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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-17 7:29 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | 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? | Fair | |
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Administrator
   
Country : India | Puzzle Marathon 2015 is over now. Overall 393 participants participated and 290 scored points. 84 participants from USA and 52 from India. 93 participants completed all ten puzzles.
Congratulations to Endo Ken (EKBM), Hideaki Jo (deu), Bram de Laat (Para), Robert Vollmert (rob) and William Blatt (willwc) for finishing as the Top 5.
Special mention for deu as the only participant to score bonus in all ten puzzles.
Congratulations to Prasanna (19th), Swaroop, Amit, Ashish, Kishore and Jayant for finishing as the top participants from India.
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Administrator
Country : India |  to our ten authors - Ashish Kumar, Denis Auroux, Fred Couglin, James McGowan, Ko Okamoto, Matej Uher, Prasanna Seshadri, Riad Khanmagomedov, Robert Vollmert and Swaroop Guggilam - for providing the puzzles for this contest. |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | We shall be responding to most of the comments soon, but let us do a summary of the puzzle difficulty first.
We observed that the differentiation between easy, medium and hard puzzles was not too significant, in the last few marathons. This time we planned to have a clearer categorization:
- 3 easy puzzles where top solvers should finish in ~15 minutes
- 4 medium puzzles where top solvers should take ~25 minutes
- 3 hard puzzles where top solvers should take ~35 minutes.
Statue Park and Fillomino were indeed easy and, not surprisingly, both had the maximum bonus submissions. Statue Park is easier than Fillomino but Fillomino is more familiar.
Nurikabe is a medium category puzzle difficulty wise but due to its familiarity it has been kept as the third easy puzzle. Going by the best times, it still fits into the Easy category as the times are lesser than other puzzles. But there were mixed opinions on this and even some top puzzlers stumbled on this puzzle.
Regional Battleships and Meandering Numbers clearly fit the Medium category with the expected level of difficulty.
Turning Fences was a tough puzzle, but it was also present in a previous marathon, so was a familiar puzzle. It proved to be harder than expected. Post event, we can say it was a hard puzzle rather than medium.
Regional Coded Snake proved to be hard too, going by the solving times. It was classified as the 7th toughest but, post event, it proved to be the 8th toughest and should have been placed after Scrabble Loop on the difficulty index.
Hidoku, Scrabble Loop and Summon were intended to be tougher than most of the marathon puzzles so far (all editions included). While Hidoku and Scrabble Loop were as per the planned level of difficulty, Summon, with just three numbers to fill, proved to be too tough. Although there were lot of obvious starting points (six digit numbers, 1000, etc), completing the puzzle in 60 minutes proved to be difficult as there were too many mini steps to solve. Based on the timings, it fits a category 'SuperHard'.
It was the toughest marathon yet. As bob said "Most puzzles are snacks, these are banquets." Hopefully most puzzlers would have enjoyed the banquet setting. |
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Grizix
Posts: 30
Country : France | Grizix posted @ 2015-03-17 2:17 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Coded Snake | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | 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 | |
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Paul
Posts: 2
Country : India | Paul posted @ 2015-03-17 2:23 PM Could not solvce even a single puzzle |
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chaotic_iak
Posts: 241
Country : Indonesia | Bug: Someone that didn't solve all puzzles (me, my Summon broke again) sees incomplete standings. |
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Administrator
Country : India | chaotic_iak - 2015-03-17 3:11 PM
Bug: Someone that didn't solve all puzzles (me, my Summon broke again) sees incomplete standings. Fixed. |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | karzym - 2015-03-17 2:37 AM
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...
Snake solution has been sent via email. |
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rakesh_rai
Posts: 774
Country : India | ghirsch - 2015-03-16 2:28 AM
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. Look at the first two rows. The six digit number in the first row and the five digit number in the second row limit a lot of possibilities. You should be able to complete the regions in the top left corner (with a lot of Xs ). Then there is a row with the sum as 1000. Think how can you reach 1000 as the sum. And, keep looking at the sums below for vertical constraints. |
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Realshaggy
Posts: 69
Country : Germany | I liked all the puzzles, even the types I usually don't like (Snake, Nurikabe, Battleships) as they all make good use of the room. I also don't have problems with a contest with a high overall difficult level and very difficult puzzles like the Summon, even if that means it's not suited for beginners. But the scoring system should be revised. By now there should be enough test data from three years. Of course it's difficult with different solving times. If it should feel like a marathon for the top solvers, it's near impossible for me.
No offense to the author, but I think especially Nurikabe is a bad type for a timed contest on a marathon grid. Seems like it's even more favourable to use intuition than a logical approach. |
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Paul
Posts: 2
Country : India | Paul posted @ 2015-03-17 3:52 PM I would love to get starting instructions, on how to solve each type of puzzles. |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-17 4:32 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Statue Park | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Turning Fences | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Fillomino | | | 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? | Average | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-17 4:34 PM | 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. | Nurikabe | | | 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 | |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-17 5:27 PM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Scrabble with Loop | | | 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? | Fairly Nice | | | What is your opinion about rules, points and scoring for this test? | Very fair | |
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anderson
Posts: 16
Country : United States | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | 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 | |
Every puzzle in this contest was awesome. Thanks to all the authors! I also have to mention that the box in the middle of the hidoku was extremely cute as well as the 360-400 path.
