Count me among the grumpy dinosaurs if you wish, but I'll sit out this event. Penpa is fairly good for what it is, but it's still very far from solving on paper from a user experience perspective. It probably took me a while to learn when I was a little kid, but by now I'm quite adept at using paper and pencil, and that is a very very high bar for any kind of user interface to compete against (largely because of another equally amazing piece of technology: the eraser). Penpa has a learning curve, not an unreasonably steep one from what I can tell, but for me it just kills the enjoyment of the puzzle to not be able to just draw harder/lighter lines by pressing harder/less hard on my screen, and quickly erase the lighter lines. (I'm sure there are features to do something equivalent, but they require navigating a user interface.)
Also, on the second practice puzzle, Penpa let me put stuff into the grayed area and it wasn't clear (until I counted and convinced myself it couldn't be) whether that region was meant to be part of the puzzle or not. (I guess that's why there are practice puzzles at the start, so people who will be doing this seriously can figure out how to live with Penpa.)

What we intend is quality rating. I see the words "quality rating" wherever stars are asked. Can you specify where you see just "rating"?

The first part is a personal preference issue which we can't do much about. As you said, there are ways to do whatever you mentioned (I even noted two possible ways in my introduction post) but I agree it can be difficult for someone who is used to paper solving, and I can sympathize. Overall though, since there are so many contests that are catering to either only-paper solving or allow a mix of both, its nice to have an only-online one once in a while, allowing for the fact that it may not be for some players.

The second part, you aren't the first one, and I will again direct you and others to my introduction post as well as the "About" link at the top of the contest page where we have divulged as many details about the rules, visual clarifications, penpa clarifications, etc. as we can. At some point I think its fair for us to expect that people will read the information we are putting out, or at least, expect surprises if not.

It+does+say+%22Quality+Rating%22+now%2E+I%27m+90%25+sure+it+was+only+%22Rating%22+when+I+did+Trial+1+some+hours+ago%2C+because+I+really+wondered+what+kind+of+feedback+you+expect+from+me+there%2E+Ok%2C+so+that%27s+a+%22quality%22+rating%2C+whatever+kind+of+information+you+expect+to+get+from+it%2E+It+does+not+let+me+give+less+than+1%2F2+star+though+%F0%9F%98%9C

Ouch.... Fixed now.

Ah. The problem is that I had honestly NOT noticed the existence of an "About" link or its significance, either on the contest page or in your introduction post (which I must admit I read too quickly). In general, I find the new visual identity of LMI's website a bit difficult to get used to in terms of where to find information. In particular, the dark green navigation bar at the very top of the LMI page had previously almost always been used only for navigation through the site, not to locate important information related to the specific contest one is about to attempt, and it honestly did not occur to me that this might contain a link I should follow before accessing the puzzles. "About" in a menu that normally contains the main LMI navigation bar is something I might have expected to point to general information about LMI. It used to be that all the information that might be needed live during a contest was in the middle of the page _PLUS_ on the IB/PB, so it takes a bit of adjustment to get used to new possibilities about where the information might be found.

Concerning+the+overall+LMI+interface%2C+I+must+concur+that+I+just+noticed+today+that+the+dark+green+bar+now+contains+different+links+when+viewing+a+Contest+page+%28I+had+previously+wondered+why+there+was+no+longer+a+direct+link+to+the+forum+contest+thread%29%2E%2E%2E+I+guess+I%27m+a+bit+slow+on+the+adaptation+to+the+new+interface+%F0%9F%98%85%0D%0A%0D%0AHaving+now+read+the+%22Rule+%26+Info%22+link%2C+I+have+a+question%2E+It+says+%3A%0D%0A%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%0D%0APenpa+Interface%0D%0A++++Only+the+lines+will+be+checked+as+part+of+solution+checking%2E%0D%0A++++The+endpoints+do+not+need+to+be+explicitly+marked+by+circles%2E%0D%0A%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%0D%0A%0D%0AI+think+I+tried+this+%28not+marking+the+endpoints%29+on+a+trial+and+recieved+a+wrong+answer%2E+Can+you+confirm+this+point+%3F+I+will+try+it+again+on+the+last+Trial+but+an+official+check+would+be+nice+%F0%9F%99%8F%0D%0A%0D%0A

