There are two solutions for the Extra Région-Thermo of the IB: 1 and 8 in rows 6 and 8 can be reversed.

Looks like the 9x9 example of Extra Regions Thermo has two solutions: deadly pattern on R68L46. Otherwise, this round looks very exciting!

All the best to everyone.

where can i practice sudoku variants

Beautiful set of hybrid sudokus, probably the best set of this year's SM. Really enjoyed solving the sudokus. Favorites include Extra Region - Thermo and Little Killer - Outside. They had sublime logic. Thanks Gaurav for the sudokus!

Hi, may I ask to create another pdf with darker shaded cells with the same password?
Another way is if you can confirm that the puzzle booklet will have darker shaded cells comparing to IB.

The problem is that the shaded things (cells, arrows, palindromes, thermos) in IB are not visible at all. It's not encouraging to start solving.

Note: The gridlines are flawless that are coming out of my printer and also the coded letters are very nicely visible.

TiiT

Ok. Based on your feedback a second PB PDF shall be made available on or before Sunday (13 June).

Very nice set of puzzles..favorite is LK-Outside and Thermo- ER. Thanks Gaurav and Rakesh.

I had a crazy problem - the pdf shows penpa link of both the first and second sudokus as the same. The third sudoku pointed to a different page. Pls check

Penpa links for first two are different (Small f and CAPITAL F). The third sudoku link points to the correct sudoku - I just re-checked. Did anyone else face this issue?

A great set again. I loved Arrow Palindrome. My favorite was Coded Consecutive Pairs 6x6.

Thank you for the effort of making another version of the puzzle booklet. I really appreciate that you were willing to do it, although it would have been also ok if you didn't do it. It definitely was helpful when I solved odd-even puzzles and at start it was excellent. The gridlines of toroidals were pretty fat though - but no problems in there, it was nicely solvable and it didn't bother me. But arrows and thermos were still basically missing. There was something visible, but it was impossible to tell where they situated - so I did redraw all of them.

After the competition I also downloaded the 1-st version of puzzle-booklet and printed the thermo out and the gray was completely missing from that page.

It made me rethink - maybe there must be something wrong with my printer or settings. I took files from different competitions (earlier GP rounds, some national championships which I tested earlier and WSC files which I have and some other files I have) and printed out puzzles with arrows, palindromes, thermos, shaded cells, ... ... and all of them are perfect. All the gray is perfectly visible in all the pages I printed out.
It just cannot be my problem and I have no idea why the gray from LMI competitions doesn't print.

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But the puzzles were really nice and enjoyable. I found them pretty challenging, but they are very nicely constructed. I enjoyed the whole set.
P.S. The classics were very easy this time and it was possible to get the answer keys pretty early. There are significant blank cells left in those pages with classics.

TiiT

Edited by TiiT 2021-06-13 7:43 PM

Thanks Rakesh. I guess I must have done something equally silly with the third link which is why I got that crazy response!

Very good set of puzzles Gaurav. The 6x6 coded pairs stood out for me. Other awesome creations were ER Thermo 9x9 and Little Killer-Outside 9x9. Thank you!

Thanks to all the participants. This is slightly different type of hybrids than usually seen, Most struggle in 6x6 consecutive pairs-coded, but it is very easy after getting possible A and F coded values [34]. Congratulations to the winners and specially Kota who just sprinted through. Special mention to James Peter, who took 2nd place among Indian participants and look very promising.