Puzzle 19 is fine, I believe. I suggest re-reading the rules carefully.

I really enjoyed the puzzles, but in the first round it was communicated that these contests are planned to be intentionally a bit shorter and easier for promotion and to attract new solvers, which is totally not the case. From my experience, it could easily been split into two one hour contests, which would have been better anyway with the mixed genres. If you want to promote new puzzle types, it does not help if even experienced solvers can just skip looking at these because there is enough Kakuro/Kropki stuff. I guess everbody who is forced to do them knows them anyway.



But if people still manage to finish in 40 minutes, everything might be ok and it's just me being slow as usual.

Edited by Realshaggy 2022-05-07 8:13 PM

Thanks for the feedback Christoph.

While I see your point, I think there is some gap here about the stated goals. It might be my own insufficient communication.

What I am trying to achieve here, is admittedly many things at once, but none of it is just "simpler puzzles to promote to new solvers".

My main goal, in any kind of thinking and re-thinking of these series, is to give a platform for Indian solvers to improve towards the larger competitions, and I'm honest about that being the primary goal. Now, how to do that is up for debate.

So my different goals are
A) the top Indian solvers should have a good challenge and variety. If they finish 6 out of 6 rounds or even come close to that, unfortunately that is not a fair reflection of our general WPC performance. So for our top solvers, I want them to improve their choices and be challenged, and struggle to finish most of the puzzles, as they would in the WPC. Some rounds can be sprint rounds like round 1 where they do get closer to finishing, again consistent with a WPC.
B) I want there to be enough easy puzzles to *occupy* newer and casual solvers. That is the key word. I have been getting 2 or 3 solvers into things for the first time this year, and I mainly have been seeing "can I tell them to focus on two or three low pointer sections to grab their attention?". These aren't competitive solvers (yet) so I mainly just don't want them spending 20 or 30 minutes thinking "ok I'm done with whatever I can solve now, this other time is just a waste" because more than 3 types can be beyond their focus. I also know that when getting into a hobby, 90 minutes may be a bigger time sink than the simple math of an hour.

So the change to 60 minutes fit both these goals. Where we may be falling short is that the 1 and 2 pointers aren't as easy as I'd like, and I try to work on that.

I am yet to fully analyze whether these changes are working, I will definitely rethink things again at the end of the season and feedback like this definitely helps towards that (though as I always do I encourage newer solvers to have a voice and come forward with their thoughts too).

It is also probably important to note that for the Indian top solvers, puzz.link isn't a frequented place for solving. In fact this category idea came from there being some puzz.link genres in IPC and them being completely new to the solvers in our top 3 besides me. So the goal of this particular round is to leave it up to them whether they want to go for some higher point familiar stuff or newer stuff and hope that they go back and solve whatever they missed post contest :)

Pretty tough set. When even the low pointers are hard, it takes the fun out of solving.
Puzzle quality was good, nonetheless.

Favourites:
20 Kakuro Kropki
13 Shimaguni
21 Shimaguni O/E

Thanks Nityant!

Very hard puzzles . Would have better suited a 90 min contest. I madly guessed in many puzzles due to time constraints and don't remember much now.



Thanks for putting together this round Nityant.

Wooohhh. What a Luck at the end. Somehow managed to click the submit button at the end for Doppelblock high pointer. Very hard puzzles but enjoyed. I knew Number placement (specially Kakuro :) ) would be my last resort in this contest and I was right . Somehow managed Kakuro (Kropki) though.Thanks Nityant for this contest :)