Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Hidoku
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Fillomino
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Turning Fences
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test?	Very fair

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Hidoku
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Scrabble with Loop
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Coded Snake
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test?	Very fair

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Fillomino
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Nurikabe
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Hidoku
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test?	Very fair

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Coded Snake
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Summon
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Battleships
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test?	Fair

Very nice set of puzzles, very challenging and of excellent quality, thanks to all the authors (particularly to Riad for using my name)

In reply to other earlier comments: I do not find anything wrong in the puzzle being hard. It's a marathon. The balance of the difficulty level is excellent.
What can be improved is the bonus mechanism. It is unfair that for at least 4 cases the 20th fastest solver has no bonus (in the case of summon even the SECOND fastest solver has no bonus!). I know that in the past there have been long discussions about the bonus mechanism. IMHO the rank bonus should not have any connection with the time bonus. also, in this case, perhaps setting a time bonus level different for different difficulty level of the puzzles (for example: 45' for the easy puzzles, 1 hour for the intermediate, 90' for the hard ones) could have been better.


Edited by forcolin 2015-03-12 5:21 PM

the sum of all the numbers formed in that particular row should be =1000

Edited by forcolin 2015-03-12 5:25 PM

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Hidoku
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Turning Fences
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Coded Snake
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test?	Fair

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Scrabble with Loop
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Battleships
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Hidoku
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test?	Very fair

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Battleships
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Fillomino
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Statue Park
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test?	Fair

At last,the Puzzle marathon has come to an end.I am relieved that I managed to complete the contest as I seriously doubted whether that would happen after experiencing the difficulty of some of the puzzles in between the test.The mental energy that I had to put into some of the puzzles to get them to completion was so tremendous.Also,I opine that the contest overall was skewed towards the harder side in difficulty.Some of the puzzles were so difficult....

It may be the marathon.I agree with that but personally, I feel that in a marathon, I should be intimated by the size of the puzzle rather than by it's difficulty.If the size of the puzzle is one thing that stands between the solvers and their quest for completion, the difficulty quotient in this test made that task doubly difficult.

I wonder what might have forced Nurikabe to be graded an 'easier puzzle'.Of course there is the standard argument which goes: puzzles are ordered based on difficulty and personal experiences may differ.Despite accomodating that statement,I would still have thought that it should end up in the hard category even if I were to say at the least.I found it extremely difficult to find continuous strings of logic in that puzzle.The logical continuation from a particular stage of the puzzle to the next seemed incredibly far fetched.I felt that the puzzle could have been more easier with additional givens to work with particularly given the fact that it was in the easier category....

On a positive note ,I was completely fascinated by the design of some of the puzzles especially of that of Regional Battleships.To be candid,right after solving the Fillomino, I decided that I would include it as my most favourite puzzle of the marathon but Battleships just totally took it away.The solve path in Regional Battleships was highly pleasing and the theme(5 all over the place! and the LMI design) and the aesthetics is just too good to describe in words!!Amazing puzzle!!.I plan to solve it again just to relish the piece of quality logic hidden intricately in the puzzle.I enjoyed solving the Fillomino too which I had described in an earlier post in the forum.The puzzle was enjoyable with the logic completely free flowing and should not pose much of a difficulty to solvers familiar with Fillomino.I had great fun solving the statue park puzzle too.The way in which the puzzle worked out in the beginning and at the very end when it came to placing the last 4 pentominoes was just a treat.

I enjoyed the marathon a lot although I felt that some of the puzzles were just unreasonably hard (atleast to me) and could have been easier or should I say
not that much laborious.

Finally,a mighty thanks and sincere felicitations to the authors for creating some quality puzzles and making this marathon 2015 a great contest!!

What happens? All of a sudden, all the scores have changed. is there a problem with the server?

The scores were using 2014 scoring earlier; perhaps it has changed to 2015 scoring.

All of a sudden, all the scores have changed. I notice there is a new set of instruction for the calculation of the bonus.


I strongly disagree with this change for two reasons:

1) In my opinion, it is never a good idea to change the rules of the game during the play;
2) the "new" structure is much more skewed and by far more unfair than the previous one. Instead of fixing what can be considered a potential unfair score on the summon, unfair scores are introduced for practically every puzzle. For example, lets consider the score of the snake. The fastest solver (with 35'44") gets 100 points; the 12th fastest solver (with 59'48", so 24 minutes slower), gets 97.3 points; the 13th fastest solver, with 60'02", gets 50 points. The fastest solver only gains 2.7 points advantage over the 12th for an advantage of 24 minutes; the gap between the 12th and the 13th of 14" is worth 47.3 points. Crazy. And the same applies to practically all the other puzzles, except of course fillomino, and in lower extent to statue park.

I believe that this contests should finish with the same score structure with which it started; if there are some defects which need rectifying (and there are) there should be a discussion immediately after the end of the contest to discuss the changes to be introduced in the NEXT marathon (perhaps a poll between various options discussed). This discussion should take place immediately while we still remember what was good and what was not. If we wait until next year we will have forgotten everything.

stefano


Edited by forcolin 2015-03-13 7:54 AM

My mistake. The score page got changed without announcing. It is now showing as per rules in 2014.

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Hidoku
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Summon
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Fillomino
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test?	Bit unfair

In my opinion, too many of the puzzles weren't solvable within one hour for average solvers. Unless the puzzles are made easier, I think it would be a good idea for the bonus period to be extended to 120 minutes per puzzle. This would ensure that the rankings are more accurate for average solvers.

I do not understand why EKBM, deu, and willwc do not have score equal to 400 plus their bonus. The rest of the top 20 have bonus+400 as their score and I can't find what separates those three. In fact, it looks like they are the only three people for which their score and their bonus do not differ by a multiple of 50.

