How well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	variations represented the theme well
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Toroidal Snake
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Thanks! I had a bit of trouble getting started, and struggled with two or three puzzles (the large standard snake in particular; I had something very close to the solution quickly, but had to get there again slowly). Now to wait and see how much faster other solvers can go.

Yes. (Note in Graffiti Snake, black cells refer to non-snake parts. The white cells refer to snake parts, so 2X2 squares of white cells are not allowed)

How well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	variations represented the theme well
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Graffiti Snake
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

I suck at snakes, though I do think I did better this time around then I do on average.

How well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	variations represented the theme well
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Graffiti Snake
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

How well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	variations represented the theme well
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Summed Snake
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

I'm personally not sure why Snakes is a theme by itself (and isn't considered a subtheme of shading or something), but eh. I'm not very sure either whether the variations represented the theme, but considering I can't think up of decent Snakes variations myself, I'll just say it's good.

The puzzles themselves are great. I think some of them have superfluous clues, but then this is aimed to beginners so I'm okay with that. Scoring I'm not very confident, but I think they are roughly correctly scored. Some 1-2 pointers took slightly more time than 3-4 pointers, but not big enough to say it's wrong. I'd probably give the Multiple Snake a bit more points though; it's easily the one that took the most time for me (10 minutes; the other big pointers are 5-6 minutes).

I made stupid mistakes on the first Summed Snake. The first mistake was genuine (note to self: 3+4+5+6 is as 18 as 5+6+7); the following four mistakes are silly typoes from reading the wrong columns. That might mean the answer key markers can possibly be larger... or it might just mean that I suck.

Good question.

How well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	variations represented the theme well
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many medium difficult puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Standard Snake
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

I enjoyed solving even though am quite a beginner :) Just found it a little hard. Expected considering its a qualifier round for IPC.

Was wondering how everyone else solves these puzzles. Would love to know about it!

Thanks!

How well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	variations represented the theme well
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

How well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	variations represented the theme well
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Horse Snake
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Don't like Snakes in general, but I found this hard. Couldn't get any of the Toroidal ones going.

I think the puzzles are excellent, top-notch quality, but not suitable for beginners.

Thanks Ashish!

I agree. Snake can definitely be part of Classics or Evergreens, since it is a single puzzle type.
Initially, we had Word Puzzles as a round, but decided to keep that aside for some reason I don't remember. Maybe next year it might be a good idea to introduce Word Puzzles and fit Snake elsewhere.

We basically felt that we should have one round with a specific but prominent type. While Snake is largely shading based while solving, I think there are certain logical characteristics which differentiate it from other shading puzzles and pull it more towards path puzzles done with shading. Anyway, next year we are most likely to continue the model of having one round for a specific type which is prominently appearing in contests, but has a little bit of a unique feel of its own.

I suggest you ask for specific puzzles. Its difficult to give one broad explanation for all of them, but if we explain one or two you may start getting the approach for the rest too.

Oh, right, there are also loop/path puzzles. Yes, Snakes belong to either of them. If the reason is "we need a round where there's only one type", then I can't argue with that, okay.

Also, calling that type to be Tapa (for the sole fact that it's the one that I can recall that has many variations).

Tapa is definitely an option in future years along with a few others we have in mind :)

How well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	variations represented the theme well
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many medium difficult puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Horse Snake
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Solved logically rather than intuitively, and it took a lot more time perhaps than it should have taken. I was too slow and could not even lay hands on any of the toroidals or exploratory ones. But I liked all the puzzles I solved.

Somehow my expecatations before the test were high for this test, and I was expecting 80+ points but fell short by a lot in the end. The test turned out a little tougher than expected.

How well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	variations represented the theme well
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many medium difficult puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Summed Snake
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Another beautiful set of Puzzles.
That's surprising that, I am ahead of others in Indian contingent. Thought Rohan would be way ahead.
Personally, I don't like snakes and I am very bad at those.

But somehow these puzzles i went logically and fluently. Especially I liked the Summed Snake (ALL 4 , didn't had to do lot of calculations and it was more intuitive how the path should go).
Only part where I guessed was the classic SNAKE big one.
This test itself was on harder side, but was expected after last easy round. I second Rohan that, I couldn't even do any toroidal (not even smaller ones). But lets see, will try soon and see if I can still get it.
Horse Snake,while practicing i found a nice notation technique for myself (don't know how other solve usually), which helped a lot and that worked out well during contest too. So horse snake i did pretty smoothly.
Graffiti were easy, that was reflected in points as well. Even the variant was small in size so pretty easy.
Multiple Snakes, not even got a chance to touch it.

Overall wonderful test. Thanks Ashish for the contest. I thought I would do bad, but seems I did pretty well. Let's see how others do.

How well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	variations represented the theme well
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Toroidal Snake
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

How well did the variants represent the theme of the test ?	variations represented the theme well
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Summed Snake
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Definitely a tougher test for me, but still lots of fun. I broke a lot of the puzzles from trying to go too quickly, but the ones that I did finish I really enjoyed and I'm looking forward to sitting down with them and going through more carefully. I especially liked the summed snakes, and the horse snakes. Those toroidal snakes were brutal though.

It's interesting that many people find this test to be tough, since for me I find it pretty easy. (Finished all puzzles in 70 minutes, comparable to last test's 60 minutes.)

I think players have strong and weak areas. I could blaze through the Regions round in 47-minutes whereas I scored just 57 points here after 90-minutes :-|
Also, being a single puzzle type, it widens the points gap between the players.

Besides, you did quite well in SVC 2015 too!

Oh right, there is SVC just 1.5 months ago. Yes, it might just because I'm stronger in Snakes, although then again I finished SVC in 56 out of 60 minutes and this one in 71 out of 90 minutes, meaning this should be slightly easier than SVC. But I already forgot how difficult SVC was. Oh well. Still a good test regardless of difficulty.

I have started the competition around 15:30 GMT+2, few minutes before the breakdown, so I could not submit my solutions. It is not important now, I just want to mention that I still cannot read the comments and observe the results.

One thing I personally find difficult about snakes is that it often leads me to trying intuitive solves, and I'm still not great with that during competitions. If everything goes well then great, it's fast, but if not I have to decide how much time to spend trying to tweak the solution, or scrapping portions of it, or just moving on to other puzzles, and I sometimes end up wasting a lot of time. That's more of just a personal thing though that I need to fix, not anything inherently difficult about the type. After looking through the puzzles again though I agree with you that most of them weren't too difficult (though I still think that some of those toroidal snakes were pretty tricky).