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?	Too many medium difficult puzzles
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?	Way too many puzzles (too little time)
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many medium difficult puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	A bit too many puzzles
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

What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many medium difficult puzzles
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?	Way too few puzzles (too much time)
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth too much or too little
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

I enjoyed the puzzles, but most were not worth their awarded points. I had a feeling that they have the same difficulty. I do not know why, but the three most expensive sudokus (Quad max, Linked Cons and Hamle) were the easiest for me (besides the classics). On the other hand, I had many problems with both Arrows and Trio Sudoku. Also broke Palindrome Search few times, but it was just because of my stupidity, not the difficulty of that puzzle. Anyway, nice test, looking forward to the puzzle PU II.

Edited by greenhorn 2014-04-21 4:33 AM

Dear All,

Can anyone kindly explain, what does the question actually mean for "2 Even 2 Odd Sudoku - 70 Points"; which says

(“Their” Straight 2 Even 2 Odd Sudoku):- There can never be more than 2 consecutive digits of the same parity in a row or column.

What means parity over here? I am slightly lost in here.

Thanks

@shameem
Parity refers to odd (1 3 5 7 9) or even (2 4 6 8) property of the digits.

All the rule means is : There can not be more than 2 odd digits placed next to each other in a row/column. Also there can not be more than 2 even digits placed next to each other in a row/column.

Thanks.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly 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?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

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

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?	Too many medium difficult puzzles
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?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

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?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

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?	A bit too many puzzles
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Firstly, I liked the whole idea behind the 'Parallel Universe'. Congratulations !
Anyway, great set of sudokus, Prasanna ! Most were manageable for an average player like me.
Linked-consecutive looked simple, but swept away a lot of time. I had to skip Hamle as I did not understand the rules till the end. So maybe a bit more 'non-standard' and simplified rules for the not-so-easy-to-understand sudokus would be great !

Overall, it was great fun !

Someone, please throw some light on Hamle. I still havnt understood the rules and the anti-rules for starting this sudoku. Thanks :)

Hamle Rules:

It's just one basic rule i.e. It says each given number should be moved that much number of cells as that number's value ,within the grid i.e. not crossing the border of whole sudoku.
After you find new positions , you solve it like normal sudoku. There is no Anti-Rule as such.

For eg: in IB, r1c3 "5" it cant move left or right as not much space, so it can be only moved down. Similarly for r6c4 "5".
Other simple trick is numbers like r6c1 "1", it can be moved right or top so it can be at r5c1 or r6c2 in either case it remains in that 2*3 box. So clue "r5c1" must move to r4c1. This kind of technique is used most in the actual puzzle too.
Hope that helps. :)

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly 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?	Way too many puzzles (too little time)
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly 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?	Fairly Nice
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	A bit too many puzzles
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
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?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

Password removed and solutions appended to the sudoku booklet.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly 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?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

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?	Too many hard puzzles
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?	Way too many puzzles (too little time)
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

(Bit late to get to this due to getting PU-II ready) Parallel Universe is over.

Our Universe Prasanna - Congrats to Gotroch, deu and sinchai4547 who take the top 3 spots respectively. Also, congrats to Kishore (kishy72) for topping the Indian rankings with a well-planned performance. I was happy to see a good participation for this contest with 248 solvers in total. It was quite a wonderful experience authoring this one. Quad Max was the highest rated Sudoku, but its nice for me to see that 5 Sudokus (Linked Consecutive, Quad Max, 2 Even 2 Odd, Arrow Sequences, Palindrome Search) got a high rating. Even the classics, which I don't think I'm that good at writing in general, were well received. There were a few negatives of course, like points allocation being off for some solvers. But I feel there'll be an element of this in many contests, especially ones involving newer variants (like Hamle) because it comes down to the author taking factors into consideration like solvers being new to it, etc. It's not an exact process but obviously the intention is to have the points distribution as fair as possible. I think most of them were accurate, for which I thank my two great testers, Bram and Salih (and also for getting the testing done pretty fast as I was probably a bit on the late side with getting the set ready ).

In general I hope everyone enjoyed this contest, and I hope you enjoy the Puzzle version of it this coming weekend!


Their Universe Prasanna - Congrats to Gotroch, deu and sinchai4547 from your universe. I can't reveal the winners on this side because it'll break the time-space continuum. It was really fun translating the puzzles to my people and letting them enjoy the contest too. Obviously, we shall meet again, very soon, in Parallel Universe II! Check it out on the top right. I took a more active role this time in providing a list of types in our Universe for your Universe's Prasanna to pick from! I hope you enjoy the puzzle types from our side!

Nice puzzles - good for mid-level players like myself. Didn't get the parallel universe part but that didn't seem to be significant.

Anyone else have trouble with Linked Consecutive? I wasted a lot of time on it and came up with an ambiguity that I couldn't overcome.

Actually, one of my testers had this problem, and I had to show them the next step too, so yeah, it can be a bit difficult to spot. I assume the image they sent me covers the portion you're stuck with. In the bottom left grid, use coloring to prove that R1C1=R5C2=R2C3 and you should be able to finish things from there.





Attachments
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LinkedCons.png (25KB - 1 downloads)

I don't know what "coloring" means. Perhaps this is the short-cut that I'm missing? Please explain.
I solved it both ways and had initially thought both worked tho' now I see the mistake in my "other" solution.
Thanks.

Coloring is basically a way to set placeholders meaning that certain cells will contain the same digit X. R1C1 is 3/6, so are R5C1 and R5C2. So if digit X is in R1C1, it'll be in R5C2 by eliminating itself from R5C1. This same digit will now eliminate itself from R1C5 (because its in R1C1) and R2C2 (because its in R5C2) and will therefore be in R2C3. Coloring's just a simple way of getting to this because you can color (or mark in some way like circling) the cells I mentioned instead of going 3/6 in your mind for each one.