Firstly, we value opinions and feedback of all the solvers here and if anything encourage more of them. So thank you very much for your thoughts.

It is generally difficult to know how easy to go and how much to go towards the other side. Just for example, define what a "beginner" should be able to solve here. Any definition you give will probably be discouraging for someone who solved less than that. So we can't possibly say that we target that a beginner should be able to solve this many puzzles - everyone is different in their development.

So the most important thing we target is - there should be something for everyone while also being a bit of a challenge for the top solvers. What a first time solver should aim for is to solve what they can, get some points and then solve the remaining puzzles outside of the 90 minutes to prepare for next time. Look at Round 3 vs this round or Round 1. Round 3 was objectively easier than both the other rounds, but there are many beginners who still got around the same score. The target distributions and feedback on difficulty are probably more useful for our authors, many of whom are also new and learning as the solvers are, to see how their round is received by different people.

So what is the solution? Well, not many do it but we do encourage asking for solve paths and tips for the puzzles after the contest too. Its a bit difficult to prepare full walkthroughs but I am sure there are enough people on the forum to answer about the next step or approach if someone is stuck on a particular puzzle - these are the discussions that should ideally dominate the forum over whether a contest is suitable for an audience or not, in my opinion.

Rather than try to make contests easier and easier which becomes a never ending endeavor, I would prefer letting the authors of Puzzle Ramayan, some newer and some experienced, to express themselves within slightly broader parameters, and instead focus on teaching solvers who are interested in seeing the logical paths of these and other puzzles and helping them raise their level through that. Some comments do make it seem like we are taking the puzzles away once the 90 minutes are done which I'd just like to remind everyone, isn't the case :) We keep a restricted forum for the contest duration for a reason. We are here to help solvers once the contest is done for them too.

Eventually this round and other PR rounds should also work as worthy qualifiers to the Indian Championships - which have both sprint rounds as well as more think-y rounds. We will surely consider all the feedback here. Thank you and everyone else for providing it.

Thanks for the puzzles, glad to finish this in time. Phew.

The 7x7 Skyscrapers was hardest for me.
The IB had a blank cell in Anglers so I thought that would apply to the puzzles here too - hence I wasted a few seconds
adding up the Anglers to make sure there were no gaps (and there were none). And made quick work on those.
I took around 2-3 minutes for the 8-point Anglers (compared to 10+ minutes on the Skyscrapers) - so not sure how others found the point balance there.

The Magnets (both classics and the variant) were very nice. I think I managed to find the intended paths and they were pretty.
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?	Slitherlink
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

Enjoyed the puzzles :)
Hope to solve more puzzles in the future :D

Thank you so much Ashish! Means so much coming from you! :)

Glad you made an exception for our round :D
Thanks a lot, Swaroop! :)

Ah the electronic misfortune! Great job anyway! Thank you so much, Pranav! :)

As a first time author, it's surreal to see postive feedback on puzzle quality from some amazing solvers and some of the best puzzle setters in the world! Thank you so much, Walker! :)

Super close!
Thank you for your feedback, TiiT! Means a lot :) glad you enjoyed the puzzles

The first 2 lines made my day! Glad you liked the puzzles, and thanks a lot for the feedback! Means so much coming from one of my favourite puzzle authors!

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?	Skylines
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

Thank you, I'm really glad you liked the puzzles in this round! :)
Skyscrapers are my favourite and best type and probably why I cannot gauge the difficulty accurately! Thanks for the feedback Tawan!

From one first time author to another- thank you, Anubhav!
Glad you liked the puzzles :)
Looking forward to solving the PR 6!! Cheers

I probably got difficulty a bit off but I am glad you liked the puzzles! Thanks Rohan!

My puzzles: Anglers 1, 2, Hashi 1, 2, Skylines 1, 2, Magnetic Fields 1, 2.
Priyam's puzzles: Tents 1, 2, 3, Skyscrapers 1, 2, 3, Slitherlink 1, 2, 3, Anglers 3, Hashi 3, Magnets 1, 2, 3.

Magnetic Fields was Priyam's idea that I developed on while Skylines was an idea I thought of to round off the set.

Thank you everyone for participating, and again thank you to everyone who provided feedback on the round.

Like last year, I got to work with a debuting author. Authors maybe don't have as much leeway as solvers do :) While a solver can take multiple rounds to improve, an author has to hit their stride pretty quickly. Like last year I think the debuting author really did that in terms of puzzle quality.

A lot of you liked the 3rd Anglers and the Magnets set - these were my favourites of the set too when Priyam first sent them to me.

Last year's "rookie", Harmeet, returned this time for PR Round 2. I hope Priyam is a returning author too.

Its always a rewarding experience to see a new author find their steps and grow in confidence after a few initial tries. I hope I can continue to guide new authors into this in future years too.

Congrats Priyam, and well done :)

Congrats to the top 3 overall - EKBM, Kota and Hazakura
Congrats to the top 3 Indians - Ashish, Amit and Swaroop (very nice for a rare appearance in this edition ;) )

The round seemed to be on the hard side but as I have said above, this may be the opportunity to learn to solve harder puzzles and we welcome any posts of doubts and queries for approaches to the puzzles on this contest.

