add to this the things that I did.... bought Airtel smartbytes,called the printer service Engineer earlier in the day thinking that the problem might be on my side...Did not expect such a stupid joke from LMI and whoever is the brain behind this stupid joke purely sucks!

...the PB has a large tip box at top-right corner of the first page. That was exactly my concern, but I decided putting such large box will be a clear warning.

Sorry for taking the test not on April 1st. Next time we'll make sure the test is open only for that one day, even if that spoils the fact that it's an April Fools test.

@meowme: Yes, that's 1.5 minutes. Assuming you already expect this to be an April Fools test and is used to solve things on computer, that's not really unreasonable...

Large tip Box?Don't fool around.It just says "Do not print this PB".It never says you CAN'T print this PB and you know something? I did start this test on April 1st and it doesn't matter when I take the test as I still would have been fooled just like many others here even if I had taken it on a 1st ,a 2nd or a 3rd .In fact I even asked Deb yesterday to cancel my start feeling that the problem is created due to my slow net speed.I was careful not to take even a glance at the puzzles thinking that it would be unfair to ask for a re-start after that.But I was never told yesterday that this was some stupid joke.

Let me say you something.I am not against people playing pranks on April Fools day but this JUST ISN'T the place to try out your monkey antics (or of anyone else' for that matter) nor should the jokes be in such a way that it hurts others in some way .Just because you don't have anything better to do doesn't mean that everyone in here would be the same way.My earnest advice at this point is to scrap this crappy test immediately and I sincerely hope that the April Contest coming up next is also not crap like this .This is just for the benefit of other LMI members and not for me as I have decided to skip the April contest .I don't want to be fooled again nor waste my time on stupid stuff like these.By playing out this 'high octane drama' along with you , LMI has made a fool not just of its members but of itself too.

Ha ha, I hadn't been the victim of an April Fool's joke for a couple of years. Took me a full 10 seconds before I realized what the first puzzle even was! Well done!

Exactly; because I said "do not print this PB", one that finds the PB cannot be printed should actually suspect that the PB is intentionally designed not to be printable.

As for the rest, I'll leave that to your judgment. Just don't participate in the next April Fools test (if there's any) if you don't want to be hurt to discover it's an elaborate prank.

got stuck on puzzle #2, pls halp ;/

Edited by karzym 2014-04-02 11:14 PM

Wonderful!!! I expected some Aprils Fool prank, so I intentionally waited for the second day of the month and test. As it was still there, I started the test, copied the password without reading, wanted to print the file - it did not work. Next thing I detected was the box which said "no printing" so only then I did a first look on the puzzle. When I realized it is solveable anyway, I started to solve and wanted to see how much time I need to be without error. After finishing I was on place 30 - my best result on an LMI contest ever. Looking forward to the final result after end of test - I think this test is very funny!!! Thanks for it!!!

It took me a minute before I realized that the whole thing is a joke. At first I was like, "All I see are the instructions, where are the puzzles?" After that, it was a case of "How fast can I solve these by just eye-balling?" In the end, I had to scribble on my desk for the Scrabble.

Anyways, when can we have a genuine Sprint test again?

Edited by achan1058 2014-04-03 3:00 AM

Another strange technical issue -- I completed the contest at 6:58 but it didn't register that I was done until 11:25. I clicked "submit all answers" at least three times and refreshed the contest page twice before the clock finally stopped. Issue with Chrome perhaps?

Don't worry, I see you being registered to finish at 6:58.

Well done Ivan.
I hope all participants understand it was just silly fun, we have plenty of serious contests.
The only down-side is I was looking forward to an hour of puzzles, but I'm just too awesomely fast...

On a side-note, are the scores calculated correctly? It seems the raw total on the score table is about 1800, not 1200?

Fixed. xevs loses 14000 points :-(

Yeah, I also just realized that the scores were wrong. After fixing, xevs' score is now near 30 thousand points; still a new record for LMI though. :P

1. In my defense, (now that I've done the 'test'), I previously thought that this was a 'proper' test, and that my computer showed the multiplier as 60/time instead of (60-time). But well, 5 minutes of good fun :)

2. This test would be really fun as a genuine sprint test, with small 6x6 grids (or there-about) and these 20 classics.

3. The nurikabe was probably thrice as hard as most of the other questions. It's all relative, of course.

4. Phew. Not counted into LMI ratings :D

5. How did only 80% get the last question right?

Edited by meowme 2014-04-03 6:25 PM

1. Indeed the multiplier is 60/time.

2. To be honest I picked the puzzle genres that a) make good answer keys that can fool people, and b) have good small puzzles, in that order.

3 is courtesy of Deb. See above. My variation would be something like 2x2 or 1xn.

5. Not everyone is familiar with that, plus it's not culture-neutral?

I guess someone fixed it in the results table after I posted...?

In retrospect, I think I accidentally tripped on a bug in the Java applet. After I logged in, but before I got the password, I clicked on the "1-10" and "11-20" links just to see how the answer input worked. Somewhere along the line (after I got the password I think) the response boxes for 1-10 appeared twice -- back-to-back -- at the 1-10 link. Ditto for the 11-20 boxes at the 11-20 link.

After I entered all 20 solutions in the first sets of boxes, nothing happened when I tried to enter the solutions again in the second sets of boxes, but I think the applet still read them as unanswered questions somehow.


If I have time between now and 11:59 UTC, I can create a dummy account and see if I can replicate what happened.


[Moderators, please move this to another forum if appropriate)

Edited by brecher92 2014-04-03 9:37 PM

What is #Pen in the scores page?

I first scrolled through PB and found the last puzzle, and saw all example puzzles of IB in PB. So I figured it was an April Fool's contest and started typing the answer of example puzzle until I figured out where the REAL puzzles were located, lol.. They were TINY... Almost didn't notice at first..

Penalty, number of wrong submissions.

Awww.... I am very disappointed that this contest will not count for score.

(sorry Ko. but still impressive!)

Oh man, this Nurikabe puzzle was HUUUUGE!!!

Darn, I might have saved a few seconds if I had realized sooner that I didn't need to solve the scrabble; there was only one possibility for the answer key regardless.

Thanks for the test. Too bad I couldn't beat 50000. :(

Wow, Excellent puzzle set!

Congratulations for MellowMelon to win the whole thing, getting past xevs with 119 seconds! Now MellowMelon is the holder of the record of most points in one test (38.5 thousands plus), at least until some person decides to make a test scoring a total of 1,000,000. *wink*

Thank you for everyone participating! A more comprehensive post is written here.

Edited by chaotic_iak 2014-04-04 7:41 AM