Sorry for the delayed post.

Congrats to Rohan, Rakesh and Kishore for being the top 3 Indians and to Gotroch, Kota and and Kwaka for the top international players. It was really awesome to see such a close finish between the first two spots. Prasanna is excluded from the official ranking as he has a bye.

I really enjoyed creating this set.

There is some feedback that sudokus were hard. Many of you voted for 'too many hard puzzles'. While it is understandable but I need to add here that Tiit, who test solved it, completed the set in 43 minutes. Based on that it was decided that we would not make it any more easier.
Most of you voted for 'very nice puzzle quality' -- Appreciate the feedback.

The first and the last points of the feedback were unanimous mostly, so thank you for that.

Finally, I'm glad most of you enjoyed the puzzles. Nice to see 317 participants with 105 Indians.

Rishi

Sorry for the late reply. Thanks Prasanna for your valuable input. Just wanted to clear whether every Next to 6/9 Sudoku will have only one outside clue.

I like how the feedback for the Puzzle Ramayan rounds include a question about which puzzle types players enjoyed most. Could a similar question be added for the Mahabharat rounds? I think it's fun to see what people's favorite variants are.

Sounds good. Will do that from the next one.

I'm not sure what the last part means. Every Next to 6/9 Sudoku will have, outside each edge, a set of 7 double digit clues and 2 single digit clues, and the rows/columns with single digit clues will be the ones where 6/9 is in the 1st or last cell (this is easily explained - because everywhere else, 9 will have one cell before it and one cell after it)

The above is only true if ALL clues are given. There can still be Next to 6/9 sudokus with not all clues given, or more than two single digit clues given.

I just meant whether every Next to 6 /9 Sudoku will have single digit outside clues. Sorry for the miscommunication.
Also one more request : Can the instruction booklets for the rounds be published a bit earlier, coz for beginners like me it takes time to understand the variants. Thanks

I would argue that it's implied that if there's a clue at all in a given row or column, it will list all neighbours of 9 within that row or column. Otherwise, the rules would better be phrased along the lines of: "Clues outside the grid indicate numbers that must placed before or after the 9 within that row or column."

I'm sure someone will explore these variants soon!