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?	Substitution 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?	True or Lie 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 - thanks!

Favorites:

True or Lie 1
True or Lie 2
Renban 2

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

A very difficult test. It didnt helpthat i broke fortress 9x9 and true lie 9x9 . Also , i was stuck in odd even count for a long time. Could have done better had i not broken the two sudokus. My favourite were Classics , True lie and substitution .

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

Substitution 9x9 looked difficult because of the words but the solve was fairly easier. Not much time was needed for deciphering. Renban 9x9 needed some tough break-ins. Renban 6x6 had some interesting logic behind it. Odd Even Count 9x9 needed some counting in some of the circles. Fortress and True or Lie 9x9 were fairly smooth solves. Most 6x6s were of medium difficulty but the points reflected 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?	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?	Very nice
Of the puzzles you solved/attempted, how well did the point values reflect the difficulty?	Most puzzles were worth the right amount

A Very challenging test with tough sudokus.Getting stuck or breaking a sudoku can easily cascade one's troubles and lead to well short of finishing a contest.

Thankfully, I had a smooth run and didn't break any sudoku.

My favorites of the set are Odd even count (13), True or Lie (9) and Fortress (8).

Thanks Hemant and Pranav for a tough, engrossing and enjoyable set !!

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?	Odd Even Count 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 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?	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

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?	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?	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

Coming off the Sudoku GP with hard classics - I thought some of these 5-points classics were also quite hard for the usual SM rounds.
I can imagine a lot of people struggling with the Substitution Sudoku - but I kinda like it.
I wasn't sure if all circles were given in the Odd Even Count - maybe future IBs should clarify this.
Not a fan of hard 6x6 variants because it encourages guessing over logically solving it, there's probably a neat path somewhere.

Nice test nonetheless.
Thanks!

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

Too hard a set for SM. :) Had to resort to guesswork in a lot of them to finish in time. Puzzle quality was great. :)

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?	Renban 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?	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?	Fairly 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

Congratulations to Jakub Ondrousek, World Sudoku Champion Endo Ken and Seung Jae Kwak for taking the top three places. The first and third place winners are the same as in SM1.

Thanks to the 364 participants from 42 countries. Ziyun Qiu (China) was the first to start the test, just 53 seconds after the test started. Taner Karabulut (Turkey) pipped David Collison (United Kingdom) to become the last person to start the test, about 48 seconds before the end. 21 participants completed the set within the allotted time, and 343 participants (94.23%) scored non-zero points. The median score of the test was 39.

Top 3 for countries with 10+ participants:

India(141): Rohan Rao, Kishore Kumar and Rishi Puri
Japan(27): Endo Ken, Kota Morinishi and Hideaki Jo
USA(24): Jason Zuffranieri, William Blatt and Jenna Rivet
Italy(17): Giulia Cossutti, Gabriele Carelli and Daniele Colnaghi
Poland(16): Tomasz Strozak, Piotr Gdowski, Mateusz Przybyla
Germany(15): Michael Ley, Martin Merker and Robert Vollmert
France(14): Timothy Doyle, Yannick Meyapin and Denis Auroux

Among the variants, Fortress was most solved and Odd Even Count was least solved.

Thanks Pranav Kamesh and Hemant Kumar Malani for the sudokus!

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

The Solution Booklet is now available here.

Congratulations to Jakub Ondrousek, Endo Ken and Seung Jae Kwak for taking the top three places. Also, congratulations to Rohan, Kishore and Rishi for bagging top 3 positions amongst the Indians.

The overall feedback about the test was that it was a bit on harder side. I would say that we had realised that the difficulty of the set we had prepared was high. So we had reduced the difficulty of a few sudokus. But it still turned out to be difficult for SM. The 9x9 Substitution was one sudoku where many people took a lot of time. But it was given a higher weightage so it was quite justified to have a more difficult sudoku. Probably we could have reduced the length of the words to make it a better solving experience.

One particular feedback I would like to comment about:


In the IB we had not mentioned that all circles are given. By that we assumed that it would be clear that all circles are not given. Probably from next time onwards we can particulary mention this.

In the round there was a particular sudoku which I liked a lot--6x6 Renban. There was a trick using which it could be solved very quickly. So, I would post a walkthrough of the sudoku.

This was my third time as an author of an SM round and it was a great experience creating sudokus with Pranav. He contributed majorly to the round and also created some really awesome themed sudokus. For example in the 9x9 Fortress he used the concept that the given digits were in respective positions in the boxes. There was an extremely good theme for 9x9 Renban. I leave it up to Pranav to explain that. Kudos to him! Thanks to LMI for giving me this opportunity.

Edited by Hemant Kr Malani 2020-02-14 1:22 AM




Attachments
----------------
Renban Sudoku Walkthrough.zip (86KB - 14 downloads)

The standard practice is that unless a statement like "All possible circles are given" is mentioned, the converse rule does not apply.

I would like to congratulate Jakub Ondrousek, Endo Ken and Seung jae Kwak for finishing on the podium, as well as Rohan Rao, Kishore Kumar and Rishi Puri for finishing on the Indian Podium.

As Hemant has said above, we did realize our Sudokus were on the tougher side and made some changes to tone down the difficulty but it is apparent that these changes weren't enough.

About the 9*9 Substitution having large words, My intention while creating it was to make it look scary with large words but with the solve being moderately easy and smooth. I don't know if that was the experience felt by most solvers but that was the intention.
Nevertheless, will keep the general feedback in mind for future competitions

The 9*9 Renban was made as a tribute to Kobe Bryant, whose untimely passing was really tragic. It felt apt to honour someone who has affected so many people across the world.

Being a novice, It was a nice experience to create Sudokus along with Hemant, who helped me a lot by helping me whenever I was stuck and ran out of ideas for creation.His renban 6*6 had some good logic behind it, was a cool construction, along with the True or Lie 9*9.Thank you, Hemant!
Thanks to Rakesh for his help as well!

There was some information in the two substitution sudokus though. The first one had a list of SIX SEASONS as per Hindu Calendar (one of the seasons being Hemant, one of the authors in this round) and the second one had NINE PHYLUMS from the Animal kingdom classification in Biology.