David, we take note of these remarks. Even if we knew from the beginning that the test is both for online and paper solvers (we are familiar with the site, I played some tests with the interface), we may have a bit forgotten this constraint when creating the puzzles, concentrating only on the spring theme and some interface limitations deb talked us about.
We didn't thought about the fact that it's not very convenient to solve online a grid with letter inside, for example.

We hope that, however, you enjoy the other puzzles, on which you demonstrate you are one of the best player over the world.

Fred

Indeed, outside letters are less practical to use than numbers and we knew about it, but they are here on purpose.

As Fred just said, we didn't really think about the practicity of solving the "letters puzzles" online. We focused on several other aspects of the test in order to make it as convenient as possible (also for online solvers), but unfortunately we forgot some of them. There is always room to improve the system...

I thought the paper submission thing worked very well. Sadly as I was waiting for everything to print out I did the classic in the web interface and somehow managed to lose my answer by the end of the test. Never mind.

For what it's worth I thought the set was set at just about the right level. From a designers point of view, everything was very pleasing. Sundoku is a lovely idea, the classic solved really nicely (remarkably so for a classic), and the Sudokurve was very creative. This is without mentioning the excellent challenging puzzles at the end of the test haha!

I also solve the puzzles online and I agree that Jigsaw wordoku was difficult online. I eventually broke this puzzle after spending a lot of effort. But I thought the solving experience in Double Sum Sudoku did not suffer even if you use the online interface. Using letters or numbers does not make much of a difference as the reference was shown next to the sudoku grid. If anything, the killer was a bit problematic for me at some places, as the '0' candidate in some cells was overlapping with killer clues. I had to restart the grid from scratch as I missed reading a zero while solving.

But the overall experience from the test was a very positive one.

Last night my friend was giving spring on my system, today when i am trying to login through my account, even after my login when i go to spring sudoku it says 'vibhor87 has completed spring' which is my friends login id..
what should i do about this

Delete the Cache on your comp and try logging in again...

Rishi

Please check your inbox

i did clear the cache dis tym, but even that doesnt help man!!!... do something i seriously wanna try this level

From the database, I see that you've started Spring. So I hope the issue is resolved.

One request - In this forum, please write in proper English. Some of us are much older than what you might be thinking. I especially have lot of problems understanding this sms-like language.

Mind blowing.........great test..........
This new submission system is excellent.

We identify this little problem with Deb, that appears on each test including a killer sudoku.
If someone has an idea to improve the system for killer sudoku, you can speak we Deb, he'll be happy

Fred

Thank you, Neeraj !

A great set of puzzles.... after a long time something which made me think for a long time... A few of the puzzles were simply superb... great job Authors...

rishi

What can I say ? A big thank you for these kind comments.

=> Thomas : My bad about the dark green. I am the one who designed the puzzles and I couldn't access to a printer before the test, so I couldn't exactly figure out what the color would look like. I keep the remark in mind for future tests with colored puzzles.

=> Tom : We went through several doubts concerning the overall difficulty of the test ; before the start, I was a bit afraid that it could be "too easy" ; then I saw the first results and it appeared that, on the contrary, it was probably slightly too hard. So it is good to read that some top solvers have found it well estimated.

=> Rakesh, Neeraj, Rishi : I am really happy that you liked the test. It is always difficult, when you build puzzles according to a "theme", not to fall into the trap of sacrificing quality for aesthetic. But of course, that is what makes the construction of such puzzles interesting.

Yet a few hours before the complete results...

Ah - well that'd certainly be my advice to any would-be test creators. Your own puzzles are almost certainly harder to other people, and so any test you put together will be harder than you think it is :). (Unsurprisingly) if you'd taken my test times for the UKPA sudoku I'd have ended up significantly quicker than far better solvers than myself.

Besides, I think if you concentrate on making hard puzzles, rather than creative puzzles, you won't end up with anything particularly good. I believe the author has to have some fun too!

We applied a little different method for testing than usual, for this test, I'll explain that tomorrow if you want

I am well aware of that ; each time I organize a tournament, I take this fact into account... and every time I realize, once it is over, that I nonetheless underestimated the difficulty. Fortunately, we were six authors this time, so we had a more global vision (and yet, the test was a bit hard...). And I just see that Fred proposed to tell you some more tomorrow, so I am gonna shut up now.

Bastien, if you want to talk about that now, don't hesitate
I'm just a bit tired and my English is very poor, so that each message I post is a real effort. That's why I planned to speak more tomorrow

Fred

No, precisely I am also a bit tired so I welcomed with great joy your message. Right now I just need to get away from screen, grab some book and read until the test is over (I definitely won't be able to sleep till I know the final results, so...).

Ah, so you're not creating grids now ???

Thank you to the authors of these puzzles. This was a wonderful set -- I think it rates as highly as any I've ever played.

Are you suggesting that I may be addicted to puzzle creation ? Look, we have met several times by now, we begin to know each other. I ask you, during one of those times we met, did you ever see me, even once, creating puzzles ?

Rhetorical question, you don't have to answer.

Please, do not answer.


By the way, you just reminded me about an idea of a puzzle I had last night and forgot to put down on paper.

Thank you, Jason !

The test is over. You can view the results here

Congratulations to Thomas, Michael and Jason who take the places on the podium ! Thank you all for participating, I hope you had fun doing this test. We will post more detailed comments tomorrow, after a good night's sleep. (It was tiring to watch you playing )

Also thanks to LMI team and especially Deb for the great work he does for these tournaments. It's enormous !

Fred

Edited by Fred76 2011-03-28 6:00 AM

From the results I can see that Double sum Sudoku had the least number of solvers, and the lowest %correct answers. I find this a bit intriguing, as, in my opinion, this puzzle was fairly straightforward with well defined starting points (columns/rows marked with 'E'). In fact, this was probably one puzzle which was over-valued, and definitely easier than some of the other high-pointers.

All killers were very good.