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?	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?	Too few pages / too small grids

Please make the puzzles larger!

Nice Test.
And definitely giving test in evening was bad idea but no option was there ;). After 70 min there were few disturbances and some how managed to solve one more in last 30 min and did mistake in two which i couldnt recover. Considering that and other's scores i think it was ok performance.
I felt 120 min should have been ideal for this test.
The puzzles were very nice, after solving one or two i felt they were tricky than hard. So needed more time to figure out in each. Among all i solved, killer, quad sum and consecutive were best. Ofcourse consecutive i got logic but did some mistake and couldn't solve it back in time.
Anyways Enjoyable test, have to solve all remaining later :)

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

I never thought that a 7x7 test could be this tough!All the sudokus that I solved during the test had a lovely and narrow solving path.Great set of practice puzzles too which served as an antecedent to this set.
Thanks Richard for a great set of sudokus!You continue to keep producing tests which are unique and high in fun quotient. : )

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?	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

Could i solve online this test, without printing out the booklet?

As this issue was addressed earlier,
but again Online Interface is not available for this test.
So you need to print out and solve or in paint or anywhere else where you are comfortable with.

Good luck :).

Thank you, i'll try next month.

That's a bit too late.

I didn't get to the test in time. Can we get the password or unlock the PDF if we want to work on it offline?

Thanks.

i hope the next test will be solvable online, since i don't have a printer here and i don't like to solve on paper and then submit, so i'll wait.

The test is running till the end of today if you still want to participate. After that the password will be removed so you can solve in your own pace without the competition pressure.

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

Thanks Richard, that was fun. I had the most trouble with the Arrow, Consecutive Circles and Fortress, but I'm glad to be able to squeeze out all 20 in the last few seconds.

I had a small issue with the diagonal Sudoku that it didn't print the dotted diagonal lines. It didn't really cause an issue as I checked the rules and added them myself. I don't know if anyone else had this issue.

It was a fun test. I admire how you can pull off so many nice tricks in such small grids.

forgot the password .what to do?

It is in red letters on the submission page after you have clicked the start test-button.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	A bit skewed
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?	Average
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

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?	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

For my first test (and really my first proper experience with Sudoku as a whole) I obviously found this pretty challenging, but I really enjoyed the time I spent on it, and found the solving process was rather quick once I figured it out. Thanks for a great test!

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

7x7 is now over. Congratulations to deu, TiiT and Nikola for the top positions.
My guess was that the fastest player would need around 90 minutes or a bit less, so for that reason I set the duration at 100 minutes. I was already positive surprised when TiiT solved the whole set in 82 minutes on saturday but when I noticed deu's total time of 71 minutes early sunday morning, I almost fell of my chair. Really an incredible performance! Very, very well done!!!

Players have given some feedback in the last days and I will respond to that in detail tomorrow. I will also write some notes to some puzzles as well as hints for some of the puzzles to get started. But that will be also tomorrow; I don't have enough time for that today.

For now I thank all participants for taking part and LMI for giving me again the opportunity to write and present a sudoku test!

Richard

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?	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

Richard for a very enjoyable test.

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?	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

Thanks Bob! I wish you a lot of holidays with lots of puzzle fun!

FYI: Breinbrekers doesn't exist anymore. It is taken off the market by the end of 2013. After that the Dutch Puzzle Association was erected. (Website: www.wcpn.nl) where you can solve a Breinbreker-like puzzle daily. If you are interested in my puzzles, check out the forum post about my Sudoku Variants Series or my author's profile about my friday-noon-puzzles, both on the website of Logic Masters Germany, where I am active for about 5/6 years now.



I have choosen exactly the same cell-size as in my previous tests; there were no complaints back then. Maybe it is an optical effect because there are now four puzzles on each page? At least writing space should be the same.



Thanks Tawan!
I think you have made an interesting point here. Writing puzzles starts with a lot of thinking for me. (Especially for tests or championships.) On the way back in my car from work to home I tend to do a lot of thinking about puzzles. In the weeks before I actually start writing the puzzles, numerous ideas have crossed my mind about what 'tricks' I can apply. I like to explore the possibilities a variant offers.
Especially for this 7x7-test I can add that it wasn't always easy to use my ideas. The fact that you have only seven digits and not much room makes it harder (than I thought), so quite some ideas didn't lead to a puzzle. I also used much more T&E to get there, so to say. Constructing 9x9-puzzles is easier.


Thanks Swaroop. Your notes have made me think, and what I have written as response to Tawan's lines comes into sight here. (My) thinking about puzzles mostly concentrates on
a) the opening or
b) a by-pass in the solving route that can make a huge difference in solving times between top players and the rest of the field.
I think you can call these solving steps indeed 'tricky', and I like to distinguish this from 'hard'.

By putting these 'tricks' in my puzzles, I also hope that people learn something while solving my puzzles, so in the end I have contributed a small piece in the development of the puzzle sport. The notes to the puzzles that I will write in the next forum thread will be helpful if players didn't recognize the tricks during solving.