Regarding the scoring system, I like the suggestion of increasing the time limit to, say, 2 hours for the hard puzzles (assuming that future puzzle marathons will have similar difficulty to this one ). I also like the idea of just giving bonuses for your best ranks as suggested by Aaron, probably the only problem with that is the feeling of "I don't know if it's safe to stop working now and take a break". Maybe the 50 points for 1st, 49 points for 2nd, etc. but you only get the bonus in the first place if you solve it in 2 hours/whatever time limit. Edited by anderson 2015-03-17 6:34 PM
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swaroop2011
Posts: 668
Country : India | Thanks to all, for your feedback and support.
Congratulations to the top contestants.
I have made a solution tutorial for Nurikabe and kept, and so sharing with you all.
Hope it helps to get you some idea behind the thinking of that puzzle creation.
Hope everyone enjoyed all the marathon puzzles though difficulty was on bit higher side but after all it was marathon.
Here is link,
http://swaroopg92.blogspot.com/2015/03/tutorial-to-solve-marathon-n...
Paul - 2015-03-17 3:52 PM
I would love to get starting instructions, on how to solve each type of puzzles. Edited by swaroop2011 2015-03-17 7:30 PM
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-17 8:40 PM | 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. | Nurikabe | | | What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test? | Fairly Nice | |
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auroux
Posts: 145
Country : France | auroux posted @ 2015-03-18 12:02 AM Note in case anyone is curious: the Regional Battleships puzzle still has a unique solution without the given ship segment in the "M"-shaped region. (The given ship segment at the bottom-left is, on the other hand, necessary as far as I recall). That clue was added in order to make the puzzle difficulty more manageable.
Denis |
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Nilz
Posts: 29
Country : United Kingdom | Nilz posted @ 2015-03-18 2:17 AM rakesh_rai - 2015-03-17 5:13 AM
Summon, with just three numbers to fill, proved to be too tough. Although there were lot of obvious starting points (six digit numbers, 1000, etc), completing the puzzle in 60 minutes proved to be difficult as there were too many mini steps to solve. Based on the timings, it fits a category 'SuperHard'.
It was the toughest marathon yet. As bob said "Most puzzles are snacks, these are banquets." Hopefully most puzzlers would have enjoyed the banquet setting.
Personally, I don't *love* the really really difficult puzzles, but if there's a nice logical path (as these did, to be fair ), I don't mind solving them. But if there is going to be a competition with bonus points for solving in less than an hour, then it's better if it's actually possible to solve the puzzles in less than an hour (well, a couple of people will tell me that the Summon was possible, but still... ). Perhaps an option would be to label them as 'superhard' and just give 75 points (or another number that is judged to be fair ) to anyone who solves them.
Alternatively, just run a separate marathon for superhard puzzles only. I would guess there would be a few volunteers to create these puzzles, and the creators could have a contest between themselves to see who can create a puzzle solved by the fewest people! |
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY | rakesh_rai - 2015-03-17 9:13 AM
We shall be responding to most of the comments soon, but let us do a summary of the puzzle difficulty first.
We observed that the differentiation between easy, medium and hard puzzles was not too significant, in the last few marathons. This time we planned to have a clearer categorization:
- 3 easy puzzles where top solvers should finish in ~15 minutes
- 4 medium puzzles where top solvers should take ~25 minutes
- 3 hard puzzles where top solvers should take ~35 minutes.
Statue Park and Fillomino were indeed easy and, not surprisingly, both had the maximum bonus submissions. Statue Park is easier than Fillomino but Fillomino is more familiar.
Nurikabe is a medium category puzzle difficulty wise but due to its familiarity it has been kept as the third easy puzzle. Going by the best times, it still fits into the Easy category as the times are lesser than other puzzles. But there were mixed opinions on this and even some top puzzlers stumbled on this puzzle.
Regional Battleships and Meandering Numbers clearly fit the Medium category with the expected level of difficulty.
Turning Fences was a tough puzzle, but it was also present in a previous marathon, so was a familiar puzzle. It proved to be harder than expected. Post event, we can say it was a hard puzzle rather than medium.
Regional Coded Snake proved to be hard too, going by the solving times. It was classified as the 7th toughest but, post event, it proved to be the 8th toughest and should have been placed after Scrabble Loop on the difficulty index.
Hidoku, Scrabble Loop and Summon were intended to be tougher than most of the marathon puzzles so far (all editions included). While Hidoku and Scrabble Loop were as per the planned level of difficulty, Summon, with just three numbers to fill, proved to be too tough. Although there were lot of obvious starting points (six digit numbers, 1000, etc), completing the puzzle in 60 minutes proved to be difficult as there were too many mini steps to solve. Based on the timings, it fits a category 'SuperHard'.
