I did this and never got back round to finishing it during the time (solving unofficially after everything had finished). As I said on our own boards, it certainly didn't feel like it was worth only 2 more points than the classic!

Congrats all round, firstly for the organisers in hitting a record turnout, and secondly for Zafer for providing an entertaining set of puzzles!

Too bad I couldn't start in time. I was doing pretty well for the 50+ minutes I had to solve.
The shifted 9 by 9 wasn't hard per se, but all the openings lay in the wrapped around nonets and were easily missed. I found the symmetric unequal hard to see. also messed it up it seems.

Thanks to Zafer for organising this wonderful sudoku test. Grids were nice and I liked the concept of "renban groups" (which I didn't know before).

Thanks to all LMI team, which allows such tests to take place. I don't know why, but I can do very good results on this site .
Because of the new result page, I really believe I was 1rst, seeing all these famous players behind me , but it misses one name: congrats to Rishi, very well played !!!

The only disappointment was the low participation of members of french forum "sudokuvariante". Even so I had opened a topic and made the announcement on the portal, and Bastien said grids were beautiful and not too hard...


Fred

Fred - read about your strategy (solving 9X9 grids first, and then 6X6 grids) in sudokuvariante.
Very interesting indeed, given that some of the 6X6 grids were high valued

In Hyderabad, all solvers got together to solve it. It was really nice meeting other solvers and discussing strategies post the test.

The Venue was Euro School (run by Jaipal ). Best part was we had 9 new people participating.. 7 school children and 2 teachers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Before we got to the test and while we were waiting for other solvers, we had a nice interactive session wit hthe school children and teachers where we discussed the variants and how we can solve them. The enthusiasm shown by the kids was really great to see.... Neeraj, Jaipal and I spent some time with the kids and they loved it....

Post the tst we all sat down and discussed how each one of us went through the puzzles and the approach adopted. The school management was happy with the interaction and so were some of the parents who had come with the kids... We are planning to have more sessions with the school kids and are working out details how to improve their interest in the game and make them solve more...

Thanks to Jaipal for arranging it and the lovely lunch...

Rishi

Congrats to everybody, particularly Rishi, Fred and Jakub H. of course.

Thanks to Zafer fo this nice set of puzzles, none of them was really hard but I had fun on every grid, which I really appreciated.

And, again, thanks to Deb and whole LMI team for this great job. You really do a big work to make sudoku evolve and gain popularity.

Here is a screenshot of the results of the school kids who attempted the Renban... It was a mighty effort from them, keeping in mind that they were looking at variations for the first time ever.... With regular practice I am sure they will climb the results ladder.





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HydResults.png (22KB - 3 downloads)

It is interesting to note that most kids solved the NoKnight Step Sudoku (apart from Classic). Some kids solved the Diagonal as well.

Before the test when we were having a session with the kids... Diagonal and AK were the most discussed... The kids understood the concepts very well too and hence majority attempted it.

Nice to see this kind of enthusiasm. Hope to see more of this in future.

You guys should plan to have one in Mumbai / Pune region. Target for December Sudoku test (around Xmas)