Rohan and Deb - Thanks as always for the time and effort put in to making another enjoyable set of puzzles. I found the surplus challenging, as well as the chain. My favorite was the large toroidal (I liked the BL to TR pattern).Cheers, Dave

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?	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

I also found the 13 pointer (surplus 9x9) more time-intensive than the 17 pointer (chain 9x9).

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

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

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

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

i agree with rakesh that surplus sudoku was the tougheest . i also found the 6x6 scattered sudoku tougher than the 9x9 scattered sudoku. i goofed up the chain sudoku , else i would definitely be getting bonus points as i still had 5 minutes even after messing up the chain sudoku and submitting the rest of the answers.

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 hard 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

Another SM episode with a brilliant set of sudokus.My favourites of the lot were Scattered (10) wherein I admired the way the scattered cells were constricted within the middle 3 columns which in turn forced a lot of quick deductions and the Ir-regular(11)
My entire solve duration of 67 minutes was split into 3 sessions.The first session was consumed by the chain sudoku (3 pointer)for 7 minutes.The next session ,where to shrug off the poor start, I increased the pace without worrying about accuracy and completed the rest except the chain (17 points)without any errors by 54 mintues and the final session where after submitting the answers of the middle lot during which I took a bit of breather, I focussed intensely on the last chain assuming it to be very difficult.It was indeed difficult and consumed close to 15 minutes but had a very lovely solving path.
Just like the others,I too found the smaller pointers a bit more venomous than their worth.For instance the scattered and the surplus lower pointers were hard to solve for me.
The test itself was excellent ,taillored well to fit the 90 minute slot.I had great fun solving the puzzles.
Thanks a lot Rohan Rao aka R^3!! for a beautiful test. :-p

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

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

How well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	representation could have been better
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?	I have a different complaint

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?	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

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

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

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?	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?	I have a different complaint

Extra lines were printed to some of the puzzles. This was not the first time. (Perhaps they were painted white in the pdf.)

Please help us investigate this problem
1. Which puzzles / pages had this problem?
2. Which other tests did you have this problem, if you can recall?
3. Is it possible to send us a copy (photo) of the print out? ( email : logicmasteradmin@gmail.com )

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

The standard 5-pointn sudokus did not seem as well representative of their difficulty when compared to each other.

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

The solve it online was a big help. But I wonder why when I submitted on online tool accepted my answers but the solutions were not accepted on the server. Is the solver submittion taken on a seperate track?

I am not exactly sure what you mean. I see that you have submitted six sudokus. Three of them submitted using online tool - 6X6 Standard Sudokus 2,3,4. Three other sudokus are submitted using textboxes meant for paper solvers - 6X6 Standard Sudoku 1, 9X9 Standard Sudoku 1, and Irregular 6X6). Both kind of submissions are accepted and shown in the score page.

While LMI does not recommend which mode to use, you can choose between "online solving mode" or "paper mode" or mix of them to solve and submit the sudokus.

Top 20 after Irregular Variations

Player	Standard	Irregular	Total
kishy72	127.767	122.4	250.167
witty	107.833	82.7	190.533
rakesh_rai	81.4	107.9	189.3
amitsowani	97	83	180
akash.doulani	92.9	83	175.9
dp_94	76	99.2167	175.217
ChessMaharaja	86	84	170
utkaarsh	75.7	89.5	165.2
rajeshk	88	72	160
lenson	74.7	83	157.7
gaurav.kjain	75	74	149
neerajmehrotra	55	71	126
chiragsethi	64.9	61	125.9
abidaya	45	68.8	113.8
ezhilmathu.advo	57.6	47	104.6
ashaash11ash	79	24	103
sarwar0209	48	54	102
nikaash	42.7	58	100.7
zalak	44	56	100
deepika m	43	54	97

Congrats to Jakub Hrazdira (Czech Republic), Kota Morinishi (Japan) and Hideaki Jo (Japan) for the top-3 spots in SM Round 2: Irregular Variants.
Congrats to Kishore Kumar, Rakesh Rai and Prakhar Gupta for taking the top-3 Indian spots. Kishore, having topped both rounds of SM comfortably, is way ahead of the rest. Good show.

Being one of the last ones to pick a round, it seems Indian authors don't enjoy creating Irregular Sudokus ;-)
Irregular is not a very comfortable type for a lot of Indians (and maybe others too?), so my approach was to create really easy Classics so that players can spend more time on the variants.

Thanks to Prasanna, Swaroop and Rishi for testing/pre-solving the set.

A lot of players seemed to struggle with the 9x9 Surplus, well, it had a strightforward solving path. Maybe it was slightly under-valued.
The 6x6 Scattered was my personal favourite of the set, and it has a neat little trick of solving if you spot the fixed positions for the same number.
The original 9x9 Chain was too hard and it was replaced by a pretty cool one (which incidently, is Deb's). I was confident this would be the highest rated sudoku of the set.

Participation was lower than SM Round-1, just about 300 participants and a little over 100 Indians. Why? Don't like Irregulars? :-)
Anyway, hope to see you all in SM Round-3 (Odd-Even Variants by Deb Mohanty), which promises to be fun with high-quality puzzles and hope to see more participation.

If anyone found any variant particularly difficult to solve or is interested to learn how to solve any sudoku of this set, feel free to post here. Some of the active puzzlers in this community will be more than delighted to share solving techniques and logical steps to solve these sudokus :-)

Does the concept of innies - outies work in surplus sudoku and torroidal sudoku ?

Solutions appended to sudoku booklet