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

I enjoyed this test very much, and managed to complete 6 puzzles (which for me is good) - I am not yet practised enough to solve fast.
Unfortunately, I made a typo in one entry, and a mistake in the puzzle for another... the worst thing was my final puzzle tht I submitted with about 1:30 to go (according to the counter) didn't get accepted :(

However, I will be taking the remaining puzzles to solve on the train - I usually give uncompleted puzzles to my 4 yo to draw on. So in that regard, this is probably the best (most suited to my puzzle interests) LMI I have attempted (even though I did enjoy some of the other ones).

It is unlikely that the 'counter' ran slowly (90 seconds is a lot of time), so I would tend to think that it could be a connectivity issue.
Thanks for participating in this test (and other tests too). Glad that you enjoy these tests.

I won't be able to do the test but it seems amazing.
Thanks for this posibility.
I'm from Argentina and we are so far away of this level, but I try anyway.
Thanks again and best wishes to Japan.

It was delightful test! I had a lot fun. :) Thank you very much. I could be make better, but in any case this result enough for me. Thank you very much again, Bram.

Liked the test very much but I'm not a big fan of bonus points of this kind. It makes the difference between stronger and weaker solvers even bigger without any upside I'm aware of. Especially regarding the Puzzle rating of LMI it might have an undesired effect...

Beautiful puzzles Bram. Thoroughly enjoyed the test... :-)

Hi,

I've just solved a few grids. I didn't read the instruction booklet before beginning, just look at puzzle types, and I wanted to do some. But those I solved were very good. So I think other ones were good, too

I just asked myself a quick question: why bonus are bigger (more %) for easy puzzles and smaller for hard puzzles? Instinctively I would have done the opposite (or just the same rate) and I can't understand what is the logic of that. (Just for my curiosity )

Thanks

Fred

Edited by Fred76 2011-03-14 4:44 AM

Connectivity is entirely likely to be the issue, I have recently noticed that sometimes it takes 2 or 3 attempts to reach a webpage... but haven't had issues once I get there. (I think it is time to change ISP)

Hello all,

I had a quick question (that might be a FAQ)-- I was able to register for this site but when I typed in my login ID and password and country then clicked "login" to start taking the test, basically nothing happened except the login button disabled. Also, I did not receive a code to open the puzzle pdf. I'm a beginner, so maybe I did something wrong?

Definitely strange. If you are doing what you mentioned, that is the correct step to login.
From the database I see that your country is still empty.

So, basically, fill Login Id, password, and country. And click on Login. It is very surprising when you say "Login" button is disabled, but you also "Clicked on" it.
Is your password single character or 2 characters?

Thank you for the quick response! Ah, my password uses upper case letters, lower case letters, and numbers. It is 8 characters long. I will try to go to my profile and update my country, thanks for pointing out that it is empty.

The country can be updated from the test page itself, so that is not the issue.
Anyway - this test will be over now (in few seconds) - but you can still fix the login problem and get set for the next test.

Post here or send me a PM, if you still face issues.

Now that full results are out, it appears that the Extra section did in fact count for everyone. In page 2 of the instruction booklet it says that section would only count if 18 puzzles were solved correctly. Was that changed? It didn't affect the standings at the top since no one worked on them, but for the past few days I've been baffled by the solving statistics on those puzzles, when no one ever had more than 18 puzzles solved.