What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many easy puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Odd Even Count 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?	2 Odd 2 Even 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?	2 Odd 2 Even 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?	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?	2 Odd 2 Even 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?	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?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Below Average
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Coded Sudoku
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 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?	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?	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?	True or Lie 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

Too hard for timed test but nice fun 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?	Coded Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

Great quality of Sudokus, really enjoyed the variants. But had a bad day and broke a lot of them, even some 6*6 ones. Thanks for the great Sudokus Ashish and Kishore!

Extremely tough for a beginner. Added to it, my network conn was really bad. So personally pathetic performance again. Infact its getting worse with each round. But I guess this is required at this level of competition. So Great job done Ashish and Kishore.

Edited by Anu G 2019-02-10 1:55 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?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Coded Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

After a bad performance in the 1st round I had targeted to perform well in this round. But couldn't perform as well. I lost a lot of time in the classics and the 9*9 2 Odd 2 Even. At the end I couldn't solve the 2 Odd 2 Even.
Overall a good set of sudokus. I specially liked the Coded Sudokus.
Thanks Kumars for the sudokus :p

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

great set of sudokus. thankfuly i had no mistakes in this round. in my opinion i found true or lie and coded sudoku easy, finshed 9x9 for both of them in 10 mins combined. had already decided to go for the hghest pointer 2 odd 2 even first and thankfully it worked for me. i felt that quadro should've been given more points compared to true or lie and coded sudoku.

overall i am glad that i finished the whole set within time

Nice test but rather difficult. Even the Classics were hard.
I basically give up an hour fumbling hopelessly so it was a surprise to see other people found it just as hard.
I thought Coded 2 was too guess-y and the 2O2E was beautifully made.

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

Thanks for this amazing set. I really enjoyed quadro and coded during the contest, and 2 odd 2 even offline.

Edited by harmeet 2019-02-10 5:20 PM

Does this mean the only differences are to do with the presentation, rather than how you might solve the puzzle? That's certainly how it seems to me, so I'd be grateful if you could confirm this or else point out differences I might be missing.

My interest in general is that sometimes Sudoku contests do themselves no favours with being overly complex and not friendly to beginners. So I see an old and relatively well-understood variation masquerading under new rules and new presentation, and I wonder if that is really being helpful. My personal opinion is that a beginner would look at a 12 in a pencilmark grid and be able to grasp what is going on far better than a 1 in a true or lie grid. If that's really the case, I ask myself what, if any, benefit this new presentation is bringing to the table.

The whole "Liar" theme is also something that probably needs some further point - at some point in the WPC and WSC community someone decided that "Liar" should mean differing by exactly one and the precedent has stuck for whatever reason. However, to an outsider this might seem quite arbitrary, and whilst this might be lying in a technical sense, this +/- 1 concept is actually far more restrictive. That, to me, is something more like "fuzzy" clues.

The final point I'd like to make is if this is really just a pencilmark sudoku, it kind of stretches the theme of "substitution" a little far. Granted, I personally don't care that much for themes as I know it's perfectly possible to group together variations that superficially look similar but fundamentally solve using different heuristics, however there may be solvers who end up confused by the theming. I tend to think it should be the puzzles that make the theme, rather than the theme that makes the puzzles.

True or Lie sudoku is not a new idea. I think it was first created by Nikola in sept. 2014 for the tournament sudoku day: http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/?test=M201409S, and appeared in a few occasions, like indian sudoku championship 2015.
I've created some similar variants, liar sudoku: http://sudokuvariante.blogspot.com/search/label/Menteur, with only the "liar" idea.

Concerning the points you raised:

Presentation: In my opinion it's not less well presented than pencil marks. Here we have only one clue in each cell, which is in my opinion more readable than pencil marks sudoku. Of course it could have been presented as a pencil marks sudoku, it's only a small twist. I think this variants belongs to a category we could call "coded information" variants, exactly as roman numeral sudoku. Roman numeral sudoku could be presented as pencil marks sudoku, too: "V" means pencil marks 45678, "III" means pencil marks 38, etc... I don't see a problem in having a small twist from pencil marks variant which leads to true or lie sudoku.

