I agree that counting is tedious - for everyone. The intention was that participants solve it completely logically (actually count the possibilities). That is the reason "close" answers were not considered correct. I think the points for counting puzzles are correct. Possibly #3 could have one more point.

You can suggest if you think there is a good way to achieve the above objective - "some way for us to be sure of the answer"

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?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Letter Weights
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

This puzzle was different from the other two but, in essence, it only needed the remaining Os (for OBOE and OCTOPUS) to be correctly determined. (Two out of five possible places). After that it was easy to complete. During testing we found this to be roughly of the same level of difficulty as the other two. However I have observed the preference for 13 and 14 over 12, for most participants so far. So, post-event, its possible that it may actually be slightly (~1 point) undervalued.

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?	Arithmetic Square
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?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Letter Weights
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

Never give a test in hurry. But not an option for me this time, since I am traveling. Messed up lots of puzzles. And should have attempted all word puzzles first, as they were high points and much easy to solve than casual stuff.
This might be my discard mostly. Let's see.
But very hard test in my opinion. Hardest of all so far.
I enjoyed solving, whichiver i solved.
Answer keys. I got confused, as some letters were combined and i was not sure how to enter it. May be i missed instructions somewhere, but eventually i figured it out.
Thanks Rakesh and LMI.

What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Shortest Distances
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Answer keys were horrible
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Can you elaborate which answer keys were horrible, so that we can work on improving on it in future.

What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?

Answer keys could have been better

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?	Arithmetic Square
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?	Double Letter Scrabble
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?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Below Average
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Answer keys were horrible
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth too much or too little

Worthless test and simply waste of time.

Oh, I definitely solved them all logically, but it's *extremely* prone to miscount, which is the problem. If you get a single miscount somewhere, you must check your whole work, essentially redoing it; in more standard puzzles, you can scan for the error and find it quickly (even if fixing it might be harder).

I noticed that but had trouble locating where those two words could be; it took me ~8 of those 9 minutes. That's why I thought it was undervalued.

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?	Scrabble
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?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Curve Data
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

Thank you!

Favorite Puzzles:

9 Curve Data
14 Regionless Meandering Words
15 Scrabble
17 Letter Scrabble
18 Double Letter Scrabble

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?	Scrabble
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 hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
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 too much or too little
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

I'll be honest--this is my least favorite category even before starting. To me, "casual" puzzles seem to me to be all about guessing, trial and error, counting and hoping, and more tiral and error. So I was really looking forward to the word puzzles which I thought would at least be logical but found them staggeringly difficult. I started with the last page. Missing Letters OK, kind of fun. Word Search I spent almost 40 minutes on a 2-point puzzle and could not even finish it. Several possibile locations for many of the words leads to dozens and dozens of combinations to avoid overlap. I could not find the right one and finally gave up. Final Double Letter Scrabble another 30 minutes trying to place my last word LATUR to no avail. May be just a bad round for me but very discouraging.

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?	Letter Scrabble
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

There were some really nice puzzles in here, but the misleading point distribution broke the contest for me. (To a large part I feel I should just have realized this and not sunk so much time into the undervalued puzzles.)

Edited by rob 2018-05-14 3:55 PM

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?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Double Letter Scrabble
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

This seemed much harder than the previous sets. It required a lot of right insight from the start to even begin too many puzzles. I find this slows solving down a lot more in a full set as it is harder to get into a solving flow. It also leads to problems with point values as they can severely increase solving times if you don't get it from the start. It's always hard to rate these puzzles though.

Also, I will never learn how to properly count, no matter how hard I try.

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?	Letter Weights
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

Thanks Rakesh and LMI for the high quality test. Though the puzzles were difficult on the whole for a PR round, I found the puzzles which I solved to have a logical start or logical solve.

This may be the round for everyone who dont have to remember confusing and contradicting rules of many other puzzles. Overall a good set and nice experience.

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?	Average
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 hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Double Letter Scrabble
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

So... the guessing round. It was clear from the start that this wouldn't be a strong round for me, as I hate casual puzzles and have only a mild interest in word puzzles. Some puzzles that I attempted during the test were ok, with double letter scrabble #18 being the most memorable one for me. Somewhere in the middle of the test, however, I lost interest in the puzzles and the round, and got tired of all the intuition-based word placements.
Certainly my least favourite round so far :(

What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Shortest Distances
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?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Can you elaborate which answer keys were horrible, so that we can work on improving on it in future.