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.

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

where can we view the complete ( filled in ) answers to the sudokus , as opposed to the solutions ?

OK got 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?	Fortress 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