Great test, not very successful on my results.
The presentation is excellent and very welcoming for new puzzlers.
Nice set of classic puzzles and simple-to-understand layouts.

Although you may have to triple check their solution keys, which I guess is unhelpable.
All in all, 5 stars. Congratulations

A rule that a line can't cover a 2x2 square may be needed in some puzzles, to force a unique solution.
If such a rule does not included, one may use the fact that the puzzle has a unique solution, without this rule.

Two questions:
1. In H2O, based on the examples (and chemistry), molecules are always arranged as H-O-H and not H-H-O, but such a rule is not included. Does H-H-O possible?
2. In half dominoes, does the half dominoes should be placed in the marked 3x3 boxes, without overlapping, as in the example?

Thanks, Amnon


Edited by amnon 2010-09-05 9:58 PM

@amnon
In H20 the atoms cannot be connected as H-H-O. They can only be connected as H-O-H.

In half dominoes the dominoes need to be placed in the marked 3X3 boxes without overlapping.

Just to say thanks for the test - many of the puzzles were unknown to me but I really enjoyed having a go despite my extremely low score (although I did complete another 3 of the questions correctly worth 50 points but very stupidly made mistakes in counting the number of turns in both ABC connectors and Masyu and miscounted one of the rows of Xs in the No Four in a row puzzle! ) Not to worry, at least I'll be a bit more careful submitting the results in future! A great selection of puzzles which I will now go away and finish at leisure! Need to get the brain cells ticking over a little quicker!

First I add my thanks for the nice puzzles.
The interesting bonus system requires different approach for the selection of problems to solve.

There is some problem with my submission of the Queens park puzzle. I entered the right solution in the form (I can still see it) and I submitted 3 answers after this one which were received correctly. It tells me that answers to 13 puzzles were submitted, which is the number I sent, including the Queens park.
However, in the results page I see the Queens park, but with empty solution.

amnon, check now

Any other claims from any player, please post soon before we make the results public.

It's OK now, thanks.

Congratulations to Thomas, Ulrich, Hideaki for topping in EverGreen II.
Out of 214 participants, 166 got non zero scores - both numbers are better than any other tests at LMI.
Thank you everyone for participating.

@ amnon

Thanks for your comments about the separate bonuses for the different puzzle sections and different puzzle difficulties.

We have tried to draw inspiration from the Brazilian Puzzle Championships and the WPC in Brazil where they gave extra credit to for participants attempting puzzles across different puzzle types.

@Everybody

Please let us know how you feel about these bonuses and what we can do to improve the bonus system.

Thanks again for running a great puzzle test!

Re: the bonuses, both in my planning before the test and during the test, I figured I would be able to keep track of the "rows" and use that to know if I should stick with a puzzle or not, but it was more difficult to follow the columns or game-plan in the same way since it was less obvious on a single page of the answer sheet that some set was being completed. Perhaps a more involved user-interface would help, but my general opinion is that "group" bonuses can be a good idea but doing two different sorts as here was a little more complicated than its value.

One different aspect in Brazil is that the test-setters wanted people to spread out their work, so they used variable scores for the puzzles in each part, where here the bonuses seemed to encourage people to focus within a difficulty level or puzzle column. Perhaps the right bonus is some multiplicative factor like (# of group A solved * # of group B solved * # of group C solved ...)^some exponent. Then if you want a test with arithmetic puzzles and loop puzzles and sudoku and such grouped into sections, solvers have a motivation to go between the sections more. I'll think about this idea more for the future to see if a good system avails itself.

@motris,
I agree with both your points about this test
1) grouping should be done based on puzzle type, rather than difficulty
2) 2 different bonus system was not necessarily nice, since little planning about it can be done. May be if the puzzles were grouped by 'types' and same column had different point-puzzles, it would have made little more sense. [so that every player has to solve easy puzzles and difficult puzzles to get column bonus]. But that might just make it more complicated.

Thanks to Amit - for testing all the puzzles. His timings helped me put the puzzles into different groups.
Thanks to David - for designing the banner for the test.

Also from me, thanks for the nice contest!

@motris: I disagree that keeping track of the columns was hard, you just needed to have the table next to you and cross out all the puzzles you solved.

But there is another disadvantage with those multidimensional bonuses: One mistake might be punished 3 times (with time bonus 4 times). E.g. I lost more than 100 points by not counting the given 2 in the polymino puzzle.

Unfortunately this happened to me as well, 1 error in counting vertical bridges, 3 penalties.
This was the icing on the cake of a horrible performance from me...
Excellent set of puzzles which has been rewarded by a great number of players from all over the world. The formula chosen with a relatively short time, good mix of puzzles from relatively easy to not too difficult, and two days time to play seems to be the winning combination. Hope to see more.
Will never thank enough puzzlers like you who spend time in organizing contests like this one.
Stefano

Thanks for some excellent puzzles. I was able to look at only A and E groups in the given time and the puzzles were indeed as expected - easy in group A and not-so-easy in Group E. Darts was also very easy - Later when I looked at it, I could solve it visually. ABCD 2nd end view was a good idea and I have not seen this elsewhere. I was not able to make much of a headway in Dutch Loop, except for the border rows/columns. Can someone explain good logical starting points for solving the puzzle.
Regarding the bonus point system, it was a nice multi-dimensional concept and must have kept the participants busy with a parallel calculation. I won't be able to comment whether it was good/effective or not. Looks like it probably was. But others who got bonus points, or narowly missed bonus points, can probably comment on it. So far, I have already seen three comments already where participants suffered to the tune of 100+ points because of one mistake.

Thanks for the fun puzzles. Not sure that I saw the connection from a difficulty perspective or grouping perspective to attribute bonuses, but I will leave that to the higher dwellers to figure out. I am a bit of a turtle when it comes to puzzles, so a sprint test like this is not my forte, but the medium level and size of the puzzles did force my hand and I very much enjoyed the contest.

On a side note, this is probably the first time I can say that I beat Nick Baxter at anything. In turn, if Nick wants to turn over the responsibility for the US Team to me to run going forward, I accept.

Thanks again. Looking forward to the next tone already.

Ken
"TheSubro"

Yes, the dart puzzle was very easy - and was misplaced in group C. Not surprisingly, it got lowest rating 2.78

Can you share where exactly you are stuck? I can explain from there. This is probably the only puzzle in the test which needs thinking 1 or 2 steps ahead.

Never mind...while trying to create the image for posting here, I managed to solve it.

Solving the Number Pyramid applying Uniqueness funda discusssed here

Hello,

where can I find the link to the complete answers to this test? I have gone through all the web page and I have not seen it anywhere.


Regards,
Zaki

Just uploaded solutions to most puzzles. It is available in the right side of the submission page.