I don't understand why there are 5 extra minutes in which "there shall be penalties." What is the point of that? Is it still worth it to submit (correct) answers during that time?

Yes. If you complete the 122 point puzzle in the 77th minute, you will submit it. However if you solve a 22 point puzzle in the 80th minute, it may not be worth it.

The objective is to provide an opportunity to submit puzzles which are close to completion, even after the "normal" 75 minutes.

How large is the penalty? It's unclear to me how I would decide whether or not to submit. I suppose it's late to ask this now, but alternatively could there be an additional rule that "If you submit again in the extra minutes and your score goes down, your previous submission will be used."?

Penalty is minimal: 5 points per minute

Hi,

Is there any website where we can practice these kind of Tapa variations? Or maybe tutorial videos that share common tips and tricks for the variations?

It would be very helpful for a beginner like me.

Thanks,
Nikhil

Even after completing the test, I'm not exactly sure what the definition of a 'line' is in the Tapa(Palindrome) set.
How was I supposed to interpret the weird X in the middle and the line with branches on the top left and bottom right?

Judging by how the puzzle solves, it appears the correct interpretation is to treat it as "Tapa(Galaxies)", i.e., take the whole connected gray shape, point symmetric around its center, and require shaded/unshaded to satisfy that symmetry, too. (Alternatively, you could regard the shapes as being composed of several lines that share a center.)

Definitely agree that this needs specification, though. It would be entirely valid to e.g. ask every end-to-end line to be a palindrome (which is a stronger condition).

Thanks for the contest! So good to have TVC back. Some great puzzles in there (once I could solve them at a relaxed pace), I particularly enjoyed the Balance Tapa.

As for the contest as such, I struggled a lot, would never have expected to come out reasonably high up in the standings (I even lost the last 15 minutes to failing to finish the high-pointer Hamle). I didn't have a single solve that wasn't mostly driven by intuition/guessing/uniqueness.

I think it's fine to have contests with puzzles that are this difficult (and there's folks who can enjoy that more than I can), but I believe that you'll get more solvers appreciating solving paths, and fewer frustrated solvers in general, if you tone down the difficulty slightly (or even a lot...). I imagine this contest would have been quite disheartening for inexperienced solvers.

I agree with Rob. I am a fan of the TVC and always found it very interesting and innovative, but this round was way beyond the limit, so I give it up with mixed feelings. After the contest, I realized that at least the last three puzzles have a great logical path, and I appreciated this moderate difficulty with no need to guess and bifurcate. Anyway, thanks for the contest!

I also agree -- this round was brutally tough. I still found it enjoyable, but I was sad to not be able to even look at most of the puzzles.

Some puzzles were definitely amazing, I enjoyed solving Palindrome, Black hole during the contest. Some low pointers were also very tough/trick, felt bashy.
Definitely difficulty was way higher than what I had in mind and yet to solve remaining puzzles. Puzzle quality is definitely good, but would appreciate if there are some approachable puzzles in the mix.
Thanks to Authors, Testers and LMI for the effort, it was fun contest.

I did not enjoy this contest. First problem: some difficult puzzles are fine. An entire set of nothing but extremely difficult puzzles is not in this context, as less experienced solvers end up with nothing they can really do, and more experienced solvers have to resort to guessing, bashing, and generally hoping to pick the puzzles that are more approachable. Which leads to my second problem: the point values were all over the place. The first two puzzles were very similar in point value, though I found the second one to be significantly harder and in fact couldn't break in during the contest. Even outside the clock, it took me a couple minutes to figure out what was necessary. The first Hamle I solved logically and smoothly in about the same amount of time as the first Tapa Line, despite being worth 2.5 times as much. The rest of the test is the same way- outside of grid size, there didn't seem to be any correlation between difficulty/time to solve and points, which made puzzle selection even more of a crapshoot.

I also ended up breaking a couple puzzles late that I couldn't fix (122 point Hamle, Palindromes- the puzzle having multiple plausible readings of the palindrome lines definitely didn't help) which would have helped my score, but not my opinion of the test. Puzzles I liked: Balance Tapa was fun, and the Hamles were interesting though the variant is very difficult to notate. The first Regional was very nice too but like almost everything else crazy undervalued.
Puzzles I didn't like: Both Pata (way too bashy, haven't solved the second yet despite a lot of time- the variant is a good one), both Easy as Tapa (way way way too bashy, haven't made any progress in either, IMO the variant is a lost cause), Palindrome (crossing and overlapping lines were unclear and unexplained in the instructions, this was avoidable with a better example).

This was the first round of TVC I was around for. If future rounds will be like this one, it'll be the last I participate in. My experience was that negative- a first for contest rounds for me. Even my first puzzle grand prix round that I bombed was enjoyable during- this wasn't.

https://youtu.be/VhLbr2HONGs

We have covered a video on Pata puzzle high pointer. Logical solve path. Do check the video.

The Solutions Booklet is now available.

Thanks to the 207 participants!

Congratulations to the winners (500+ scores): Prasanna Seshadri, Walker Anderson, Endo Ken, James McGowan and Hideaki Jo.

Agree that the test overall was too difficult.
A different opinion from the others is that I don't think it is a bad thing to have a test that is unfinishable.
It is fair for strategizing to be part of the contest. I feel it is a good change from the Sudoku sprints we've been having.

I think the downfall of this TVC was the lack of easy and straightforward puzzles in the test.
Nice puzzles for sure, (I enjoyed them after) but maybe not suitable for a 75 minute test.