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

Nice sudokus, but too hard for SM. I think there was far too much of math.

Favourite sudokus: Difference 9x9, XSums 9x9, Difference 6x6

Thanks Pranav and Rakesh!

When I saw the IB, I could not understand even the questions, and rued the fact that I last studied Math 4 decades ago. But as I started to solve, I started understanding it, and solved the IB (except the remainder). During the contest,my printer got stuck, and I lost 10 minutes getting it to work. So I managed to solve only the classics and the Product. The classics were much easier than last time. Thanks for that. And I actually find the Math variants very interesting, and will enjoy solving them offline. Very interesting 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?	Little Killer 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?	X Sums Sudoku
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

I personally loved the round with Math being my favourite variant. I got stuck in few high pointers and as a result could not solve more puzzles this time around. Thanks Rakesh and Pranav for the good set of puzzles.

When will the result come? How many tests does one need to participate in, in order to get ratings?

The current results are available at http://logicmastersindia.com/SM/201903/score.asp

Also, the ratings shall be updated soon. Participation in even one recent test (out of the last twelve rated tests) makes you eligible for ratings.

The test is now over.

Congratulations to Tantan Dai (top position in a LMI contest for the first time), Hideaki Jo, Takuya Sugimoto and Endo Ken for taking the top four places.

Amongst Indian participants, Congratulations to Rohan Rao, Kishore Kumar, Suvarna and Shaheer Rahman for taking the top 4 places.

Of the 275 participants, 95 were from India, 27 from Japan, 21 from USA, 17 from Italy and Poland, 16 from France. Ganghyun Lee (Korea) was the first to start the test while Kshitij Kumar (India) was the last participant to start the test. 12 participants completed the set within the allotted time. The median score of the test was ~37.

Thanks Pranav Kamesh and Rakesh Rai for the (hard) puzzles!

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

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?	Average

Thanks to everyone who has shared feedback. Some responses below:

Agree

Agree mostly. Probably we could have added more balance to the set. But we did not want to go with more than 15 points for any puzzle. I think this may be the first time we have gone to 16 for a single puzzle in SM.

Agree with the first point. This was a Math round, maybe we went a little overboard. But there was enough sudoku solving too.

Thank you.

Agree and Thank you. What was the pre-prep you did?

Thanks. We have two discards in SM, so it is ok if you do not do well in a test.

It will happen soon. Also, you may want to adjust your aim and make it higher and that may help you achieve your original aim.

Agree. We wanted to be fair to Maths and not just stick to addition and multiplication variants. We are keeping general difficulty level little higher this time. That is the reason we have only five variants this year, not six. But with the (high) level of solvers in India, we cannot say anything is too hard for SM.

Please feel free to discuss if you get stuck in any sudoku anywhere (except the printer getting stuck). Glad that you like the math variants. Not very common.

Please do try out the rest outside the contest.

This was the episode for Math variants and traditionally it has been among the harder tests in SM. Even an easy Maths test comes out as hard generally. Pranav and I decided that we will keep variants concentrating on the four basic mathematical operations - addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. In the end, since addition is the most popular and has too many variants around it, we kept two addition variants - Little Killer and XSums. The overall objective was to provide a challenging set which had some straightforward grids (classics, product, xsums), some time taking but definitely solvable ones (Little Killer, Difference 6x6, Remainder 6x6, classic 4) and some tough ones (Difference 9x9 and Remainder 9x9).

I had to prepare grids for Difference N and Remainder Sudoku. Both these are unfamiliar variants and can be little confusing also. The start for Remainder was tricky and in Difference N, there is a point where the continuation is tricky. Both of these 9x9 grids were probably worth more points than what was finalized in the contest. And, the original versions had lesser clues in both. I think we added at least two clues in Difference N and 6 clues in Remainder sudoku.

Product and XSums were relatively less tricky and could have been worth lesser points (going by the times taken by some of the top solvers). But they were definitely more beginner-friendly. And Little Killer had a clean solving path but it would take time to do it. In my opinion the "Little" Little Killer was more "Killer". And, we deliberately kept the classics easier.

We observed that many participants spent a lot of effort (20+ minutes) on one or both of the last two variants. Congratulations to the 32 participants who got Remainder 9x9 correct and 69 solvers who got Difference N 9x9 right. In fact a lot of participants started with Remainder or Difference and did better perhaps. A bit sad to see many participants ending on 84 points, even with a lot of time (20+ minutes) available for the last one. There was some maths in play in the centre box which may have taken time.

Hybrids and Irregular will be the next stop in the 2019 SM journey. Looking forward to Akash's round.

I would like to congratulate Tantan Dai,Hideaki Jo,and Takuya Sugimoto for getting the top 3 places in this round.Congratulations to Rohan,Kishore and Suvarna as well for the Indian Podium.
This was my first experience of co-authoring an SM round,for which I am extremely grateful to LMI for.
It was undoubtedly a difficult test,with the Remainder possibly being over the top on the basis of difficulty,which I'd say we underestimated.Personally,I felt everything other than the Difference and Remainder(mainly because of the novelty of the variants) were relatively simpler,even the classics.

I prepared the grids for the Product Frame,X sums and the Little Killer,all of which are familiar variants.It was a fantastic learning experience for me to co-author with Rakesh,who helped me solve the many problems I faced while creating.Thank you for all the help and thanks to all the participants for their feedback :)

Good Luck for the next Round :)

Edited by pranavmanu 2019-03-16 3:01 PM

Who prepared the Classics ;)

It was split equally between both of us :)

Really enjoyed. Solved a couple remaining post the completion of the test. Please do post the link to the solution booklet.

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

I have participated in 2 tests so far and have not received any ratings. Is a minimum rank necessary to obtain ratings?

Solution Booklet: http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/dl.asp?attachmentid=773