Good luck to all participants!

The test has now started.

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?	Doors
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
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

Is puzzle 3 supposed to have 10s in the lower left and lower right corner? It didn't seem unique to me but worked nicely with those added. Maybe I'm missing something.

Thanks for a good test!

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?	Black and White and Grey
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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

Favorite Puzzles:

Tents 7
Black and White 12
Number TriLink 20
Black and White and Grey 22

Thank you!

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?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Black and White and Grey
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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

Are you sure that puzzle no.3 numberlink has unique solution? ;-)

Explained above. Apologies for the inconvenience. We request that this isn't considered in the puzzle quality rating since there is a best author prize this year! :)

I don't mean to be unappreciative, but I didn't particularly enjoy the mechanics of all the grids were one idea was repeated over and over -- it is funny once in a while but here it made solving quite repetitive and not so enjoyable. (Hitori 5 and 6, tents 8 and 9, loop finder 15, doors 17: each of them had a very nice and rather original underlying idea in principle, but in practice these grids were just not fun to solve). This is a case where trying to have original aesthetics / themes in the puzzle construction actually hurts the puzzle quality in my opinion.

Denis

What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Black and White and Grey
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Answer keys could have been better
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

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?	Doors
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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

Wonderful Test !!
Actually went smooth for being starter.
I completed 20 puzzles in 40 min but took like 15 min in just the Doors and BWG big ones.
At the end entering answer keys was little hectic.

My favourite was of course Doors Big and BWG big.

Thanks Rohan for wonderful test.

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?	Black and White and Grey
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
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

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?	Black and White and Grey
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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

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?	Black and White and Grey
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

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?	Doors
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

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?	Black and White and Grey
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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

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?	Doors
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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

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?	Doors
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
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 distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many easy puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Loop Finder
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
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 was disappointed with the raster graphics on Black and White and Grey and on Tents (pixellation was really ugly to look at). Also, the interior grid lines in Doors were too dark and thick to be solved in the manner the IB suggests. I ended up drawing X's over borders that contained closed doors and perpendicular lines through doors that were open to create a network of lines. Perhaps slitherlink-style dots would have been better?

Thanks for a great set!

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?	Hitori
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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

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?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Black and White and Grey
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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

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?	Doors
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
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

So, clearly there are a bunch of easy puzzles. I know it's for Puzzle Ramayan, though, so on retrospect it's fine, even though I was hoping for better.

My favorite puzzles were the two hardest puzzles: Doors 3 and BWG 2. There are several puzzles that are less than ideal: Numberlink 3 had very similar halves; Hitori 3 had a big frame that ended up not doing anything, just artificially making the puzzle larger; Tents 2 had an answer key that was completely independent from the trees (because the only two solutions before including the trees gave the same answer key); Tents 3 had an obvious solution (there were several other no-number Tents puzzles I've done that were more appealing than this); Loop Finder 3 also ended up just having an artificially larger puzzle size, although it's definitely an interesting parity problem; Doors 2 was extremely repetitive.

Answer keys were mostly good, although I expected "leftmost tent for each row" for Tents and "lengths of segments up until closed doors" for Doors. Whether puzzles are worth the right amount, I can't say since I blazed the test, but I think a few puzzles can have their values adjusted.

Anyway... Well, an okay start for the season. I hope it's going better forward, though.

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?	Doors
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
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

No particular reason for quoting, I just wanted to say "New, Huge and Challenging Author" is an awesome tag to have :D

As a general point, I actually feel this difficulty is just right for Puzzle Ramayan. Its significantly less challenging than Sudoku Mahabharat but that's reflective of the current solving capabilities in India. Many newer solvers tried this contest and solved a decent number of puzzles. I think that's good, and hopefully it encourages them to be a bit more regular. In Sudoku we have a lot more depth, so its good to have things a little more difficult. Of course, ideally once solvers become regular and continue improving, we can move the difficulty up along with that. Puzzle quality aside, just commenting on difficulty, I would urge other PR authors to keep this difficulty too. I know it may not be as much fun for veteran solvers and it might be a little more difficult to build fun and varied solve paths but the priority of this particular series is to provide a base for Indian talent (and new talent from other countries too) to develop.