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?	Irregular Frame 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?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Fortress 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?	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?	Irregular Frame Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

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

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?	Outside Parity 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?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Coded Pairs 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?	Outside Parity Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

Really enjoyed solving this set. All the sudokus had nice, logical solving paths which made the test quite enjoyable. The variants were not the usual ones, which made the experience better!

Thanks Amit and Hemant for the puzzles!

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?	Fortress Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

A hard and tough episode definitely.Just barely managed to scrape through the test and in the end glad to have completed.I had a messy solve in Coded pairs(12) and it took the longest time for me(15:23) which is too much considering that I finished the Fortress(11) in 5:23 and Outside Parity(15) in 6:51 ! Even the CP(3) sharply pricked me .I suffered the most in Unordered Distances and it went horrendously bad .I had to guess both Distances and the 5 pointer ,I was completely blind and had no idea how to start.Very fortunately both my guesses in that turned out right.

I did enjoy the contest but I would have preferred to finish it more cleanly than how I did in the contest.I plan to solve both coded pairs and distances later very cleanly and get that sense of satisfaction.

My favourite sudokus are Fortress (11) followed by outside parity (15).

Thanks Hemant and Amit for a tough challenge which I relished very much.Puzzle quality was top notch.Good luck for Odd even and Substitution :) .

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?	Unordered Distances Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

Very nice set of sudokus. Good quality but slightly on the harder side.

Favourite sudokus: UnorderedDistances-2, CodedPairs-1, IrregularFrame-2, CodedPairs-2 and UnorderedDistances-1

Thanks Hemant and Amit!

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?	Unordered Distances Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

Brilliant test.Greatly enjoyed.
Solved really smoothly except for the 5 pointer Unordered distances,which was an excellent sudoku and took up time.
Favourites were both the Unordered distances,the 11 pointer Irregular frame,and the Fortress.
Cant ask for more,thoroughly enjoyable set.
Thanks a lot to Hemant and Amit for the excellent sudokus.

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?	Coded Pairs Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

First off, I'm an amateur solver (and not a composer at all), so my comments probably shouldn't carry as much weight as those of the more experienced players who are fully aware of the effort that goes into this. But as this is the first time I've actually come close to completing a round (and it may very well be the last), I wanted to leave a comment.

I had a lot of fun doing the Irregular Frame - 2 (11 pts) and the Coded Pairs -2 (12 pts) logically, although each cost me around 14 minutes.

Outside Parity - 2 (15 pts) was enjoyable too, even if my solving online (rather than printing) made it a bit difficult for me to remember which cells I knew to contain odd numbers or even numbers.

I had no idea how to start the Unordered Distances - 1 (5 pts) and spent 5:51 guessing my way through it. In contrast, I solved the Unordered Distances - 2 (12 pts), logically if I remember correctly, in around 6:37, which suddenly feels short when compared to the 5:51 for the 6x6. Of course, I may have just been blind on the 6x6 and lucky on the 9x9.

Overall, this was really fun, and I look forward to any more contests by these authors.

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?	Classic 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?	Irregular Frame 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?	Below Average
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?	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?	Outside Parity Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

I did abysmally. This was the first time I was seeing these variants. The sudokus in the Instruction Booklet were much easier than the real test and that fooled me into thinking I had understood the trick. I hope to improve next year. Great test to check the best sudoku brains :).

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?	Irregular Frame 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?	Outside Parity Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

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

The test is now over.

Congratulations to Jakub Ondrousek, Jan Mrozowski and Kota Morinishi for taking the top three places.

Amongst Indian participants, Congratulations to Rohan Rao, Pranav Kamesh and Kishore Kumar for taking the top 3 places.

Of the 272 participants, 92 were from India, 29 from Japan and 16 each from Italy, USA and Poland. Philippe Meyer (France) was the first to start the test while Sreejith Srikrishnan (India) was the last person to start the test. 35 participants completed the set within the allotted time. The median score of the test was 50.1.

Thanks Hemant Kumar Malani and Amit Sowani for the puzzles!

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

Solution Booklet: http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/dl.asp?attachmentid=755

Also PB without password available from contest page.

The general experience was that the round was a bit more difficult. While setting the sudokus for the round we had dropped one sudoku and reduced the difficulty of another to make the round easier. After Rakesh and Prasanna tested the set I was quite assured that the round is okay from the point of difficulty. In fact, Prasanna had found it to be easier than the first round. Anyway, it did turn out to be difficult. Specially many solvers struggled with Outside Parity 9x9, Coded Pairs 9x9 and Unordered Distances. With all these stats, Jakub finished the set in 41:31, which was definitely mindblowing!

Of the Sudokus I had created, my personal favourites were Unordered Distances 6x6 and Outside Parity 9x9. Unfortunately, they were also among the ones which got the least number of submissions.

Congratulations to the top 3 and thanks to all the participants.

Initially I was slated to do this round on my own but I was happy to collaborate with Hemant on this round who ended up creating a larger share of the sudokus.

We wanted to introduce some variety into the puzzle within the theme of outside and neighbours, which led to the selection of these set of variants. The Unordered Distances variant was an accidental miscommunication where Hemant assumed that the order is not implied in a standard Distances Sudoku puzzle. The puzzles he sent for testing were of high quality and hence we decided to introduce his new twist in the round.

Adjusting the level of difficulty was a challenge and the first few submissions were on the difficult side. We decided to tone down the difficulty on the last few puzzles which were left to be created.
There were a few examples where we could have made the puzzles more difficult, e.g: The first coded pair reduced to a domino sudoku but was solvable without needing to realize that. The unordered distances 9X9 IB example was more difficult than the puzzle in the test. I think the balance was right for most participants so some of those efforts did help.

I hope all the participants enjoyed solving the sudokus and are encouraged to participate for the rest of SM.