Thanks to all the organizers for conducting a smooth and successful ISC. Congratulations to Prasanna and Kishore for the podium!
Great job by Swaroop as well finishing a close 4th. Shoutout to Nityant and James for a terrific performance and Aashay to complete the SM winners. Hope to see you at WSCs soon.

Puzzle quality was high and all 3 rounds were enjoyable. Some of my favourite sudokus:
Palindrome Arrow 50-50
Equations
Hundred
Sequences

I didn't quite like that there were just 3 rounds this year. It's too less for a final event that aims to provide a similar experience of an offline finals.
Most of us take two days leave (or break from routine) to travel to another city to compete for an offline finals. I'm sure we could arrange an 8-hr time slot at the comfort of our homes (or places of choice).
But well, lets hope we can resume offline finals from next year. Always a pleasure to meet up with everyone for the fun weekend event.

And of course, my recurring feedback each year that the SM base points are so negligibly low that there is very less incentive to participate in the online rounds. It should at least be equal to one round (points in the range of 300-600 as per this year's scale)

The integration of Penpa is fantastic. While it might provide a little edge to online solvers, I think the positive of enabling more players to compete outweigh the negative. So kudos for the work on this.

Once again a huge thank you to all the authors and test-solvers for the time and effort put into this event.

A huge thanks to all organizers and authors involved in putting together this fantastic ISC. I really appreciate the efforts being made to conduct online ISC finals over the past 2 years so that the essence of an offline event is not completely forgotten. Congrats to Rohan for a dazzling performance and to Prasanna for putting up a spirited show. Well done Swaroop for finishing a close 4th.

Special congrats to Nityant and James Peter ! You guys really made the scoreboard merry and more lively and gave a complete scare :). All the very best to keep improving your skills !

I only wish my performance lived up a bit more. Although, I would admit that it was a complete relief to finish in top-3, I honestly feel that with those total points, a third was not deserved given that there is a huge difference in points (around 1200) between 1/2 and 3. Mental note to myself to read rules more carefully and thoroughly in future and not to goof up Rounds.

Favourites of each round :

R1 - Pencilmarks and Killer
R2 - Equations and X-Sums
R3 - Clone and Hundred

R3 was a fun and very nice set to solve. Good luck to all for IPC :)

Thanks to the organizers, authors, and testers for the great puzzles for ISC. All the Sudoku puzzles were of very high quality. My favorite is R3 with a good concept. Rohan and Prasanna's performance is awesome. Looking forward to IPC next week :).

Video on Hundred Sudoku from R3

https://youtu.be/xhmyfelFt-I