Firstly, this has nothing to do with Indian team's performances. It would, if LMI were suggesting not selecting the best 4 experienced as the A team. All LMI are suggesting is that 2 newcomers get sponsored. They can be on the B team. The turnover is more in terms of people gaining experience to the WSC, rather than the Indian team doing well/not well. I feel this is relevant to a lot of your later points too. All of them would be good valid points if team selection centered around this categorization. As is, LMI will try for a scenario where the A team still gets selected by LMI, which will be the 4 best solvers. Its just that some of them may not be sponsored (which is a big deal, but not the same as not being selected or team being compromised).

You make a good point about advertising LMI before Sudoku Mahabharat, BUT, think of it this way. The people coming to the Times Sudoku Championship aren't looking for a site dedicated to Sudokus & Puzzles of all levels, and forums, and whatever other benefits we know LMI has. They are simply looking for the next Sudoku competition to do with minimal effort in terms of reading instructions/format. Because of this, I think a direct pamphlet about a contest can be more of a hook than a website as a whole. This is definitely open to discussion though.

On a side note, one thing I remember is the suggestion to have different levels of difficulty for Experienced and Inexperienced. This I am definitely against. Here are reasons why -
- We aren't sure of the numbers in the experienced category, no matter what categorization we make. This means, it is entirely possible that a city has 0 experienced solvers, in which case we are selecting even the 'experienced' quotient based on easier papers, OR we are having more inexperienced contenders for two spots and lesser inexperienced contenders for two spots in the National finals.
- Conversely, this also works against inexperienced solvers, because someone who might have beaten an experienced solver in the local rounds has to show it at a different level unnecessarily. Kishore for instance, if he takes part, would most likely be among inexperienced solvers, whereas he is fully capable of being in the best four Indian solvers outright. It ensures concentrated growth rather than overall growth, I think.
- At some stage we need to ensure escalation of difficulty for the newcomer too, because no matter what, we can't change the WSC booklets. If they aren't exposed to some level of variants and so on, then we are banking on them being active on the forum in the months leading up to WSC and using the practice material, which isn't a given, because a newcomer poses an unknown element of how much time and effort they can put in, so eventually if they are unprepared they will be found out badly at the WSC and demoralized, maybe beyond repair. That defeats the entire purpose of having a newcomer represent India at the WSC.
- Raw talent in Classics does not essentially mean they can be molded into excellent overall solvers. IF this was a definite, then I would be all for the experimentation here. But we have enough top solvers who had real raw talent in Classics but couldn't translate it (not just from India) and also enough top solvers who have never been sprinters on Classics but yet have strong showings because of their overall capabilities. Overall I don't think the pursuit of raw talent in Classics is a good enough reason to ignore the points made above. This is of course just my personal opinion.
- Overall, it just makes it easier for selection with the same answer booklets across the two categories. If someone is good enough to be on the team by merit they aren't ignored. With categorization of difficulty, we can't really ever put an inexperienced solver in the A-team, even if they are actually good enough. I really think this shouldn't be the case. We can be far more flexible with the same answer booklets.


I'll also list points made by the people in favor of this -
- It enables LMI to keep harder difficulty for experienced solvers which is more difficult to finish, thereby eliminating the big risk element that comes with finishing early and big bonuses.
- It enables LMI to reach out to the newcomers with more doable content.
- We can find out someone with raw talent in Classics who we can mold. If this had variants, which aren't very easy, then we may miss out on someone with raw talent.

Feel free to add more, it looks like I've shortchanged the points against my side on the matter :P

It is indeed true that they are not entering into a competetition looking for a site of that sort.But it ALSO true that they wouldn't be cognizant of what is awaiting them .The situation is in no way analogous to a case where a bunch of students are stuffed in with last minute questions and lots of information in addition to the amount they already have and eventually creating a situation of total panic and chaos.
Hell no!
It is a scenario where a large group of enthusiastic people are looking to compete,have fun time and also harbor high expectations of ending up in the top four .In such a situation ,I certainly don't think that we are diverting the attention or the concentration of the people too much.Besides,there is always an explanation session just before the start of the rounds where the rules of even Classic sudokus are explained.This can be clubbed at the end of the PPT session and by means of this we still manage to make the whole chatter/talk very coherent.

But like Deb pointed out, the availability of Projectors looks like the major issue here to me.I did not think about the projector at all.We need to think of a way to tackle this.If there is no other solution to the projector,we may,in addition to the distribution of pamphlets,obtain the email-ids of the participants in their sudoku booklets and later forward the PPTs to them.No one here is lazy enough or not have the time as to not see a PPT containing hardly 5-10 slides about sudokus and stuff and a beautiful website dedicated to that.

Edited by kishy72 2015-05-16 8:34 PM

I think there are good points on either side on this one (LMI PPT vs Sudoku Mahabharat Pamphlet) so I think we should look at projector availability/cost analysis/etc. In fact, if we can show a PPT, the ideal thing to do would be to show a PPT about LMI and then direct participants to the pamphlets on the side for SM and SC (since I'm sure there'll be some U-18 participants or parents participating) so that something of focus is given while also showing there's more if they wish for it.

If I'm not wrong, we have already had an email space in the Times Sudoku rounds, and we have sent emails and smses to participants in the previous years without much response. This is why I feel a written pamphlet might go a longer way since these are mainly Sudoku fans coming from the written newspaper background, and probably rely on that more. Worth a try anyway :)