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?	Minesweeper
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

Nice! :)

Thank you. I am glad you enjoyed the 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?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Easy As ABC
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?	Magnets
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?	Magnets
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

Nice and very pleasant set of puzzles.I enjoyed the set a lot .Lost a lot of time on ABC No touch due to a false deduction.Favourites are Magnets followed by Mastermind puzzles.Thanks Swaroop !

Thanks. I am glad you enjoyed. Good show.

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?	2D Mastermind
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Answer keys could have been better
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

There is a wrong is IB, puzzle 4-6 minesweeper: only 14 mines in the puzzle.

Thanks for pointing this. It should indeed be 14 mines.

What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Magnets
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?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little
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?	Mastermind
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?	Easy As ABC No Touch
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

Excellent contest, thank you Swaroop!

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?	Mastermind
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?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Dominos
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

Great Test Swaroop!
I spent lot of time unsuccessfully solving high pointer Arrows puzzle :( Any logical deduction pointer will be helpful for this puzzle

Thanks, Rajesh.

It is a tricky puzzle but completely logical. I will share a 1-page document after the contest is over, on how to solve the Arrows high pointer and Minesweeper high pointer puzzles.

Thank you. Good Performance.

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?	Magnets
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?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little
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 medium difficult puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Magnets
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

Pretty nice puzzles but not suitable for a PR round, as usual.

Thanks Swaroop!

Congratulations to Endo Ken, Hideaki Jo and Kota Morinishi for taking the top 3 places.

Among Indian participants, Congratulations to Prasanna Seshadri, Amit Sowani and Rohan Rao for taking the top 3 places.

Of the 165 participants, 23 finished all puzzles. Robert Vollmert (Germany) was the first to submit the test while Tomasz Strozak (Poland) was the last person to start the test. The median score of the test was 60.7 .

Thanks Swaroop Guggilam for the puzzles, and all participants who provided valuable feedback.

Participants may share feedback on the results page and rate the puzzles on the contest page.

Congratulations to all the winners.
Good performance by new-comers. Also a notably good performance by Kishore, very close to 3rd position (0.4 points difference).

Some facts:
Arrows 3rd was the least submitted puzzle (only 34 participants)
Minesweeper 5th was the most submitted puzzle (177 participants).

I tried my best to have a mix of easy, medium and hard (kind of tricky) puzzles so that everyone gets something to solve. Thanks for all the feedback and I hope you had fun solving every puzzle. We tried our best to keep the answer keys simple enough. But some of the feedback mentions that answer keys can be better, can you please specify which type of puzzles you had trouble entering answer keys. So that we can address those in future, or else it's difficult for us to know where the problem is.

Lastly, Thank you LMI for giving me the opportunity to author one round in PR. Special thanks to TiiT and Rakesh for testing all the puzzles and giving their feedback.

Regarding 3rd Arrows and 6th Minesweeper: I know lot of people had trouble solving these 2 puzzles, including our testers, but later once explained the trick, they agreed to keep it. My idea was, even if most people would not be able to solve it, but they might learn something new in this test and will help them perform better next time.
From my end, I made a small document explaining the start for both of these puzzles, you can find it in the below link (Apologies for the images, had to use paint due to short time):
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1r7TUKyI8gKpyZzjdNwnvpNma90qcigg3

Please feel free to ask questions here, if you are unable to solve any particular puzzle or do not understand anything in the above document, would be happy to help you out.
With Regards, Swaroop
Good luck with remaining rounds.

My approach for Arrows 3 was slightly different but with the same conclusion. Sum of all numbers is 82. Corner arrows can point to up to 4 numbers, and middle arrows can point up to 3 numbers. The remaining off-corner arrows must therefore point to at least 3 numbers each (8x4 + 4x3 + 8x5 = 84, so we only have 2 to spare), so they must all go straight.

Edited by chaotic_iak 2018-04-17 5:32 AM

Interesting. Great to learn new approaches. Although I created with some particular idea, it turns out there are many other approaches to solve the same thing which even I am not aware of.
Thanks for sharing your approach.