Congratulations to Prasanna Seshadri, Tiit Vunk and Seungjae Kwak for taking the top three places, well ahead of the fourth placed participant.

Thanks to the 337 participants from 41 countries. Veronika Kolvekova (Slovakia) was the first to start the test and Rajani Rokade (India) was the last person to start the test. 29 participants completed the set within the allotted time, and 318 participants (94.36%) scored non-zero points. The median score of the test was 37.

Top 3 for countries with 10+ participants:

India(124): Rohan Rao, Rishi Puri and Ashish Kumar (2nd-4th)
Japan(21): Kota Morinishi, Endo Ken and Hideaki Jo
Poland(18): Piotr Gdowski, zbych and Tomasz Strozak
USA (17): Jason Zuffranieri, Walker Anderson and Jenna Rivet
Germany(16): Michael Ley, Robert Vollmert and Laje6
France(16): Timothy Doyle, Anne Limoges and Yannick Meyapin
Italy(16): Laura Tarchetti, Matteo Testa and Paolo Tivano
Slovakia (10): Katarina Simonovicova, Natalia Chanova and Marek Kasar

Thanks Ramesh Swarnakar and Harmeet Singh 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.

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 Queen 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?	Average
Which set of puzzles did you like the most?	Odd Even 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

To start with we would like to thanks everyone who participated in the contest. We would further like to congratulate Prasanna Seshadri, Tiit Vunk & Seungjae Kwak for taking the overall top three places amongst the 337 participants and Rohan Rao, Rishi Puri & Ashish Kumar for bagging the next 3 positions amongst the 124 Indian participants.

We got mixed feedback regarding the quality of puzzles and their difficulty level. But overall, the general feeling was that the sudokus were hard. We agree. But our sole aim was to give good but challenging sudokus to everyone. Odd-Even Bridge-2 (9x9) has seen the least submissions. Interesting to note that the original Odd-Even Bridge-2 had lesser number of givens and while finalizing we decided to add few more givens to ease it. But still it turned out to be the least submitted Sudoku. The Odd-Even-2 (9x9) was made easier by adding more clues than what original was having because that is one variant which almost everyone likes whether the solver is a newcomer or an expert. While in the process of finalizing the sudokus for the contest we felt that Antiknight-2 (9x9), even though hard, can remain as it is. It was certainly hard but logically solvable and has some nice deductions which everyone will agree with. A walkthrough for solving the Antiknight-2 has already been uploaded in the site which will provide better insight to it. We felt that Consecutive-2 (9x9) was comparatively easier and can’t be compared with the difficulty of Antiknight-2. But, yes, with respect to points distribution it appears Consecutive-2 and Anti Knight-2 deserved more points than allotted. This is in the retrospective. May be we need collective results of more test solvers while point allotment.

Nevertheless, we will keep the overall feedback in mind and try our best to provide good and interesting sudokus. We would like to thank LMI for giving us the opportunity to author this round of Sudoku Mahabharat 2020. Once again we thank you all for participating in this wonderful event. Last but not the least, we would like to thank Rakesh Rai, who has been so supportive and patient to make this contest happen.

One more thing, though painful & heartening, we would like to remember our beloved friend and great Sudoku enthusiast, Shaheer Rehman, who is no more with us. But we will always remember him and hence would like to dedicate Anti-Knight 2 and Odd-Even Queen 2 sudokus to him. These are our favourite sudokus as an author of SM Round5 2020.

Thanks & Regards

Harmeet & Ramesh

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 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

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