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