%5BQUOTE%5DKithyane+%2D+2022%2D02%2D21++12%3A57+PM%0D%0A%0D%0AConcerning+the+overall+LMI+interface%2C+I+must+concur+that+I+just+noticed+today+that+the+dark+green+bar+now+contains+different+links+when+viewing+a+Contest+page+%28I+had+previously+wondered+why+there+was+no+longer+a+direct+link+to+the+forum+contest+thread%29%2E%2E%2E+I+guess+I%27m+a+bit+slow+on+the+adaptation+to+the+new+interface+%F0%9F%98%85%0D%0A%0D%0AHaving+now+read+the+%22Rule+%26+Info%22+link%2C+I+have+a+question%2E+It+says+%3A%0D%0A%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%0D%0APenpa+Interface%0D%0A++++Only+the+lines+will+be+checked+as+part+of+solution+checking%2E%0D%0A++++The+endpoints+do+not+need+to+be+explicitly+marked+by+circles%2E%0D%0A%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%0D%0A%0D%0AI+think+I+tried+this+%28not+marking+the+endpoints%29+on+a+trial+and+recieved+a+wrong+answer%2E+Can+you+confirm+this+point+%3F+I+will+try+it+again+on+the+last+Trial+but+an+official+check+would+be+nice+%F0%9F%99%8F%0D%0A%0D%0A%5B%2FQUOTE%5D%0D%0A%0D%0AI+can+confirm+that+endpoints+are+not+required%2E+You+can+also+check+the+replay+of+all+other+solvers%2C+many+have+not+marked+all+the+endpoints+%28including+myself%29%2E+You+can+try+again+on+last+Trial+and+let+us+know+if+you+face+any+issue%2E

%5BQUOTE%5Dswaroop2011+%2D+2022%2D02%2D20++7%3A37+PM%0D%0A%0D%0AI+can+confirm+that+endpoints+are+not+required%2E+You+can+also+check+the+replay+of+all+other+solvers%2C+many+have+not+marked+all+the+endpoints+%28including+myself%29%2E+You+can+try+again+on+last+Trial+and+let+us+know+if+you+face+any+issue%2E%5B%2FQUOTE%5D%0D%0A%0D%0AConfirmed+on+the+last+Trial%2C+it+works+perfectly%2C+thanks+%F0%9F%91%8D%0D%0A%28next+time+I%27ll+read+the+Rules+before+doing+the+trials+%F0%9F%98%86%29

Hola

That's all fair. I can understand that any time there are changes its difficult to get used to them. What I can promise you is there is value in learning and getting used to these things, because we will be having more such daily online-only contests, and the new website look is here to stay because it aligns more with our approach to be mobile friendly in addition to being good to laptop users too. Maybe some of our regular participants were comfortable and didn't see the need for a change but we are seeing a lot of newer solvers get interested with these changes and hope that the regular ones find them worth adjusting to. Thank you for the open discussion anyway!

Also, we did take in your feedback and have changed "About" to "Rules & Info", hopefully that's clearer now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX93U2jTaN8

A video posted on the Channel Unshackling Sudokus and Puzzles on how to solve a Rassi Silai puzzle with Tips and Tricks explained. Do watch the video and subscribe if you haven't done so yet :)

%F0%9F%91%8D

Thanks for a great contest with great puzzles. This time, I looked a bit more into the scoring system. First, I could not find any description how it works.

Let's just ignore all the "Early Bird" stuff. For me it doesn't make sense in this sort of contest (big number of very easy puzzle with sub minute solve for a lot of people), but why not.

