Can I have some links to learn how to solve Snake type puzzles. I have not solved one yet.

The instruction booklet has links to two previous Snake Variation contests. Also, croco-puzzle is currently running a series of snake variants: http://www.croco-puzzle.com/Ue-Raetsel/serie.php?serie=60 (though the rules are in German, but feel free to ask).

Loop Snake: Is the loop necessarily unique? May the loop go through black cells (the given ones, not the snake)?

The loop is not necessarily unique. The loop CANNOT go through given black cells.

However, for this contest, the loop WILL BE unique in all the puzzles, and this has been added to the instructions.

Link puzzle Example





Attachments
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link puzzle.png (30KB - 7 downloads)

Thanks for the "Linked Snake" example, it does a very good job pointing out that clues don't affect the other quadrants, I made errors there quite a few times.

Is the solution to #9 on the contest unique? Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that the top right corner can be done in two ways.

It is unique. Given black cells are NOT part of the snake.

Maybe you can show us a solution which doesn't match the answer key? I cannot see an alternate solution.

Ah, I see. It was not unique in v1 of the booklet. Luckily, the system took my answer anyways.

Whew, what a rush! Great fun, thank you!

Nice set of puzzles. Fun test. I felt as this test anyway doesn't count for ratings, I would have preferred bit more time (90 min test). I was able to solve all puzzles but may be slow, but i continued solving after the time is over and I realized few of the high pointers later were very easy in comparison to few other low pointers. But anyway completed all puzzles. May be took 30-40 min more considering I took 20 min to do Coded Snake big pointer (was doing lot of mistakes due to some un-necessary assumptions).
Thanks ashish for this set.

Oh it doesn't? That's a pity, why not?

Thanks swaroop for your feedback.. coded snake high pointer is quite tough though but you did well in the contest :) congrats and i am happy you enjoyed the contest :)

Thanks rob :)

Annual contests have never been included in ratings. I'm sure there has been a discussion somewhere hidden deep inside the forums, I don't quite remember now.
Will let someone else answer :-)

A nice set of puzzles. A pretty easy set, too; maybe the first set in puzzle tests ever where I finished all puzzles in time. (That's a good thing, of course; easy puzzles are better than devilishly difficult ones.) All points roughly match my timing, for the sole exception of the 70-pointer that I intuited through in 52 seconds. Although to be honest Loop Snake is very vulnerable to intuition, so scoring it is a difficult matter, so I'll say it's a job well done.

The test is over.

Congratulations to uvo, EKBM and rob for taking the top three places!

Total number of participants were 102. I hope everyone enjoyed the contest.
Congratulations to Uvo , EKBM and Rob for top 3 places overall.. Congrats to Prasanna, amit and rajesh for top 3 Indians.
Being for the first time organizing a contest on LMI, it wasn't easy as there were many things to be kept in mind. first of all i would like to apologize to the participants who had to wait a little for the contest to start.
Due to some unforced errors, the competition had to be delayed.
i really thank deb for giving me the opportunity to organize such a contest on LMI. i would like to thank Rakesh for guiding me from the creation of the puzzle till the end of the contest. i would like to thank Rohan, amit and prasanna, who suggested me with some points to note down and helped me to start the contest with no more delay.
At last i would like to thank all who participated in the contest.
The least submitted puzzle was toroidal (big) with 100% correct rate and the tough puzzle according to the correct submission was coded snake (big) with 78% correct submissions.