To begin with, congrats to Kota, Jakub O and Tiit who take the top 3 spots respectively. Also, congrats to Kishore for topping the Indian rankings with an awesome performance. Kishore's improvement over the last two years has been tremendous and it bodes well for the Indian team.

I was simply blown away by the participation in this contest with 384 solvers in total(343 Non-zero scores). When the contest began Deb and I had assumed there would be about 60-70 official Indian entries but the numbers were beyond our imagination. Total of 147 Indians took part (125 Official).

Let me try and explain how the Idea of Sudoku Mahabharat began. When we were in London for the WSC, During lunch, the discussion moved towards the Indian team composition and how Rohan, Prasanna and I had become a constant feature and everyone else fighting for the remaining fourth spot. Thats when we decided why not create a Grand Prix style of tournament for Indians where the top players are ineligible to participate. This would give others a chance to compete with no prior notions and will help them remain motivated.

Since this was the first episode and I was entrusted to begun the tournament, it was not an easy task to determine the difficulty of the puzzles. There was always this battle whether the puzzles are too easy or too hard. We had to keep in mind the target audience in India. For some of the regular international players this might appear to be a glorified beginners contest, and I may agree to a certain extent, but I have to thank my testers Rohan and PRasanna for testing and the countless discussions/arguments we might have had in finalising the puzzles. This mix would not have been possible without their insights.

Untouch 9x9 was the highest rated Sudoku, but its nice to see that nearly all the puzzles were rated in the same range. My personal favourites were the Untouch 9x9 and the Quadruple 9x9. 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. This is again to majorly the timings of the testers and personal solving experiences might always differ. Also each solver has their own method of approaching a puzzle and that in the end will determine how the answer keys are selected. It's not an exact process but obviously the intention is to have the points distribution as fair as possible. Personally I think most of them were accurate.

I Hope you all enjoyed the contest and we look forward to similar patronage for the upcoming episodes.

How well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	variations represented the theme well
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
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 well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	variations represented the theme well
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
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 well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	variations represented the theme well
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many easy puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
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

why has my result been disqualified????

How well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	variations represented the theme well
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
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

IB for SM Round 2?

Will be posted today.

how to submit the answers??
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Hi. If you are solving in the online flash interface, please click Submit near each puzzle after you have completed.

If you are solving in a paper and entering the marked rows/columns, enter the specified row or column combination in the text box A and B and then click submit button.

hi i am atul and i am new to this site tell me something about how to play in this site and what tournaments i have to play as early as possible

The next contest that's important is the Sudoku Mahabharat Round 6 - http://logicmastersindia.com/SM/2014-15.asp . Unless something else gets announced before that date.

As for how to participate on LMI, check this - http://logicmastersindia.com/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=381

The link http://logicmastersindia.com/SM/2014-15.asp is showing a 404 error

There is no "." at the end. Please check again.

ok

i was the finalist of jagran sudoku championship held in lucknow 1year ago and unfortunately not able to win the trophy or even a certificate, do u think i could perform better here and how?

The forum is full of India's and the world's best Sudoku solvers, so any solving related doubt will get addressed really well.
We have regular contests here, like the ongoing Sudoku Mahabharat. Participating regularly obviously helps progress over a one-off contest. You can also try the downloadable archives for more Sudokus to practice - http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/downloads.asp?testType=10
This is the place where the National Sudoku Championships will be announced/held. So if your eventual goal is to do well in those, being regular here would help.

I am new here and got to know about the Sudoku Mahabharat. Only two rounds are remaining. Can I still qualify for finals??

It will obviously be difficult to beat scores accumulated over 5 rounds, but you never know. Either way, I'd suggest you participate simply as practice for future contests. If you are new here its especially important to get used to the ways of an online competition so that you can do better in online ISCs and the Sudoku GP and so on.

Updated rankings after 6 rounds of SM are available at http://logicmastersindia.com/SM/2014-15-ranks.asp

Final rankings after seven rounds are now available at http://logicmastersindia.com/SM/2014-15-ranks.asp