Thank you all once again for participating :) Over to Amit and some Casual and Word puzzles in Round 5!

Hearty congratulations to all those who topped the charts, and thank you to all the participants, so many more than I was expecting!

Thank you so much for summarising the results, Prasanna, it's been an absolute delight to work with you!
Prasanna's mentoring has been invaluable to me, and I cannot believe I've learned so much so quickly, all thanks to him :)
It's very encouraging to see positive feedback on puzzle quality from solvers and authors that I admire so much! I agree the round was on the harder side, and I hope to take the feedback into further authoring opportunities.

It's been a very unique and wonderful experience co-authoring my first PR round, and I look forward to many more!

A special word of thanks to Rakesh for putting in so much work into organising and facilitating the contest. Getting a close-up view of all the works really makes me realise how much effort and care goes into putting together contests like these at Logic Masters India!
Much love to all the admins!

Thank you all :)

Eagerly awaiting PR round 5 (Casual and word) by Amit!

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?	Fairly Nice
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Skylines
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

Thanks to the 282 participants from 38 countries. Congratulations to Endo Ken, Kota Morinishi and Kazuya Yamamoto for taking the top 3 spots. Pavel Kadlecik (Czech Republic) was the first to take the test (excluding participants who did not submit anything) while Fernando Almazan (Spain) was the last person to start the test. The median score of the test was 49.

Top results for countries with 10+ participants:

India (46): Ashish Kumar, Amit Sowani and Swaroop Guggilam
Japan (26): Tomoya Kimura, Hideaki Jo and Takuma Kitamura(ranks 4-6)
USA(26): Walker Anderson, Jeffrey Bardon and Will Blatt
France (17): Anne Limoges, Denis Auroux and Laurent S
Germany (16): Michael Ley, Robert Vollmert and Jonas Gleim
Italy (15): Giuliano Montelucci, Giorgia Benassi and Stefano Forcolin
Poland (15): Tomasz Strozak, Tomasz Stanczak and Krystian Swiderski
Czech Republic (11): Jakub Ondroušek, Jana Vodicková and Ondrej Motlícek
Slovakia (10): Peter Hudak, Marek Kasar and Natalia Chanova
UK(10): Freddie Hand, Sam Cappleman-Lynes and Tom Collyer


Thanks Priyam Bhushan and Prasanna Seshadri for the puzzles!

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

Tents: Quite a few opinions emphasizing that the column number should be 123 instead of ABC. The main reason is not to cause confusion with tent clues. We agree that ease of entering is better with 123. So this can be considered next time, ensuring visually that there is no chance of confusing them as tent clues.

OK. We can consider both options in future.

This point has been answered already.

Not sure if that would work better. We considered the current key as against "number of double bridges" as counting is too error-prone and maybe guess-friendly too.

Magnets: The advantage with + and - is that we enter the same characters that we used during the solve. Also, + and - are next to each other on the keyboard. Probably we can allow both options next time.

These are good points. And if it is called nitpicking, that is welcome. Good observation on the Hashi key. Yes, the red border goes away once the minimum was reached, and we kept the message also that way (6-8 letters, 3-4 digits). Not ideal, but not a big issue either. If we dont ask for zeroes in the answer key, the effectiveness of the answer key gets diluted. But this is something which we can discuss in future.

Thread on Hashi answer key suggestion: https://logicmastersindia.com/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?pid=5079
Just bumping up a thread on Hashi answer key. My personal view is that Para's suggestion is far more easier than what was used in this test.

I finished all the puzzles later even though my performance was not good. Points distribution could be better. I have started enjoying puzzles lot now than earlier. This may be after solving group which helped in understanding and the idea of having focused group on single round was awesome and helpful. Thanks Priyam and Prasanna for initiative. I wish we could do same thing for each round. This is so much so I am waiting for next GP/PR round now.
The logic on Magnetic fields-Highest pointer was amazing and being author helps to decode those logic fast. Solved Anglers first time, they look numberlink to me with additional length constraint and could solve them without much trouble
Magnet 10 pointer, I could have submitted but I think answer key is very complicated, I wrongly entered in hurry and missed it, I like GP option where there is option given even to put P/N. I think we make answer keys easy and that should be worked upon.
I like skyscrapers highest pointer a lot, Priyam, I think this is your creation and it doesn't seem from 1st time author.
My other favorite puzzles [As i solved almost all offline] in no particular order

-- Skyscraper - Highest pointer
-- Hashi - 4 pointer
-- Magnet - 10 pointer
-- Anglers - 4 pointer, 8 pointer
-- All Exploratory puzzles -- I think they were just having awesome logic and wonderful creation

Thanks Priyam and Prasanna for the wonderful test.

Edited by gaurav.kjain 2020-04-23 4:50 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?	Magnetic Fields
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Answer keys could have been better
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

The Solution Booklet is now available here.

Also, participants CAN suggest their discomfort with answer keys (with suggestions) before the test starts.
IB was released on Sunday and test started on Friday.