The Arrow sudoku was indeed quite tricky -- not exactly beginner stuff in my opinion.
Apart from that, on the classics I must have set a new record for the number of incorrect solves and broken puzzles. For some reason it took me 3 attempts to get each of the first two puzzles right... :( when I submitted all my answers after 12 minutes, little did I know that my final solve time would be more than twice that.
Professional musicians often claim that a catastrophic general rehearsal is the best guarantee that the concert itself will go well, so perhaps I should take comfort in playing so badly just a few weeks before the WPC...
Denis

The arrow was indeed quite nasty, especially near the end. I ended up having to use some kind of cycle strategy to eliminate a digit.

This contest probably serve as my "most typo per question" as well, having entered 25% of the puzzles incorrectly.

As far as I know, It's entirely up to you whether you want to compete as Beginner or Seasoner, depending on how you feel -- unless you have a high LMI rating, in which case you will be forced to compete as a Seasoner.

Edited by auroux 2014-07-24 4:59 AM

Once you have chosen to be a beginner, you can become a Seasoner in two main ways,
1. Using LMI ratings/performance on these tests/performance on Monthly tests, there are 4 criteria to get bumped up automatically.
2. If you want to make the change, you may request one of the admins to bump you up manually.

The arrow sudoku was the best. First time I am participating in such online sudokus. I could do all the other 7 online and had submitted and finished off yesterday. But today I took the Arrow sudoku on a printout and with a beautiful logic could complete successfully. Wonderful feeling... even if the timing looks awry.... Thanks once again.

Mistakenly I did not submitted my answers before 40 minutes. I submit the answers of 3 sudokus at 40:25 and arrow sudoku at 64:31. will i get full points for first 3 sudokus or only half points?

Nice and Awesome Puzzles.
Trio was nice theme.
Arrow literally killed my time took 10 min on that.

The arrow Sudoku was a real test to the logic. I submitted the classics well within time and also the 3 variants again in time but the arrow sudoku was a killer. The first time i submitted i got it wrong and then it took almost 100 mins extra to solve the puzzle correctly. I really enjoyed solving it finally though I lost on the time factor. Awaiting eagerly for the next beginners contest already.

I have been trying to participate for a very long time but the plugin just isnt right some body plz tell me what to do about it.

@winash26
i guess you are talking about java flash plugin.
I don't think anything else is required.

You can try in other browsers like chrome, mozilla or opera. Also you can try installing the browser java flash plugin again.


Edited by Administrator : LMI does not use java.

You need adobe flash player ( http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ ) installed on your laptop / desktop. Do you have it? If not, can you have it installed?

oops sorry my mistake :)

Can you please give me tips now on how to solve the 'Arrow' problem?

Thanks

Please ignore this message - I figured it out thanks to a tip from Deb Mohanty

This is the first Beginners Contest I've authored, and it was a sudden plan when Deb and I decided I should conduct one before the WSC-WPC fever sets in.

I hate creating Classics (like many Authors), but since I had no choice, I pushed myself and created 3 Classics (Classic 1, 2, 3) each having a different kind of solve. I think I got tired then and created a simple fourth Classic with the 'triplets' theme :-)

Trio Sudoku: It was my personal favourite. It took me longer to create with a 1~9 diagonal theme than any normal Trio, but I was satisfied with the puzzle. It had a nice solve and I'm sure all of you enjoyed solving this :P

Diagonal Sudoku: I like Diagonal Sudoku with 3 blank rows, it forces solvers to put in those digits using the diagonal. Maybe next time I'll try 4 blank rows!

Extra Region Sudoku: Nothing special here, just a pleasant design to see (I think!) and a simple symmetry of givens. I didn't want too many digits to be filled using Classic rules, and I think that stands true for this puzzle.

Arrow Sudoku: There must be something to test solvers, right? I admit the Arrow was not trivial, it had a tight opening in the bottom-left of the grid, but after that, the solve is very smooth. Lots of players struggled solving this variant and I've posted one (the easiest I could think of) solving path. You can have a look here: http://rohanrao91.blogspot.in/2014/07/beginners-contest-on-lmi.html

I'm glad to see 295 participants, though crossing 300 would've been nice :-|, but thanks a lot for participating and I hope you enjoyed.
Congrats to the top-3 Beginners: sworls (USA), anti-inequality (Turkey) and ViRa (India) and the top-3 Seasoners: Kota (Japan), Timothy (France) and deu (Japan).

Feels nice to finally conduct a Beginners Contest and hope to see many more contests and sudokus in future!

I find your explanation about the 1 in R8C4 quite confusing. I imagine it can be struggling to try to "solve" these 2 arrows independently. If you take care of both arrows together it becomes very easy:
Considering that the maximum of the sum of both cells R9C23 is 4+5=9, then the sum of the three cells R7C45 and R8C4 has to be <9, hence must contain a 1, which can be placed only at R8C4.
There is even no need to write candidates ;)

I liked this sudoku very much, and I remember I explained this "technique" about taking care of several arrows together in a Swiss federation newsletter (...a bit sad that other swiss players taking part didn't solve this sudoku).

See you in London

Fred

The way I got it was

R9 C23 could be from 3/4/5 so other than 5 , 3/4 has 1 in their addition combination. which has to in one of the cells even if 5 is one of the cells.
so 1 has to be in one of the 4 cells(R7 C45 and R8 C34), which can only come at R8C4.

Since only single 1 comes in these 4 cells which will also provide other clue, that is R9 C23, one of this should contain 5.


Edited by gaurav.kjain 2014-07-29 10:16 PM

Yes, this is something even I missed. Thanks!


Yes :-)


There are multiple ways of figuring out the bottom-left... but either ways, I think it does take a while to identify the opening, especially when you are solving under time-pressure!

Where can I view my LMI rating points?

Click on your name: http://logicmastersindia.com/forum/view-profile.asp?action=view&uid...

Thank you

Hi, Can you tell me when is this month's beginner's sudoku contest likely to be published ?

Since we're all headed for the World Championships, there's nothing planned as of now, and won't be for the near future. If something does get planned, it will be announced here. You can always practice the archived ones though.

Thanks and good luck with the World Championship !

Are they held currently or not??