Beginner-friendly: I don't think the rule and presentation of true or lie sudoku is too complex for a beginner. I think the idea is quite simple and the presentation very clear. If a player prefer pencil marks, it takes few seconds to write them in all clued cells, I don't think it's a problem for players.

"Liar", perhaps liar is not the right word to use, but who really cares about name of variants?

The only complaint I would make is that playing online was not very easy with this formatting, as mstang noticed.

Fred

In a True or Lie sudoku, each given clue restricts marking to ONLY 3 possibilities which is certainly not the case in a pencilmark sudoku (where you may have 2,3,4 or even more ! given digits/possibilities) in a cell.Yes it is similar in solving style to a pencil marks sudoku but that doesn't mean that it should be taken off from contests.



I think you are reading too much into an issue which I think is very trivial.The opinion that you put forth regarding a beginner grasping idea of a pencilmark grid more than a TOL grid is very dubious and I don't quite agree with that.On the contrary, any person grasping anything boils down to whether that person in question understands the rules clearly(which I think can definitely be taken for granted for TOL rules) and once that is done , I think TOL is a far better and beginner friendly version than a pencil mark sudoku.



As I said before, the issue is too trivial .We didn't even think of it being compared to a pencil mark sudoku.Perhaps you might have had a bad experience solving a TOL in the past which bothers you when you see it and your opinon on it is largely framed based on you being very subjective ?!



If a beginner or any person for that matter had a question regarding rules of TOL, that would have been raised in the forum and besides TOL doesn't find its debut here .It has occured previously in other websites' contests too (argio logic for one which also presents pencil marks sudokus separately !) and even in last year's SM round (where you didn't seem to have an issue) and where no one had posted any problems regarding comprehension of rules.

I was quite disheartened after my performance today and felt I was not fit for competitive sudokus. Then I decided to try and solve the puzzles offline. I had got stuck on classics 6-7 points and wasted lots of time in the contest. Offline, I finished the 10 points true-lies quite fast and also the odd-even count. I think the 10 pointers were easier than the classics. I take back my comments that it was extremely tough for a beginner. The variants were actually very interesting. I just chose the wrong puzzles. And forgot to upload the result of the first classic thinking i will do it later . Anyways I continue to learn from my mistakes. Well done, Kumars.

Do you have any suggestions for improving the formatting for this variant?

You may have noticed that points for classics were higher as compared to most SM tests. So classics were expected to be harder.

There is nothing like a wrong puzzle but individual preferences can differ. And with the clock running, even easy grids can look formidable sometimes.

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?	2 Odd 2 Even Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth too much or too little

Extremely hard test,as expected.
Just like last time,literally every sudoku was difficult,which is now certainly a theme of Ashish's creations without doubt.
I felt a few sudokus as a result were grossly undervalued,examples being coded and odd even count,both of which were worth more points.
Classics should have been given lesser points to compensate.
Didnt enjoy the test much,but thanks to Ashish and Kishore for the sudokus.

Slightly off-topic, but regarding +-1, my suggestion would be to go with "knapp daneben".

In terms of presentation I think it's fine to not present the True or Lie as pencil marks. Besides the mentioned Roman Numerals, there's also e.g. last GP's Braille Sudoku or just Odd/Even Sudoku. Certainly they can all be expressed as pencilmarks, but I feel that the presentation does direct the logic in a way. The kinds of arguments that are possible are somewhat restricted, and there are different patterns to be recognized. I did end up writing out candidates in the hard competition puzzle after missing some logic, but in the end I think the messier grid rather solved me down extra (on top of the work of writing out candidates).

The puzzles were great, and quite difficult. Thanks to the authors and organizers!

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?	2 Odd 2 Even Sudoku

What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very 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