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Casual and Word - 22nd - 27th May 2020 - Puzzle Ramayan & IPC Qualifier 202049 posts • Page 2 of 2 • 1 2
@ 2020-05-27 11:26 PM (#28290 - in reply to #28276) (#28290) Top

amitsowani




Posts: 349
1001001002020
Country : India

amitsowani posted @ 2020-05-27 11:26 PM

chaotic_iak - 2020-05-25 11:39 PM
Overall a very nice test. The theming is excellent (although it's questionable that the curve data has "easy" worth 5 points and "medium" worth 4 points...) and the puzzles themselves were mostly nice.


Thanks Ivan.
It was my first attempt at creating curve data puzzles. I will need a lot more experience before I can have sufficient expertise over adusting the level of difficulty for curve data. In fact both of the original puzzles submitted for EASY and MEDIUM turned out to be non-unique. But thanks to Rakesh's diligent testing I was able to fix it before the test.


Matchsticks is a very weird genre, and I'm not sure it's logical. I'm sure most of the penalties by people are in this genre. One good thing about commonly encountered puzzles (Nikoli-style etc) is that you can verify your answer easily; here, verifying your answer to Matchsticks requires you to practically solve the whole thing again. (All optimization puzzles fall in this bucket too.) Not that it's a bad idea to include them, but you need to be really careful with how you do it. I'd say Matchsticks 2 is the most difficult puzzle in the test; Matchsticks 3 is in fact fairly easy (you have enough room to make practically any number you want, so getting a proof is really quick).

I completely understanding the feeling you describe where the solver is not sure if the answer is correct or not. However within optimization problems too there are several types of problems and I tried to present it as close to a constrain optimization problem as possible.
I think optimization puzzles should also have some representation. We had an entire round of these in WPC 2017.


For Word Division, with how many native English words are used, I largely intuited the solves by trying to read some reasonable words I can see from the board; people not used to English won't be able to do this.


This is a good point that you bring up about the Word Division puzzles. I was thinking about using foreign language words (words for Easy, Medium, Hard in different languages). But that theme was already used in the Mastermind puzzles, so eventually I went with synonyms within English.
@ 2020-05-27 11:28 PM (#28291 - in reply to #28280) (#28291) Top

amitsowani




Posts: 349
1001001002020
Country : India

amitsowani posted @ 2020-05-27 11:28 PM

harmeet - 2020-05-26 8:55 AM

Thanks Amit for this enjoyable set! Word puzzles were very nice.


Thanks Harmeet
@ 2020-05-27 11:34 PM (#28292 - in reply to #28285) (#28292) Top

amitsowani




Posts: 349
1001001002020
Country : India

amitsowani posted @ 2020-05-27 11:34 PM

tamz29 - 2020-05-27 3:25 AM

You could reach the answer with 7 moves (or any n really) if some moves were transpositions. (Ie. Keep moving the D around until you have 4 moves left). I agree that it's a questionable inclusion.
A possible improvement would be making sure that the solution is reached by the minimum number of moves.


After reading the discussion regarding the Matchsticks puzzle I think I missed a couple of aspects during the test.
I think the rule that each matchstick can be moved exactly once needs to be specified explicitly. Otherwise with transpositions you are right that the target can be achieved in any number of moves.
I had a specific solution in mind which like Ivan pointed out can be achieved in exactly seven moves.

In hindsight there is also room for improvement of the answer key which should possibly be asking for information about which matchsticks are being moved and to which location.

Without this kind of answer key and the explicit rule to restrict transposition I agree with your recommendation about asking for a solution which is reached by the minimum number of moves.
@ 2020-05-27 11:37 PM (#28293 - in reply to #28288) (#28293) Top

amitsowani




Posts: 349
1001001002020
Country : India

amitsowani posted @ 2020-05-27 11:37 PM

priyambhushan - 2020-05-27 1:56 PM

Thank you so much for this wonderful set, Amit!


Thanks Priyam.
@ 2020-05-28 1:15 AM (#28294 - in reply to #28233) (#28294) Top

ABcDexter



Posts: 47
2020
Country : India

ABcDexter posted @ 2020-05-28 1:15 AM

 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? Word Division
 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 enjoyed the word puzzles, those were the fun part of the contest. Also, the casual puzzles were fascinating because time taken to solve them was non-linear :D
@ 2020-05-28 9:06 AM (#28295 - in reply to #28294) (#28295) Top

Administrator



2000100050020
Country : India

Administrator posted @ 2020-05-28 9:06 AM

Thanks to the 206 participants from 37 countries. Congratulations to Freddie Hand, Jeffrey Bardon and Endo Ken for taking the top 3 spots. Also congratulations to Michael Ley and James McGowan for completing the test error-free (without any submission errors). Choi Yong Seok (South Korea) was the first to take the test while Daniel Victor (India) was the last person to start the test. The median score of the test was 50.7.

Top results for countries with 10+ participants:

India (33): Prasanna Seshadri, Rohan Rao and Priyam Bhushan
Japan (23): Ryotaro Chiba, Taigo Ando, Kosei Yoshimori (ranks 2-4)
USA (20): Walker Anderson, Jenna Rivet and Todd Geldon (ranks 2-4)
France (11): Denis Auroux, Anne Limoges and Philippe Meyer
Poland (10): Tomasz Skalski, ralf09, Lukasz Kalinowski

Thanks Amit Sowani for the puzzles!

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

Rohan Rao (18), Pinijpong (17), Yunguowoo (13) and Ashish Ghogre (13) led another leader-board in this test.
@ 2020-05-28 4:33 PM (#28296 - in reply to #28233) (#28296) Top

Administrator



2000100050020
Country : India

Administrator posted @ 2020-05-28 4:33 PM

The Solution Booklet is now available here.
@ 2020-05-29 5:50 PM (#28298 - in reply to #28233) (#28298) Top

3strikerz



Posts: 8

Country : South Korea

3strikerz posted @ 2020-05-29 5:50 PM

 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? Word Division
 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


Don't know about matchsticks - they kinda seemed like guesswork for me. Loved the word puzzles though.
Casual and Word - 22nd - 27th May 2020 - Puzzle Ramayan & IPC Qualifier 202049 posts • Page 2 of 2 • 1 2
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