The "Bonus" field is the total bonus in 10 puzzles, without discarding the two worst. As of now, these are the only three players who have got bonus in 9 or 10 puzzles. So "Points" is not equal to bonus+400 for them.

The scoring system has been more or less same since the very first year, with minor tweaks. Every year, when we start planning marathon, we start with the intention that the puzzles will be of roughly similar difficulty, with enough players solving under 60 minutes. But this has never become a reality, and the relative difficulty of the puzzles has very wide range.

I am starting to like the idea proposed by Stefano (and many others) that each puzzle should have different time targets for bonus. 45 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes sound good too, just that we (as organizers) have to be extra careful while categorizing the puzzles (e.g. Nurikabe shouldn't have been in easy category). But within each puzzle, do we continue with the bonus system of the past?

The other approach I was thinking is that, lets say, in each puzzle we give bonus to top 50 solvers. 50 for the top player, 49 for the next, so on. This has an indirect implication that a player won't know how much time to spend before "giving up" on a puzzle. That is certainly not a nice situation to be in, but it simplifies the scoring system a lot. It also means we can't allow very hard puzzles where the 50th best time might run more then 2 hours.

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Statue Park
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Hidoku
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Fillomino
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	A bit skewed
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test?	Fair

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Coded Snake
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Scrabble with Loop
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Turning Fences
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test?	Fair

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Battleships
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Fillomino
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Statue Park
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test?	Very fair

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Hidoku
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Scrabble with Loop
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Battleships
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice

Lots of fun as usual, thanks to the other authors and the organizers.

After a poor start on the Turning Fences, I'm a somewhat surprised at how well I got through. Even some of the "easy" puzzles were hard enough that I felt I was solving a bit beyond my level, which usually leads to breaking a puzzle or two.

As for individual puzzles, apart from the lovely Hidoku, it's hard to rank them. They were uniformly excellent. (I chose "fairly balanced" for the puzzle types due to the lack of Sudoku or other latin square puzzles.)

Regarding my contribution, I'm a bit unhappy that it turned out to be clearly too hard. By the time we figured this out, it was too late to fix. I feel like the solve is both a bit too hard in terms of individual steps, as well as too linear. Add to that it's a type that does not seem to lend itself to guessing, and it's not particularly well known.

I'm most worried this will turn people off the type, if this is the first puzzle they see. Do try some easier ones, I think it's a very elegant and rich puzzle type. On that note, I'm quite sure that it is in fact suitable to large grids; it should be quite straightforward to construct a puzzle of half the difficulty.

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Turning Fences
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Scrabble with Loop
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Summon
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test?	Very fair

Thank you all who participated in creating this contest!

My special thanks will go to Riad Khanmagomedov for creating the Scrabble with Loop; personally I don't like crosswords etc., but this individual puzzle had quite many names of my friends from WPC/WSC and, thus, it brought in to my mind many happy memories :)

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Meandering Numbers
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Battleships
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Hidoku
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test?	Very fair

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Fillomino
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Hidoku
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Battleships
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test?	Fair

My ranking is better than I expected. It all felt a bit slow today, but I guess that still matched what others did. I still felt a bit overwhelmed by the size of some puzzles, which is why I don't generally like really large puzzles. But I still enjoy competing in this.

As for the puzzles.

Statue Park: I had a bit of a slow start, missing an opening in the left top corner for a bit. Once I got over that step it was a smooth solve. I enjoyed it.

Fillomino: This one didn't go that well. I got stuck near the end, because I made a small error. I spent about 5 minuted fixing it. When I found my error I felt like an idiot.

Nurikabe: I didn't find a nice logical path for this one. I kind of just ended up trying to pack in the 6's in the bottom till it worked. I might have missed something. I knew this wasn't going to be my puzzle, too many people with experience solving large nurikabes

Meandering Numbers: I enjoyed this puzzle. I never really got stuck, but it's sometimes hard to find the right region in these puzzles.

Turning Fences: I hoped I had a chance to get first time on this one. But some small mistakes made me lose a few minutes. The lack of 0s and 4s, probably made it a harder puzzle.

Regional Battleships: I wasn't sure what kind of puzzle this was going to be, but it turned out to be a kind of Star Battle type. The construction was pretty well done. One of my favourite solves in the set.

Regional Coded Snake: I took ages to get started. I thought the opening wasn't very straight forward, but maybe I missed something. Then I broke it at the end. So I restarted. Halfway trough the solve I realised how to fix my old solution. That's why I missed out on the hour mark. I thought the combination of the regions, Snake clues and Coded clues was a bit much for a competition. I don't mind combining a lot, but not that much a fan in competition. Still a nice solve when I don't mess up.

Scrabble with Loop: I think was a fun puzzle. I think throwing in a Loop into a Scrabble makes me solve it a bit faster than normal. Word puzzles aren't my thing, loop puzzles are. I had fun with all the names of puzzlers.

Hidoku: I had fun solving this puzzle. I have written a few of these puzzles and know to just treat it as a path puzzle and just use the numbers as guides. In this size it's sometimes a bit hard to find the right places to makes progress, but got here in the end. I liked the long unclued path. I figured it was somewhere given the largest clued number.

Summon: This was a monster. It took me about 50 minutes to find the right opening. I thought I had found something, but that in the end gave me nothing. Then when I found the right opening I still made a few mistakes, usually involving not realising a number was already in a larger area. And after that I also ignored one clue, which finally got me to the end. It was really well constructed, but maybe a bit too hard for this purpose. Over 2 hours is a bit much.

Thanks to all the writers. I again enjoyed myself.