Some practice links -
Crazy Pavement - http://www.janko.at/Raetsel/Tairupeinto/index.htm (Various sources, compiled)
Heyawacky - See the only-rectangles version here - http://www.nikoli.com/en/puzzles/heyawake/ For the irregular version which will appear on the contest, here are some links below -
https://mellowmelon.wordpress.com/category/puzzle-types/heyawacky/
https://prasannaseshadri.wordpress.com/category/heyawacky/ (avoid the variants that get mixed up in the category)

Also, note - this is a great round to participate in even if you do not have a printer. It is pretty easy to do shading puzzles on your normal paint tools on the computer using the fill with colour function. I should have noted as much for the snake round too (in fact the walk-through images after the Snake round http://logicmastersindia.com/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=1191&... were all done using paint tools) but that had Summed Snake as an exception, whereas here they're all paint-friendly.

For my first 1 or 2 years of solving on LMI I didn't have a printer and mostly preferred shading puzzles because I solved everything on Paint. In the long run it is advisable to switch to paper by getting a printer because the National/International Championships tend to be offline, but its useful to do this if you're just participating for fun or want to stay in touch with these contests without a printer.

PuzzlePicnic has some good Heyawackys too (all listed as Heyawake, but with Heyawacky rules)

Edited by brecher92 2016-01-20 7:06 AM

Thanks for sharing links Prasanna and Brecher.
Here are few more practice links:

Lakes:
https://maybepuzzles.wordpress.com/2015/02/07/puzzle-57-lakes/
There are 2 more as separate links in the above link itself.
PNB: http://www.puzzle-nonograms.com/

Windows: http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/?test=M201310P2

http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/?test=M201309P2 (This link is not a separate puzzle, but a marathon puzzle with all types of this round part of it. Might be a good practice) .

just to clarify. A heyawacky is a heyawake with irregular (not rectangular) shapes. All other rules are the same. Correct?
ALso. A lakes is a Nurikabe without the requirement of the black cells to be all connected. Correct?

Edited by forcolin 2016-01-21 12:42 AM

Yes you are correct regarding heyawacky.
Regarding Lakes, Its Nurikabe without connectivity rule and without 2x2 rule.

Any beginner level tips and strategies for Crazy pavement ? I attempted a couple of easy puzzles from Janko which gave me the impression that there are not many tricks in the puzzle.So,I jumped to a bigger sized puzzle where I was clearly clueless .The grid was 12X12 and the start was really difficult with bigger valued clues....

Can you post a link to this specific puzzle?

The only rule to be careful about with Heyawacky is that Heyawake is generally worded as "rooms" for the spanning rule and Heyawacky as "borders". This is mainly because the same irregular region can wrap around two borders. For example a U pentomino is allowed to have both its "ends" unshaded and the cell in between them unshaded by Nikoli Heyawake rules which use "rooms", but not allowed by Heyawacky rules using "borders".

Please share the puzzles, so that we can help you.

In general one tip I would give is doing some math for each row/column which has clue. For e.g. If you consider the IB example: For 1st row, the combinations of shading available is 1+2+4, and the clue is "5". So you clearly know it has to be 1+4. So you can keep doing like that. This will make your things easy.
Secondly, sometimes try looking for combined clues together for multiple rows/columns.

All the best everyone. :)

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?	Windows
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

A fun test - on the one hand, I found it a bit easy, on the other, it was nice to finish one of these for once.

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?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Heyawacky
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?	Heyawacky
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. Especially I enjoyed Heyawacky 4.

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?	Lakes
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?	Heyawacky
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 felt this was the most balanced PR round so far.

Excellent puzzles and a good hour spent in solving them.
Thanks Swaroop!

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?	Lakes
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

A fun set overall, if more on the easier side. Apparently Windows is a type that can be broken by intuition; I did Windows 4 in 2m25, the largest point/time ratio for this test.

I'm not very certain why Paint by Numbers is chosen here, since it's not a very deep type on its own; I don't think there's too many variations of tricks that can be used there. On the other hand, it's perhaps the type that is most well-known to people not active in competitive puzzling, so perhaps that's a reason on its own. It's also interesting that there's a lack of "common" shading types such as Nurikabe, but since the basic things of shading puzzles are covered ("black cells cannot be adjacent" and "white cells form contiguous region" are by Heyawacky; "black cells are connected" and "no 2x2 black cells" are by Windows; even Nurikabe's own island rule exists as Lakes), I guess the variations do represent the theme well.

The reason for including Paint By Numbers is exactly what you said, it is familiar and easy to understand.

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?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Crazy Pavement
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?	Too many easy puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Lakes
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 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?	Heyawacky
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 one word to describe the set.

Splendid !!

This becomes my favourite PR round so far and I am confident that it will remain that way until the end.Everything was perfect about the test.Construction/Points distribution/Difficulty/Selection of puzzle genres etc.,.My favourites of the test were Heyawacky (10 Points)and Windows(11 points).

Tremendous job Swaroop.Just for designing this test,you deserve a place in the Puzzle Team this year :-p.Simply stunning work behind the scenes.I greatly enjoyed the set.Thanks a lot for the test.

You made me experience the concept of 'fun' in a puzzle test which occurs very rarely.So you made me give an all "green" feedback in a puzzle test :)which is another of those rare things that I thought will never happen .Perfect work!!Keep it up!

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?	Crazy Pavement
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

A very nice puzzle set and I thought the difficulty level was nicely targeted for beginners. Thanks to the creators :)

Edited by Helen 2016-01-23 9:46 PM

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?	Crazy Pavement
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

Once again, this set was a lot of fun, though maybe a little too easy. There was a good amount of variety in the different puzzle types, and I liked seeing some unfamiliar types. Heyawacky 4 was very nice, and I also really liked both instructionless puzzles (though I made the stupid mistake of solving the instructionless Heyawacky example, thinking it was one of the puzzles for points).

I am glad you enjoyed. Thanks for the feedback. Yes indeed this test was targeted towards easy side.