If we start at the "Leaderboards" page, there is a column "B" in the table with my personal points. I have no idea how these values are derived beside the vague description below the table. But these numbers suspiciously add up to 1600. If we really look into the details, the puzzle where I got the most points in this table (more than twice the amount of any other puzzle) is the one where I had the worst performance in the contest by far: Puzzle No. 16 (had to restart because of a mistake. And then at the end there was a "Something is wrong" message, which turned out to be not about the puzzle solution, but about my dropped internet connection, which I found out after looking for a mistake for 5 minutes. That's another topic where some change in the error message might be good.)

If I look at the "Statistics" page, there are various values I don't understand. I can't find the values in the "50th player" and "100th player" column anywhere else, especially not in the detailed ranking of the corresponding puzzle. (Also the marking HH:MM for these columns is probably wrong.). In the "Puzzles - 2" tab, I can again see my "B" ratings without any idea how it is calculated.

With that sum being 1600, it's save to assume that the main contributor to the ranking (beside solving all puzzles) are the "Type A" points. The contest started with 350 puzzlers and as expected, there is a slow decline. There were a stable 200-250 successful solvers per puzzle. Of these, up to 60% got nothing. That's just not a good idea in my opinion. Of course it doesn't matter if you can constantly get Top100 results, but a lot of people (even experienced puzzlers) can not. So for all but the maybe 50 people who can constantly get Top100 results, the ranking correlates very badly with the performance.

Edited by Realshaggy 2022-03-14 4:23 PM

Scoring is pretty simple - the "A" column is 101 - your rank (1st = 100 point, and 1 less until 100th gets 1 point). The "B" column is a flat reward for solving the puzzle at all, scaled based on difficulty with that difficulty calculated from the top results. The exact mechanism isn't important, but it rewards persevering to solve a harder puzzle over just being fast on the easy ones and giving up on the hard ones.
The "50th and 100th player columns are correct with HH:MM as that's how long the puzzle was available until 50 and 100 people solved them. Personally, I think the fact that most of the the 50th player times are in the multiple hours means that the early bird stuff is a bit of a miss, but some people clearly like trying to be in the first few and it barely harms anything to be there so whatever.


I do agree that the scoring staying at 100-1 points for 1st to 100th doesn't really work with the scale, as it didn't for Tapa Train either. But while Tapa Train had no idea of the expected level of participation, Rassi Silai Race should have known and I think should have adjusted slightly. I think the best proposed solution was to award 100-51 points for 1st to 50th, but then both 51st and 52nd would get 50 points, 53rd and 54th would get 49 points, and so on - extending the "tail" of the scoring.

Maybe the multiplication of A and B would work better. Being in the top place for a harder puzzle should worth more points than an easier one.

I think IHNN has responded to most of RealShaggy's concerns and thoughts, I'll add this much:
- I agree that the scoring systems could be more prominently displayed. We will do that for future series, perhaps as a link by itself next to "Rules & Info" so that it is standardized and remains there. I think it was all mentioned in detail during the Tapa Train introductory posts but we failed/forgot to carry it forward here. That'll be rectified.
- We were a bit cautious with Rassi Silai about going beyond the "top 100 get points" system because we still had some concerns (maybe Tapa is popular so it had that many players, maybe the shading interface is better, etc.) and wanted to wait just one more contest before we changed that. We addressed the penalty system this time, and think that is good to stay, we will address the scoring now that we know the format itself has been successful over two very different genres. Since we are looking at this long term, we wanted that bit more information before acting.
- Regarding early bird rankings, as well as the scoring system, I want to remind people again that this is supposed to be a format where the priority is to encourage more participation. So we largely want to keep things light and easy to understand. That is mainly why I agreed with the changes in points above, but I also want to caution that we will be against any complicated solutions and formulae. This is not meant as a response to the posts so far, I like IHNN's suggestion and that'll definitely be something we keep in mind when discussing tweaking the scoring. I'm just pre-emptively mentioning this so that people know what we are going for.
- I welcome more feedback and discussion, hopefully from newer solvers as well.