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brecher92
Posts: 30
Country : United States | 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... |
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achan1058
Posts: 80
Country : Canada | When is this contest actually starting, since I am not seeing anything other than the instructions booklet. |
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debmohanty
  
Country : India | Administrator - 2014-03-14 5:08 PM
Beginners' contest is delayed - we will post a note when it starts.
achan1058 - 2014-03-15 3:11 AM
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.
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Administrator
Country : India | March Beginners' Puzzle Contest has started
The dates are revised to 15 th - 20 th March (including both dates )
Submission Links : Spiral Galaxies • Tetrominoes
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greenhorn
Posts: 164
Country : Slovakia | 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. |
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chaotic_iak
Posts: 241
Country : Indonesia | 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.  |
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davep
Posts: 43
Country : United States | davep posted @ 2014-03-15 9:57 PM Excellent job, Serkan. I particularly enjoyed SG # 6, which I thought was quite clever. Thanks for the contest!
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Realshaggy
Posts: 69
Country : Germany | 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.) |
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debmohanty
Country : India | Realshaggy - 2014-03-15 11:17 PM
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. |
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Realshaggy
Posts: 69
Country : Germany | Oh sorry. I didnt recognize you can use the sum of the digits as a check. |
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WA1729
Posts: 65
Country : United States | WA1729 posted @ 2014-03-16 1:46 AM 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? |
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auroux
Posts: 145
Country : France | auroux posted @ 2014-03-16 3:54 AM I agree with most other posters -- really great puzzles, but on Galaxies figuring out the white/grey/black rule and checking on the given example took forever. (I should probably just have tried to solve #7 with the rule I guessed instead of wasting time trying it out on the example, but I really didn't have faith that I had guessed right). |
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achan1058
Posts: 80
Country : Canada | I guessed wrong on #7 in such a way that produced the right answer, and only realized that when I was trying to do #8...... |
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swaroop2011
Posts: 668
Country : India | Thanks serkan, really beautiful puzzles.
Especially SG 5 and 6, Exploratory of Tetrominoes.
But unfortunately a bad test for me in Spiral Galaxies, I did continuously mistakes in all of them and at the end was confused to figure out rules for exploratory part and time got over. :(
After struggling little and fixing the rules it just took a minute each to solve each puzzle. :)
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macherlakumar
Posts: 123
Country : India | Thanks Serkan for excellent puzzles.
I enjoyed both tests, I felt that Tetrominoes is easier than Spiral Galaxies.
I figured the rules for Spiral Galaxies exploratory part in just 1 min but due to stress I convinced myself that I got the rules wrong and slept :D
Regards,
Ravi |
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bob
Posts: 59
Country : United States | bob posted @ 2014-03-20 3:30 AM How do I give up? The last two spiral galaxy puzzles are impossible to me; I am baffled by the example and I would just like to find out the rules. But the clock never runs out. Is there any way to forfeit? Seems rather difficult for a "beginner" contest. |
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swaroop2011
Posts: 668
Country : India | i don't think you can do that, just leave it like that and when test ends it will stop.
But i would like to suggest you that try thinking in different ways, i also got stuck there but once figure it out its very easy : )
Just fix some rules what you think from given example and then try to solve, if you are not feeling its unique then try to extend some rules. : )
bob - 2014-03-20 3:30 AM
How do I give up? The last two spiral galaxy puzzles are impossible to me; I am baffled by the example and I would just like to find out the rules. But the clock never runs out. Is there any way to forfeit? Seems rather difficult for a "beginner" contest. |
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bob
Posts: 59
Country : United States | bob posted @ 2014-03-20 5:46 AM I can't read the post because I can't solve the last two puzzles. I've been staring at the example quite some time at different sittings. I can't come up with any rule sets that would give unique solutions. Very frustrating. I guess I'll just wait. |
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kiwijam
Posts: 187
Country : New Zealand | kiwijam posted @ 2014-03-20 6:05 AM Many thanks Serkan, challenging but not impossible. :)
(PS The Score link at the top of this page is referring to the 201304 test, not the 201403 test...) |
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swaroop2011
Posts: 668
Country : India | bob - 2014-03-20 5:46 AM
I can't read the post because I can't solve the last two puzzles. I've been staring at the example quite some time at different sittings. I can't come up with any rule sets that would give unique solutions. Very frustrating. I guess I'll just wait.
check your PM |
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bob
Posts: 59
Country : United States | bob posted @ 2014-03-21 2:10 AM In case anyone else has this problem--maintain your printer! In the experimental spiral galaxy puzzles, my black circles and grey circles were all sort of...greyish-black and indistinguishable. I use a cheap laser printer and the toner is running low. This made figuring out the rules impossible without explanation. Thank you Swaroop for the PM. I looked at the original pdf file and indeed, there are three different colors of circles not two. Time to go to the office supply store. |
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swaroop2011
Posts: 668
Country : India | May be in future to avoid this problems, a small warning or a line saying that puzzles might contain different color clues or something like that can be announced.
bob - 2014-03-21 2:10 AM
In case anyone else has this problem--maintain your printer! In the experimental spiral galaxy puzzles, my black circles and grey circles were all sort of...greyish-black and indistinguishable. I use a cheap laser printer and the toner is running low. This made figuring out the rules impossible without explanation. Thank you Swaroop for the PM. I looked at the original pdf file and indeed, there are three different colors of circles not two. Time to go to the office supply store. |
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Administrator
Country : India | Passwords removed from booklets. There is no plan to upload solutions this time. If anyone needs solutions, please post here. |
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Nola
Posts: 18
Country : Germany | Nola posted @ 2014-03-22 1:18 AM Hi, I could not figure out the rules for Exploratory Galaxy, which would lead to a unique solution. Could someone please explain to me? (Please real explanation, not only a hint, since I am already very frustrated with them. ;-) ) Before them, it took me only little time for the other six puzzles (at least for me), so I hoped to finish once in time, but then got stuck and ended frustrated. However, I was pleased with my tetromino results (even when not in time). Greetings, Nola |
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Bram28
Posts: 35
Country : The Netherlands | Bram28 posted @ 2014-03-22 2:08 AM Administrator - 2014-03-20 10:42 PM
Passwords removed from booklets. There is no plan to upload solutions this time. If anyone needs solutions, please post here.
So what was the rule in exploratory galaxies? I'm still stumped! |
@ 2014-03-15 2:22 AM (#14613 - in reply to #14579) (#14613) Top