Thanks Swaroop, this felt like a perfect PR round to me. Easy puzzles (but, honestly, not *that* easy to solve rigorously, so very much appropriate for a contest targetted towards less experienced solvers. Thanks a lot!

I feel lucky for the instant grading, since my one mistake was a real mistake (I'd let some transparent yajilin clues unused by the loop) and not just an input error.

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?	Yajilin
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

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Although completing would have been better, but you did well.

Thank you Rob.

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?	Windows
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?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Myopia
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?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Average
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Transparent Yajilin
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?	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?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Ripple Loop

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?	Myopia
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?	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?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Transparent Yajilin
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 very nice set. I was afraid of trio cuts eating my time, happily I got them fast enough. 12-pointer Border Nurikabe was pretty fun but maybe overvalued, after some initial progress I was convinced that the regions will mostly be "outlined" by borders (especially the 9) so it worked quicker than expected. My favorites are the large classic yajilin and the transparents. Thanks for the puzzles! Stay safe everyone.

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?	Border 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

I really loved the puzzles, enjoyed solving Nurikabe and its variant.

Hope that our friend Shaheer rests in peace.

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?	Border 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

Nice, although easier than other PR rounds so far in my opinion. The puzzle quality was great, so I can't complain much!

Edited by mstang 2020-03-26 1:08 AM

Thank you. I am glad you enjoyed.

Thank you.

Thank you. Indeed the difficulty was set to be on the easier side.

Thank you, everyone, for their wonderful feedback and participation. I will divide my overall thoughts into different categories.

Puzzle Types:
I wanted to have a mix of some standard puzzles and some new variants which are bit unpopular or don’t regularly appear. So I choose Nurikabe, Windows, and Yajilin in the regulars. In the un-popular category, I was first trying to select Every Second Breakpoint and even created two puzzles of it, but was not satisfied with it, as they were coming out very trivial. Then I found Myopia Loop and really liked it, so I went with that. I also liked Transparent Yajilin and Ripple Loop very much.

Puzzle Difficulty and Quality:
Definitely I wanted the test to be on the easier side and accessible to newcomers but maintaining the puzzle quality, so that it doesn’t become trivial solve (Unless you are Ken Endo – Impressive performance). Looking at the performance with 88 solvers finishing the test, I think I achieved that. Based on the feedback from most of them, I feel happy that you enjoyed the test and really liked the puzzles.

Puzzle Points:
I think most of them agreed with the point structure, with very few of them concerning Nurikabe Borders being overrated. I partially agree with you that, this puzzle might feel overrated if you can intuitively see the areas (especially for numbers 8 and 9), then it becomes easy. But for newcomers, who are trying to solve step by step, it will definitely be more challenging. So I hope you understand our methodology of setting the points of this puzzle to be high.

Answer Keys:
I wanted it to be simple and consistent across puzzles. I know it might not be possible to do a similar thing in a lot of tests, but fortunately, it worked out here. I believe no complaints here from anyone.

Winners:
Congratulations to the top 3 Overall: EKBM, WA1729 and fff1015.
Congratulations to the top 3 India: Prasanna, Rohan, Ashish. (Special mention goes to Amit and Kishore too for finishing the test). Good performance by Priyam too, considering new in this field.

Statistics:
1) Most Submitted Puzzle – Windows 4 Points (250 Solvers)
2) Least Submitted Puzzle – Windows 7 Points (143 Solvers)
3) Most correct submissions – Myopia 2 Points (97.34%)
4) Least correct submissions – Windows 4 Points (70.4%)
5) Most Favourite types – Transparent Yajilin, Myopia, Border Nurikabe in order
It’s fascinating that most and least submitted puzzles are of the same type.

Thankings:
Thank you, everyone, again for their feedback. A special thanks to Rakesh, as always doing an extraordinary work behind the scenes, for bringing everything together, for testing, feedback, etc. Thanks to LMI for providing me the opportunity to author the round.

Final Words:
If any of you are stuck in any of the puzzles, please feel free to post in the forum, or message me directly, would be happy to help you. Best of luck for the next PR. Good luck to Priyam for Authoring Debut along with our veteran author Prasanna.

I would re-phrase the first four points in statistics:

1) Most solved puzzles - 1-Nurikabe (216), 2-Nurikabe (209) and 12-Yajilin (209)
2) Least solved puzzles - 7-Windows (120), 17-Ripple Loop (137) and 9-Trio Cut (142)
3) Most accurate submissions - 20-Myopia (97.34%), 7-Trio Cut (96.48%), 12-Yajilin (96.31%)
4) Most error-prone (Least accurate) submissions - 4-Windows (70.4%), 17-Ripple Loop (79.19%), 6-Windows (83.91%)

Thanks to the 241 participants from 39 countries. Congratulations to Endo Ken, Walker Anderson and Soji Kubota for finishing the set in under 30 minutes. Ryotaro Chiba (Japan) was the first to start the test while Michael Tang (USA) was the last person to start the test. The median score of the test was 83.8.

Top finishers for countries with 10+ participants:

India(34): Prasanna Seshadri, Rohan Rao and Ashish Kumar
Japan(26): Tomoya Kimura, Hideaki Jo, Kota Morinishi (ranks 3-5)
USA(23): Jeffrey Bardon, Nick Brady and Gabriel Hirsch (Ranks 2-4)
France(15): Anne Limoges, Denis Auroux and Timothy Doyle
Germany(15): Robert Vollmert, Michael Ley and Jonas Gleim
Italy(15): Giuliano Montelucci, Stefano Forcolin and Arianna Domenichelli
Czech Republic (10): Ond?ej Motlí?ek, Jana Vodi?ková, Jakub Ondroušek
UK(10): Freddie Hand, Tom Collyer and Sam Cappleman-Lynes


Thanks Swaroop Guggilam for the puzzles!

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

The Solution Booklet is now available here.

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?	Myopia
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

Dear Swaroop,

Thank you so much for the appreciation!

And thanks for mentioning the next round, which is my first ever time authoring.
Looking forward to everyone solving the 4th round of Puzzle Ramayan, which I am co-authoring with Prasanna Seshadri :)

See you all in April!