7 out of the Top 8 in SM1 finished in Top 8 at the recent WSC as well.

At the outset I thank one and all who participated in this SM1 round. I am really very happy to see good feedback from around 30 participants. Frankly speaking whatever I constructed for this round started three months back. Most of them were rejected due to high difficulty level and not suitable for competition. Within a week time most of the puzzles were constructed and those puzzles were rated higher than others in the feedback. So I learnt a lesson that high difficulty level is not the criteria for good puzzle. In this round I have seen some interesting things..

a) Top 3 places were separated by a minute or two.
b) Tantan Dai missed the second spot due to penalty even though she completed before Seung Jae Kwak.
c) Tantan took 22 min for classic and 21 min for variants which is surprising for me.
d) Tawan (tamz29) took 24 min for Arrow 9*9 by missing 'universal Logic' set for starting this puzzle.
e) Seung Jae took only 2.31 min to finish the Diagonal 9*9 (highest pointer of this round) which is unimaginable to me.
f) Endo Ken (EKBM) took 22.26 min for Palindrome 9*9 which is so costly for him otherwise he would have been in Top 10.
g) Among Indian participants, Rohan beating Kishore by 45 seconds and reaching the top spot is really amazing one.
h) Jason (Ziti) commented that he hasn't seen me so far and appreciated my creativity skills. Frankly speaking Jason, I am not a good solver so you haven't seen me any where in the competitions so far.

I am really very happy to see 38 participants finished in time out of 261 with average score of 50 and all the puzzles were attempted by most of the participants. So I am satisfied that
we gave right level of difficulty puzzles for this round even though some of them feel slightly higher level of difficulty. For them I am so sorry.

In fine I am thankful to Rakesh Rai who patiently tested all my puzzles. Last but not the least to say thankful to LMI for giving me an opportunity to author this episode.
Thanks to all.

Kumaresan.R
Author SM1, 2018-19

Thanks Kumaresan for the wonderful set of puzzles for the curtain raiser for this year's SM rounds. I found the puzzle construction was of great quality and all puzzles gave good work to our skills. Though I felt that some were tough, it is better to have some tough puzzles than a sprint round as it will make us improve overall on solving strategies as personally sprint is not my favourite. Palindrome sudoku was my favourite and Arrows looked nice though I am yet to solve it.

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?	Palindrome Sudoku
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?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Palindrome Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

Very well-balanced set of sudokus. The Arrows 9x9 logic was very neat. I struggled a bit on the Classics and Thermo, but thats just my rustiness.

Overall, a great start to SM 2018-19 and looking forward to the rest of the season.

Thanks a lot Kumaresan! Wonderful and high-quality sudokus!

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?	Palindrome Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little

I haven't given the test between 14th to 17th Dec. I came to know about this competition late. Can I still compete in this competition by giving remaining tests?

Yes. You can participate in the remaining tests. The best 4 will be considered for rankings.

Solution Booklet: http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/dl.asp?attachmentid=749

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?	Classic Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Many puzzles were worth too much or too little