Three favorites--scrabble with loop, meandering numbers, summon. The summon puzzle was quite hard, but it had a satisfying learning curve for me. This was a new puzzle type for me.

Overall quality--simply excellent. Beautiful thematic construction and several novel puzzles/variants to me. No website or printing problems whatsoever.

I found the puzzles somewhat unbalanced. In particular, the Regional Coded Snake was utterly impossible for me, far more difficult than summon (the second hardest). Normal snake puzzles are a bit of a slog, trying out various bits and pieces until all of the numbers fit. But, here there is only a code. So it is trial and error and error and error and error and error... I put in over 6 hours over three separate evenings just on this one puzzle, far more than any of the others, and far beyond when it stopped being fun. I gave up for the first time ever. Just gave up. Ugh do I detest snake puzzles. Every change I tried would break one of the complex rules, usually on the other side of the board. So it was a bit of a wash...the snake puzzle attempts detracted from some of the pleasure from solving the others. Just my opinion...some people seem to have a natural intuition of where snake segments go and where the critical spots are. I most definitely do not. The other puzzles seemed appropriately categorized although the Nurikabe seemed not so easy.

Rules, points, scoring--doesn't really matter. I solve mainly for fun and for the challenge. I do respect those who can fly through these things.

Thank you, authors/constructors. And thanks LMI for setting this up. I do enjoy large, hard puzzles occasionally, and they are hard to find even on the internet. Most puzzles are snacks, these are banquets.

Bob

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Fillomino
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

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.	Hidoku
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

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Fillomino
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Turning Fences
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Hidoku
How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Very skewed
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

This is always one of my favourite contests, so thanks to everyone involved. However, I think I did prefer last year's marathon, overall. This year's puzzles just seemed slightly too difficult- in particular, I found a large jump in difficulty between the easy ones and the medium ones. There was still some nice logic in some of the hard ones though, so I probably would've enjoyed it a lot more without the pressure of the clock!

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.	Scrabble with Loop

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.	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?	Fair

Always my favorite annual contest!!! Many thanks to the authors for the beautifully crafted puzzles!

I found the puzzles on average harder than in previous marathon contexts though, so for average puzzlers it was hard to stay under an hour for any of the medium/hard puzzles. As a result, the final score and ranking was very much determined by the easy puzzles alone.

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Statue Park
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Scrabble with Loop
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?	Bit unfair

Could someone give some tips on how to start the summon (once the competition is over of course)? I was very lost on that one and basically made no progress on it.

There should be no restriction when a puzzle can be started. Currently, when one puzzle is started, other puzzles cannot be started for some time period. The only purpose this serves is to remove options and cause annoyance for people with limited time.

Great puzzles! Especially liked the Hidoku, Fillomino, and Statue Park. I'd say the Summon and RC Snake seemed too hard for an LMI contest, but they were fun anyway.P.S. I don't think the score sheet is sorting my 11315:21 on RC Snake correctly :P

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Nurikabe
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Statue Park
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

One way to fix this issue would be to have incorrect answers add time to the clock instead of just giving a penalty. That way if people really want to skip puzzles they've already started, they could just submit incorrect answers until the timer is over an hour, as opposed to waiting however long.

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Hidoku
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Battleships
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?	Fair

There always have been a 1 hour wait period before one could start a new puzzle.
But since it is last 24 hours, the wait period is removed.

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Summon
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Battleships
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

Thanks for your feedback about the regional coded snake. :) i never thought it would be so hard to solve it. being first puzzle contributed in LMI website for a competition, i was excited to make it something different and quite tough, but it went out to be more tough than i expected :) I will see to it that it never happens in upcoming future test. Thanks for all of your feedback :)

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Hidoku
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Nurikabe
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Scrabble with Loop
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?	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.	Regional Battleships
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Hidoku
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.	Statue Park
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Battleships
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?	Very nice
What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test?	Bit unfair

Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Scrabble with Loop
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Fillomino
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Meandering Numbers
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.	Scrabble with Loop
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Battleships
Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest.	Regional Coded Snake
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

Nice puzzles. I thought Nurikabe was easier. The most puzzle I like is Summon even if it was hard, the least - Snake, I hate snakes, even more like spiders than those ba******. :) Can someone post the solution for this? (it can be priv message) After 2 hours of tortures I've got this http://i.imgur.com/PCQgIXt.jpg and wanted to throw my computer out of the window. Yeah, I know about the mistakes at the bottom and on the top...

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.	Meandering Numbers
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?	Bit unfair

The puzzles were all quite nice in the abstract, but the difficulties were poorly calibrated.

RC Snake was clearly a difficult puzzle, not a medium one, and Summon was just a monster (I broke it 3 times, but even after I understood my mistake it took me about 3 hours to work through it).

I would like to side with those who suggested that, in future years, the cut-off time for difficult puzzles should become longer than 60 minutes, or one should still be able to earn some bonus in some way for performing well. I am reasonably pleased with my time on Hidoku, and to a lesser extent on RC Snake, but rather disappointed that the scoring system doesn't make a difference between solving in 75 minutes and taking many hours. (Of course, if I had done really well, neither of those would have taken an hour and I perhaps wouldn't be complaining as much :)

Also, I know that's a very unfair/specific complaint but, as the author of a puzzle that was more carefully calibrated in terms of difficulty level, I feel very slightly annoyed that I only get to discard my performance on only one of the insanely hard puzzles rather than two of them like almost everyone else. That could create an incentive for authors to create hard marathon puzzles rather than easy ones :-) just kidding.

Denis