I assume this answers your question. :)

http://puzzleparasite.blogspot.com.au/2015/12/tvc-xvii-practise-par...

Announcements Password protected puzzle has 11 pages (including a cover page with points table) Time bonus will be computed after you click 'Claim Bonus' Penalty will be given irrespective of correctness of submission Contest Length : 75 minutes Total Points : 1000 Bonus : 3 points per minute saved (Computed upto seconds) Grace Period : 5 minutes Penalty : 5 points per minute used (Computed upto seconds)

Link to score page : http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/XVII/score.asp

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
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
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
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 for a fun test. I especially liked the TAPA LOGIC, and the Tapa Magic puzzles.

I am a newbie..Could you please tell me the password of the puzzle booklet?

We will not be posting the password here in the forum. You need to login at the submission page ( http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/XVII/ ), start the test, and you will get the password.

You might want to read the F.A.Q. about this.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
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
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
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

Puzzles were nice. At some points I needed to bifurcate, but that's probably due to time pressure, not finding a more logical way quickly enough. The only complaint is perhaps Alternative Tapa; the grid is too big, so scanning which letters have been covered is difficult (see: Hitori puzzles), and the existence of letters occurring only once made me to reconsider for a moment whether it's possible for a letter to not have any shaded cell at all. (It said "only one of them are passed by the wall", not "exactly one", so that thought crossed my mind. At the end I just assumed it's a linguistic mistake.)

Clarification on Alternative Tapa

If any letter is appearing exactly once in the grid, the corresponding cell must be part of the wall.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
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
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Outside Tapa was much cheaper in my opinion - well nice points to me with small time. Tapa without borders were too cheap in my opinion - hard points from there for me. I really enjoyed the first one. really nice puzzle and with very good outer look. It was hard (also was expensive if I look it now) but was a good introduction to the contest.

I was thinking about Florian during solving the puzzles (especially the first one) and reminded some good times we had together. Not much time of that but still something. We had some conversations more in BIST2012 as there were not so many from outside of China and we hanged out quite a lot together. I feel great that I have had many chances to meet him and am very sad about what happened. He was a great person with an extremely good humour sense.

Also thanks to the creators of the puzzles. I really enjoyed it.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
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
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Way too many puzzles (too little time)
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

Nice puzzles. Imho it should be clarified, that there may not be 0-clues in Magic Tapa, since this would cause non-uniqueness in the lower left corner.

Thank you very much for these. It would help if I noticed things like the size of the area for the Tapa with Borders. The Florian theme was lovely - as TiiT says, I was thinking of him too whilst solving - in particular of the 24hr competitions.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
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
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Way too many puzzles (too little time)
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth too much or too little
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	I have a different complaint

The fact that each puzzle's key has the letters ABC makes it very easy to enter the answer into the wrong puzzle. I did this several times before correcting them (in the end they were all right). But having them be "ABC" "DEF"etc would be helpful.

Also it would be nice if the points were listed in the IB. Not in the first version, but in the final version.

Thanks!

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
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
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
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

Wooo. Full 0.2 points of bonus. Got stuck on the last Tapa Magic because I can't count to 2 (kept colouring 3 around a cell). When I saw my mistake I somehow managed to solve it and enter it just within the time limit in the last minute.

Fun set. Will have to get back to the second Skyscraper to figure out a bit more of the logic.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
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
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	I have a different complaint

The last puzzle allows a double solution (although with the same answer)

It's good to avoid unnecessary graphics in booklets, which slow down printing

You should check again, I'm confident that it has only one solution. Maybe your alternate solution has some rows with repeated digits.

Zero is not Classic Tapa clue. Tapa clues are from 1 to 8. If the zero is used in a varition we mention in the instruction. Moreover if the zero had been used in this variation, you would use the zero in clue cells with slash like 0/3, 0/1, 0/4. So it means there are tons of solutions. So you cannot use the zero in regular Tapa unless the instruction says 0-8 digits .

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
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
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	A bit too many puzzles
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

Just started playing here at LMI for a few weeks (also working the backlog since 2010 on my free time), and for now the puzzles are really excellent.
I haven't played a lot of tapa puzzles before, but it is a puzzle type I really like, and I look forward to do more !

A single zero is a Classic Tapa clue. (0/1, 0/2, etc isn't a Classic Tapa clue, but a single 0 is.) Otherwise, how would you explain the existence of Classic Tapa puzzles that involve a 0 (indicating all squares around it are empty)?

Edited by chaotic_iak 2016-01-04 12:57 AM

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
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
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
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, really good to have a new TVC series. The dedication is great way to keep Florian remembered.

I felt like I had a slow start, though the points per time don't really reflect that. One oversight on the harder skyscrapers meant I solved that one twice, but no trouble otherwise. I should revisit the star battle, the option I chose towards the end went through. The outside tapa also seemed a bit overvalued to me.

For less experienced solvers, it would be helpful tobe a bit more explicit in the instructions about details like those 0s in the magic tapa, it's just very hard to tell if you haven't solved the example carefully. By the way, the base "tapa rule" at the start of the booklet makes no mention of a digit range 1-8.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
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
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
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've now solved most of the puzzles - just the skyscrapers ones left. I was surprised how easy I found the Outside Tapa (for the points) - I should have tried that one in the test. Thanks again.

I made the effort to practise for this using Bram's puzzles. His puzzles were frighteningly difficult, but if it weren't for those,
I wouldn't have grasped so many Tapa concepts doing this test.
In general, I feel Tapa is heavily intuitive and to score well in these sprint tests, you're better off "guessing" your path.

All the puzzles are so neat. Make Room for Tapa was lovely because it had enough clear logical deductions to discourage guessing from early on.
Tapa Magic was cool, but sadly this type might be quickly worn out after, say, 10 puzzles.

I was on intense mode for the entire 80 minutes and I still have two big puzzles left.
How on earth are you guys so good at this!? ;

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
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
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Perfectly balanced
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
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
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

My goal is always to put at least something in each practise puzzle that might be useful when doing the test puzzles. So that means that they might seem more difficult as there will be some deduction in there you might not be familiar with yet. But once you're aware of that logic, doing the next puzzle might seem easier as you no longer have to work out such deductions.