should have been harder to try to solve it without this rule, I remember I used it a few times during solving and, of course, at the end, too.

Fred

Edited by Fred76 2014-01-27 6:32 PM

I am very disappointed about the puzzle booklets and their layout. I prefer 2 grids per page, so I opened the document with 9 pages. But the grids were toooooo small. Nevertheless I printed it out and start solving. In the puzzles like Latin Square, Killer, Sudoku and Dragons I-II there were no space to write digits not even pencilmarks. So I needed to print also some pages from the bigger document. Then revealed another problem - the logo (pretty nice logo by the way) waste out all my printing color.
On the other hand, I enjoy solving the sudokus. Those under 60 points vere absolutely easy and the rest was very pretty solvable. My tactic was to skip the Symbols and solve the rest, but I made stupid counting mistake at Arrows and solved them twice, that is why I missed reltively easy Brickdoku and Skyscrapers.

Edited by greenhorn 2014-01-27 7:15 PM

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
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 found my mistake

Edited by sinchai4547 2014-01-27 10:45 PM

Request players not to post (screenshots of) results before the contest is over. It gives, however slight, advantage to players who haven't solved yet.