LMI always puts together such clever and fun puzzle competitions, and Rakesh continued the tradition with a thoroughly enjoyable puzzle set. Kudos to all responsible for this competition.

And I'm happy to say I only typed one number in wrong!! :)

Welcome to the group Jason... Im there with you on mistyping :D

Rishi

Was the password XX characters?

Yes, the password was that long.
I removed the exact number of characters since the test is still on.

I don't think my adobe reader can input a password that long.

That is pretty strange. Nobody reported the problem so far. Which version of reader do you have? (and which OS?)

I work for a website which would like to post the results of the competition. When will results be available to the public?

Results will be out immediately after the test is over (i.e. at 1/24/2011 11:59:59 PM GMT)
Approximately 16 hours from now

I loved the trickiness in the rossini sudoku.. during the comp i thot its a mistake... but i read administrator's comments stressing that all the puzzles are correct ...When are the results expected??

5.30am Tuesday IST

Results are available now here

Great test Rakesh!! All variants thoroughally enjoyable.

Just wondering, how did u guys approach the multitab sudoku?

Prime Exotica is over -
Congratulations to motris, David, deu and don3232.
motris finished well ahead of time getting huge bonus.
David played exceptionally well too.
deu and don3232 finished in just about the time.

Out of 186 players, 144 players got non-zero scores.
Out of 42 Indian players, the familiar names did better - Rishi, Rohan and Amit.

Congratulations to all, and thank you once again for your continued support and participation at LMI.

All participants whose number of points is not a prime number are disqualified !!!

Do you mean the "Top 9" are all disqualified !!!

Rakesh - well done. Excellent set of sudokus, fittingly rewarded by huge participation and good feedback.

Difficult to believe that it was your first attempt.

When will you update the Sudoku Ratings?

There were 13 (a prime number) "nick of time" finishers - those who sent in a correct answer in the last minute. And the winners here are:

1. 100:58 skywalker
2. 100:51 Nikola
3. 100:37 Kota

Very soon

Neeraj, DreamRose311, channa, bothrasumit: I had to edit your earlier posts because you had mentioned about the "no arrows" in Rossini on the forum. The grid was planned that way, but many solvers felt there was some mistake or missing arrows. Looking back, I think I should have put an explicit comment on the grid that "there are no arrows in this grid". That would have helped avoid the confusion.

Hi Rakesh,

That was very nice set of sudokus with new variants and it was really
enjoyable to deal with them. again to you, LMI and all
contributors for this event. And I'm not agree with you
for your last comment about Rossini. Because there was a clear
expression like "If there is no double arrow outside a
row/column, the nearest 3 digits CANNOT be in either
ascending or descending order." in the instructions and it
was really a good surprise to see that there were no double
arrows given for the grid . And I think there had been a smile
on the faces of solvers who dealt with it. So I think adding a
phrase like "there are no arrows in this grid" was no necessary
and spoil that effect. That's what I'm about that issue.

Regards,

Zafer

Thanks all for your feedback.

I am happy with the good participation level in this test (186 players from 35 countries), much more than I was expecting. Also, special thanks to many solvers who returned to LMI after some gap, notable among them being WaterlooMathie, drsteve and mackokajka.

Also, Fred did a very good job of testing the puzzles and eliminating some multiple solution cases.

I was worried about the timing for the test - whether it was correct. In the end, it seems that I got it right. Many top solvers were able to finish 12 puzzles and were on the verge of finishing the 13th, and except for motris and purifire (who had a very good chance to come first in this test), the others almost finished on time.

The median score in this test was 164, and average number of puzzles solved was 5.04.

Can any of you who solved this share your approach?

Lovely set of the puzzles. Great job, Rakesh! I prefer concept of DNA sudoku with a lot of clues. I took a wrong conclusion in numerologidoku grid and then I little lost a rhythm.
Congrats to all toppers!

Nikola

I can share my thoughts.... To begin with, I had a "cheat sheet" with all possible multiplication options with unique digits.... once that was ready I saw the 4 numbers at the vertices of the puzzle grid.... 5 at R1C1, 6 at R1C9, 9 at R9C1 and 4 at R9C9. This made me realise that the 4 and 5 form a pair and so do 6 and 9. any combination of multiplication options having 4 and 5 together and any combination having 6 and 9 together can be eliminated since they would go against normal sudoku rule. For example take the following option "7 x 94 = 658". take the pair of 4 and 5. since the number 5 is there in this option, it cannot be in the multitab in R1 or C1 and since 4 is also there in the option, it can neither be in R9 or C9. Hence this option can be eliminated. Similarly if any option had 6 and 9 that also got eliminated because of the same rule. Hence the list of options got significantly reduced to begin with. then from the rest we could eliminate more based on other numbers present in the grid. I am attaching the "cheat sheet" for better understanding.

I know its not a good method since we wont have any such sheets in a offline contest but since it was online and no mention of not using any "prepared" tools, i took the liberty of using this. That is precisely why I call it a "Cheat Sheet"

Rishi



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