In Battleship Observer, does a numbered cell count as empty cell for other numbered cells?

It will be counted as empty as clear from example (count numbers for 6 in example to understand and clear your doubt).

Yes.

Note: Pentominous doesn't have the restriction that each region can contain at most one letter, which the competition puzzle, Pentomino Division, does (as mentioned in the Instruction Booklet). Other than this, there's no change.

For the Tom Tom puzzle does operations division and subtractions apply if the group is having more than two cells? If yes, then I assume that operator will be applied in decreasing order.

Yes. And yes.

A little information about the authors -

Thomas Snyder and Grant Fikes are both from the USA, and are regular authors on Grandmaster Puzzles, where I am a contributing author too. You can find out more about them here and here. I have previously linked to some of the puzzles on this site, in this thread as practice, but you will find many other Classic puzzle types there too to practice for the weekend competition, like Nurikabe, Slitherlink, TomTom, Star Battle, Battleships, Araf, etc. I highly recommend the site for high quality puzzles in general.

Bram de Laat is from the Netherlands, and has a blog called Para's Puzzle Site. I have linked to a few puzzles that can be used from his blog too, but here too there are some great puzzles across a variety of types. There should be some helpful classics here too. Also, I recommend viewing the Slitherlink solving tips post by Bram, discussing patterns that are helpful in solving this puzzle type.

James McGowan is from New Zealand, but competes in the UK team internationally. He has been on "double duty" for this weekend, what with also being the main author for the UK Puzzle GP. He doesn't have his own blog, but has contributed puzzles to the UKPA forum, the German Puzzle Portal, and the upcoming Art of Puzzles book (by GM Puzzles). He's been quite helpful as one of the test solvers too.

There are contributions from the Organizers too, namely me and Deb Mohanty. Since you're already on LMI if you're reading this, Deb's basically the person who runs the site, and has also authored many contests here, including multiple National Championships. I have my own blog, but I'm not nearly as active as I used to be. My recent efforts, apart from writing puzzles for GM Puzzles and the recent Monthly Tests on LMI, have gone into starting a Patronage system for LMI. While the Championship is free, if you enjoy our contests, and want to give something back, please check it out.

Also, thanks to all the Test Solvers:

James McGowan, as mentioned above.
Bastien Vial-Jaime from France.
Vladimir Portugalov from Belarus.
Tiit Vunk from Estonia.

in Tiki Tour, can a tent belong to 2 trees? In other words, can 2 trees have only a single tent that is adjacent to both trees?

Each tree must have its "own" tent.

Word Nurikabe: Can the two or more given letters be part of same word? I assume that answer is yes as instructions does not restrict it. Please do clarify if possible.

Will this become restricted forum after test begins like other monthly tests ?

Yes.

ok
Best of luck to all :)

All the best :)

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
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

I really should not do the test when tired. Wasted a huge amount of time on the easy questions.

By the way, only my score is showing on the scoreboard, while everyone else gets 0 points. Is that normal?

Edited by achan1058 2014-05-25 4:59 PM

For now, yes. We're working on the incorrect submissions to release the proper official results.

Did the Instructions Booklet (IB) provide enough information about participating in IPC?	Yes, mostly.
Did you understand the puzzle rules, examples and answer keys from the IB?	I understood all of them.
Did you find enough easy puzzles to solve during the championship?	Yes, there were many of them.
After your experience in IPC, are you going to participate in future championshiops or contests at LMI?	Most likely

The rules of the every puzzle should be listed in bullet form.

Each bullet point should have one and only one restriction of the puzzle mentioned in it.

Currently, one instruction statement of the puzzle has multiple restrictions mentioned in it (or all the rules are described in a paragraph format) - increasing the probability of a new-comer to miss one of the multiple restrictions.
(Anyway, some of the statements in the instructions are complicated/convoluted for new comers.
So breaking the instruction statement down into individual bullet points, with one rule per bullet point will make it clearer to new-comers)

= = = =

While the participants are supposed to read the rules very carefully, but it does help if the same are listed in bullet-wise fashion so that the solvers (especially new-comers and non-regular-puzzle-solvers) don't miss any facet of the puzzle.

It also makes it easier for non-regular solvers to validate the answers upon submission - by checking against each bullet point.

Edited by rajibrborah 2014-05-25 5:24 PM

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

Thanks for this feedback. These are very good points. We'll consider them in the future.

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?	A bit hard
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right