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?	Nurikabe Loop
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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 booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Favorite Puzzles:

3 Water Fun
9 Shakashaka
11 Nurikabe Loop

Thank you!

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?	Straight Loop
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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 booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

I must say I was bit afraid of the test, considering last tests authored by Amit.
But this was indeed spectacular. Right balance of difficulty and quality. The sarting trick of each puzzle was really awesome.
Unfortunately I messed on the last puzzle and couldn't complete in the time but nonetheless enjoyable.
My favourite were:
1)Straightloop (3rd one I was just staring for a minute, until i realized similar to balance loop logic)
2) ShakaShaka (again the 3rd one was awesome, the 4-1 combo was tricky)
3) Cross Loop (I was afraid of this type as solving it first time and I was struggling.)

Thanks Amit.
Thanks LMI.

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?	Nurikabe Loop
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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 booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

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?	Straight Loop
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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 booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

I think the puzzles were a bit easier than usual. Also thought the "SL with shading" could better be described as a "Outside Yajilin" or "Row/Column Yajilin" or another similar name because the ruleset of having no two shaded cells adjacent was much more like Yajilin than Simple Loop.
I really enjoyed the last straight loop and the last shakashaka (though I almost ran out of time for that so I had to guess a bit). I also felt the large nurikabe loop was a bit too easy (I intuitively guessed how the middle should fill given the rules and it worked).
I really enjoyed this PR.

Edited by An LMI player 2019-02-24 2:04 PM

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?	SL with Shading
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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 booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

A thing about Shakashaka: I don't think it's your usual shading genre, and I might place it closer to object placement instead.

Oh, also a thing about Straight Loop 3: Technically this one is not solvable because there is no number in the circles. You might have wanted to put a ? in every circle instead, to tell that there *is* a number but it's unknown.

Edited by chaotic_iak 2019-02-24 4:49 PM

Thanks for the test!
A very nice balance. No one particular puzzle was too hard from the rest.
Haven't seen Cross Loop before, an interesting type.
Straight Loop costed me lots of minutes because somehow I was trying to solve it as a Balance Loop.
I see other people have similar experiences!
Ughh

A very nice PR round. This should be the standard for SM/PR.
Thanks again!

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?	Water Fun
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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 booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Barring 2-3 puzzle types, they were all new to me, so I was very sceptical about this round.
However, I had a surprisingly great time solving this set! Lots of variety, and a good balance of puzzle difficulty from my point of view.
Thank You Amit! :)

Edited by priyambhushan 2019-02-24 11:43 PM

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?	Straight Loop
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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 booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Excellent puzzle selection. It had something for every participant. Particularly liked straight loop and simple loop with shading. Not yet comfortable with cross loop and shakashaka.

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?	Straight Loop
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
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 booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

I have to agree with you on this one because I borrowed the idea from Swaroop's Rows Yajilin from the 2018 Puzzle GP Round 3. The practice link that I provided was for Yajilin as well. I think Outside Yajilin is an appropriate name for this type.

Its a fine line to define the genre, for example some people would call Fillomino as Number Placement while others would define it as Area Division. I wanted a puzzle type which requires thinking along a different dimension, so I included Shakashaka which requires the creation of the rectangles along diagonals.




In hindsight I agree with your recommendation that we should have placed a question mark within the circle. A blank circle could then indicate a cell through which the loop has to pass through without having to obey any number related constraints.

I have seen it only on the Logic Masters Portal where it is named as Achtelwenden which translates to Eighth Turn.
I was not sure about an appropriate English name for the type so we kept it in line with the other loop puzzles: Simple, Straight and Cross.

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?	Shakashaka
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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 booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Straight Loop
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
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 booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

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?	Water Fun
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
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 booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

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?	Nurikabe

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?	Cross Loop
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
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 booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Very nice set. I'd have hoped the variants were slightly more known types for a PR.

Favourite puzzles: 3rd Shakashaka, 2nd Cross Loop, 3rd Water Fun.

Thanks 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?	Cross Loop
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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 booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Congratulations to Endo Ken, Tomoya Kimura and Ryusuke Nishiyama for taking the top three places.

Amongst Indian participants, Congratulations to Prasanna Seshadri, Rohan Rao and Ashish Kumar for taking the top 3 places. They were the only ones to complete all the puzzles.

Of the 192 participants, 31 each were from India and Japan, and 22 from USA. Philippe Meyer (France) was the first to start the test while Lenson Andrade (India) was the last person to start the test. 59 participants completed the set within the allotted time. The median score of the test was 72.2.

This test was dominated by participants from Japan who took the top 5 places, and 8 out of the top 10 places.

Thanks Amit Sowani for the puzzles!

Thanks to the participants who have shared feedback so far. Participants may share feedback on the results page and rate the puzzles on the contest page.

A general suggestion to the participants is to READ the Instructions Booklet (especially the answer keys) before attempting the test. Many answers were in a format different from the one used in the test.

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?	Nurikabe
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
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 booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Thanks everyone for the encouraging feedback and constructive suggestions to improve.

Before I say anything else I would like to thank Rakesh for his support for this test.
He identified four broken puzzles while testing and also provided great feedback on the level of difficulty.
Based on his suggestion we dropped one difficult Shakashaka and Nurikabe Loop which were then provided as practice material.
And as for all LMI tests he is handling all the back-end setup for the tests. So clearly without him this test would literally not have been possible.

In terms of the puzzle selection, I wanted one/two standard puzzle types and some new types which introduce an additional dimension to the solve. For the exploratory types I wanted some kind of a crossover, with the shading type borrowing some elements from loop based puzzles and the loop type borrowing elements from shading.
The simple loop with shading (outside Yajilin) idea was borrowed from Swaroop's Rows Yajilin in 2018 Puzzle GP round 3. I found Nurikabe Loop on GM puzzles and tweaked the rules a bit to obey the 2X2 Nurikabe rule. Water Fun and Shakashaka are personal favorites so I wanted to include those in the test. I have been solving a lot on the Logic Masters portal where I came across Straight Loop (Geradeweg) and Cross Loop (Achtelwenden). My personal favorite puzzle was the 2nd Nurikabe which is not very difficult but I tried to base it on a Yin-Yang theme which appears as part of the solve.

I hope you all enjoyed solving the puzzles and best of luck for the rest of the season.

Solution Booklet Please

Solution Booklet: http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/dl.asp?attachmentid=770