Notes about Corral - As mentioned in the IB, Normal corral includes the cell itself. The puzzle has been changed it here to keep in line with the seethrough to avoid counting mistakes.

Small revision in the Instruction booklet for the Star Battle Answer Key instructions. It now reads correctly how to enter the answer key: Enter the rows and/or columns where the size 2 and 3 ships lie.

for OUTSIDE SKYSCRAPER SUDOKU doesn't the clue tells about that particular row/column which indicates??
Check out the clue "1 4".
1 says its in the 2X3 box and the 4 tells about the skyscraper.
so 1 should be present in that column and the corresponding 2X3 box...
but it is not....

Between 1 and 4, you've to determine which one is Skyscraper clue and which one is Outside clue. It is written in the instructions. This process is part of solving.

Instructions in Chinese - http://www.sudokufans.org.cn/forums/index.php?showtopic=234 - Thanks to Minfang Lin

Looking forward to this test :)

I did not understand 'Dice' and 'Alphanumeric Dice'.

The rules are that each puzzle has a set of 6-sided dice. Either 3 or 4 Dice.

For Dice. On each die there are 6 letters, one on each side/face. All letters are different. The example puzzle has 3 die, so a total of 18 letters. When you were to roll the dice, 3 letters will show on top, one from each die. The given words all thus have a letter from each die. You have to figure out which 6 letters are on each die, so that the given words can be rolled using those 3 dice.
The actual puzzle will have 4 dice, so a total of 24 letters.

Alphanumeric dice has basically the same premise, except now each die has a letter and a digit from 1-6 on each side/face. Each die will have each digit from 1-6 once, like a normal die. The 3 die puzzle again has 18 different letters. The 4 die puzzle has 24 different letters.
Now if you were to roll the dice, 4 letters and 4 digits will show on top. In this puzzle you are given the 4 letters rolled and the sum of those 4 digits (just like in the ABC puzzle). Now you have to figure out which letter and digit are on the 6 sides/faces of each die, so that the given words can be rolled with the given sums.
(ps. you can check the last icon from the banner to visualise how such a die would look)

I hope this is clearer. If not, can you let me know what exactly you don't understand. It's different from the regular puzzles as it's not a grid based puzzle, it's a logic based puzzle though.

Edited by Para 2011-03-08 10:49 PM

Rohan, See the logo ( the last of the 6 boxes) for example of how an Alphanumeric die would look like.

Ok. Thanks, I understood the puzzle now.

The instruction says 'You have a set of 3 dice' and then it says '...that are rolled with those 4 dice', so I felt I was missing something. I assume the 4 dice is for the actual puzzle, whereas the example has 3 dice.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Sorry, that seems to be a typo. I'll have it fixed.

We've release the Myopia genre on puzzlepicnic. I had come across this genre once on a slitherlink site, hadn't been aware of this puzzletype before. (If anyone has, sorry for the name mix-up). There's an extra rule in the puzzlepicnic rules. There won't be any of the white arrows/lines in the competition puzzles.

http://puzzlepicnic.com/genre?myopia (there's a link to all puzzles at the bottom).

Thanks for the link Bram. Myopia is probably not as common as most other variants that you've.
The 2 puzzles by you at puzzlepicnic should serve as good practice.

I have some doubts about this test and I would like to remove it:

D3/4. Sea Battle
You say: '...so that in every row, column and boldly marked area exactly 2 ships appear.' I think it is impossible if you have at least one 3-cell ship. I would like to make everything clear here.

E3/4. Pentopia
If we looking in the T-line in the example, the closest penta is placed diagonally. So, I assume that there will be no diagonal lines in the grid. Am I right?

X1. Dice and X3/4. Alphanumeric Dice
It might be useful here to show an example with the solving steps.

I hope this will be a nice test, especially I like sudoku variations.

Thanks!

Nikola

Edited by Nikola 2011-03-10 1:50 PM

In the meantime I figured out the rules for D3/4. Sea Battle puzzle.

Nikola

Ok.
Regarding "E3/4. Pentopia", there won't be any diagonal lines.

Just in case anyone else has the same questions.


It's 2 ships per row/column and boldly marked areas, not ship parts. So a size 2, 3 or 4 ship in a row/column counts as one.


It's only in horizontal and vertical directions. The same goes for myopia.



Well I can give you an opening step and you figure out the rest. It might help you get an idea of the solving techniques involved.
DICE example:
From BED - AND - PEA you can determine this. D must be on the same die as one of PEA, but can't go with either A or E, so it must go with P. You can now also figure out how to distribute the letters ABEN with these words.

Alphanumeric Dice Example:
|NOD 5-YES 6-CAR 7| are 9 different letters that add to 18, so they all have to be either accompanied by a 1,2 or 3 on their side/face as this is the minimum you can have. When you now combine ABC and Dice techniques, you should get to the solution.

Puzzle booklet uploaded. It has 13 pages including the cover page (with points table)

You can view your score after completing the test.

If you didn't get points for any puzzle because you entered in wrong format, please
post a reply here
OR
send a PM to Bram
OR
to me

Please don't post full / part of solution. Just the puzzle name.

Thanks for a fun test. One of the first competitions I've avoided making a mistake on. I figured I was going to have a hard time given how much trouble the examples gave me, but I was happy to exceed my own expectations at least. Still probably not incredibly well given how much time was spent staring at Sudoku, which is generally not a good use of time for me.

Another awesome test, another idiotic mistake for me. (I assumed the entry rules for all the dice puzzles were the same, and alphabetized them all.)Thanks to Bram and everyone.

Excellent puzzles...I liked both the sea battles the most. Thanks Bram.

And, probably inspired by Akash, I wasted close to half an hour in the end.

Very nice puzzles, well done Bram. I particularly loved the Pentopia puzzles, hope to see more of them in the future

Marcin

Very nice puzzles, so I enjoyed two hours. Thank you for Bram!

By the way, in Japan where I am from, many people are suffering from the earthquakes and tsunami which happend on March 11th.
I live in Tokyo which is far from the hypocenter, so there is little damage around me.

From the Internet and so on, I heard the news that so many people are anxious about the present circumstances in Japan all over the world.
I appreciate for the care from other countries. And I think that it is happy that I solve the puzzles as usual.

Thank you for reading.

Kota

Hi Kota, Thank you for kind update about the quake and tsunami. What we gather from internet and newspapers is that it is really devastating.
We can just pray and hope for well-being of everyone there.

Also read from deu's blog that he had to walk few miles from his office to home. Hope everything is well there too.

Deb