It was the toughest marathon yet. As bob said "Most puzzles are snacks, these are banquets." Hopefully most puzzlers would have enjoyed the banquet setting.
Enjoyed a lot, thank you. and to all the authors too.
in summary we had 2 easy, 3 medium, 4 hard, 1 superhard puzzles. I like this share but perhaps it is a bit too tough for less experienced solvers. look at how many players had a high number of solutions with 200+ minutes for the majority of the puzzles. This could be frustrating. In my very personal opinion, the ideal mix could be 4/3/2/1 or 3/3/3/1
The bonus mechanism needs improvement. I believe it is nonsense in having two bonus mechanisms awarding bonus points to the same players. If one system is unfair, the other system gives no compensation. In my opinion the time bonus works very well, but the rank bonus should be a pure rank bonus, i.e. to award 25 points to the first, and decreasing linearly until the 50th (or 100th ) fastest solvers. In this case no matter what the bonus threshold is, a player will always be motivated to complete the puzzle, however hard, even beyond the 60' wall, and the 50th fastest solver of the summon still could have earned 12.5 points even with a time of 200+ minutes. And this would be ideal, we have seen many times that only one bonus mechanism leaves the door open for unfair scoring.
stefano
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forcolin
Posts: 172
Country : ITALY | karzym - 2015-03-17 2:37 AM
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...
don't throw away the computer. you will have no computers left. perhaps you can break in half the pencil it that relaxes you. you will still have the computer and if you sharpen both pieces you will have gained a pencil.
here
http://web.freepass.it/sf2l/PCQgIXt.jpg
is the solution. The fundamental mistake bottom left. Can't go from R16C3 to the head of the snake in 5 cells INTERNALLY- must go EXTERNALLY so L=1 not 3. Edited by forcolin 2015-03-18 5:17 AM
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FoxFireX
Posts: 35
Country : United States | Been a while since I've been able to compete in one of the contests. Amazing how having a second little boy born into your family will do that! When I saw this one was starting, though, I had to set aside time to make it happen. Glad I did. Even though I think I only managed bonus on three of the puzzles, I at least completed nine of them. The only one I didn't was (predictably) Summon, which I decided to pass on after a couple of hours, and then reading the comments here. The puzzles were all very enjoyable across the board, and I thank all the creators for giving us such a lovely variety of large, tough puzzles.
Now, that being said, I wanted to offer a slight counter-balance to some of the comments. Personally, I don't know that I really want to see a scoring system where I feel like I need to keep struggling with a puzzle into a second or third hour. As mentioned, I now have two boys under my roof, so time is a precious commodity. I have to start these puzzles in the evening, after they've gone to bed, and it's purely luck as to whether I'll even get one hour of quiet to work on it. Two puzzles this time were interrupted by wake-ups (fortunately I don't think I was going to bonus either of them). I have a difficult time setting aside TEN one hour blocks during a week+. I simply don't see how I could plan for ten blocks of up to three hours each. That kind of time simply doesn't exist for me during a week. I'd personally rather see the difficulty taken down a notch on those hardest of hard puzzles. I don't expect to get bonus in everything, because I'm not a world-class solver, but I would like to feel like it's at least possible to make it fit in the time I can make for it.
Again thanks to all the creators, and I look forward to next year, whatever the format! |
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An LMI player
| An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-18 7:42 AM | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Regional Battleships | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Hidoku | | | Your 3 most favorite puzzles of the contest. | Summon | | | 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? | Exteremely unfair | |
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debmohanty
Country : India | forcolin - 2015-03-18 2:32 AM
The bonus mechanism needs improvement. I believe it is nonsense in having two bonus mechanisms awarding bonus points to the same players. If one system is unfair, the other system gives no compensation. In my opinion the time bonus works very well, but the rank bonus should be a pure rank bonus, i.e. to award 25 points to the first, and decreasing linearly until the 50th (or 100th) fastest solvers. In this case no matter what the bonus threshold is, a player will always be motivated to complete the puzzle, however hard, even beyond the 60' wall, and the 50th fastest solver of the summon still could have earned 12.5 points even with a time of 200+ minutes. And this would be ideal, we have seen many times that only one bonus mechanism leaves the door open for unfair scoring.
stefano
I like this idea very much.
1. Solving time bonus if the puzzle is submitted within the bonus period ( The bonus period was 60 for all puzzles in this contest, but as many have suggested it should be varying depending upon the puzzle difficulty )
2. Rank bonus for top 100 (This is independent of bonus period )
Assuming the bonus period is 60 minutes for Statue Park, Fillomino, Nurikabe, 75 minutes for Meand Numbers, Turning Fences, Reg Battleships, and 90 minutes for RC Snake, Scrabble, Hidoku, Summon, here is what the bonus points will look like for top 25. Link to excel file for further analysis.
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@ 2015-03-17 7:29 AM (#17970 - in reply to #17765) (#17970) Top
