David,
I definitely understand your frustration for not being able to solve the last 2 Sudokus with 35+ minutes in hand. As one of the LMI organisers (and as someone who has mostly designed the flash interface for Sudoku solving), I'll be the first person to admit that LMI Sudoku interface is definitely not the best around the internet. I'm certain that some (or many) other sites provide much more user-friendly (and powerful) interfaces. But LMI contests differ from many others with the kind of Sudokus we provide. That has been our focus. We have spent more time on making sure that quality of Sudokus is one of the best, rather than fiddling with the flash interface.

At the same time, we invite both kind of players (paper / online) to compete, and many times the pros and cons for both modes balance out. We also have seen players using both the modes in the same test (i.e. solving 6X6 grids or easy 9X9 grids online, while solving other grids on paper).

As many players pointed out, 0-8 had a problem solving online. We probably should have made a note in the forum before the contest. In other Sudokus you've mentioned, paper solves might have certain advantage. But if we decide to only have Sudokus which are fair to paper and online solvers, it will be a huge constraint for authors. Many authors would agree that it limits their creativity, and we probably shouldn't do that.

Please be assured that we take each and every input that we receive and try to work for the best solution. And we'll definitely advise our future authors to keep in mind that a certain percentage of our solvers are online solvers.

Hope to see you participate in future and make LMI tests more competitive.

Deb

Regarding pdf printing problem this time, before the announcement itself, all of us (Fred, Bastien and me) were concerned more about how the pdf will look in a B&W printer.
I printed the pdf (in a high-end HP LaserJet B&W printer) and it came out without any issues. I didn't think much about the color printing.

Frankly, I'm against using colors in puzzle grids at LMI competitions, but we made an exception in this case because of the associated theme. This is the first time we had colors in grids (even MellowMelon had to change his puzzle presentation to accommodate B&W printing).
We are unlikely to have colors in puzzles frequently, but whenever we have we'll ensure that it prints equally well in B&W and color printers. [ Oh, well, at some point in time we discussed to have 2 booklets, one in B&W and one in color ]

Regarding pdf not printing at all in some printers, I've no idea what could be the problem. But Tom C's explanation on UKPA forum seems most reasonable.

A big thank you to Fred for posting a solution path for the Extra Regions Sudoku. Beautifully done and I must apologise for my earlier comments. I have also found a simple logical solution to Sundoku and a logical (but very difficult!) solution to the 0-8 Killer. As predicted, once the time pressure was off, my brain started to work a little better.

This is the second time I partecipate to a contest.
I prefere to solve online and, as requested, i propose some suggestions.
The candidate are very small and removing them with the mouse (ctrl+click) is not so esay.
Is it possible to make the grid resizable with ctrl+mouse wheel?
I discovered today trying to solve the grids I could'nt solve in 2 hours that you can undo all the inputs.
this could encourage the tentatives,
In my opinion it would be better to limit the undos to just few steps.
Great test, anyway.

I agree that the candidates are small. And using ctrl+click is not the best way to remove a candidate...definitely not the quickest and is click-error-prone, i.e if you release the ctrl early you have to re-enter the candidates. I have not used either Undo or Digit colour feature so far. Now, that I know about it, it seems to be a really good feature and can speed up online solving a bit. I don't think there is a need to limit the number of undo steps. Can it be used for trial and error (T&E)? - Yes. But, probably, that is not a big enough reason for restricting the usage. All said, it is a good feature and can only improve the online solving experience, if used well.

Hi David. I am glad you could finally solve the killer logically. The puzzle wasn't that hard if you managed to follow the intended path, but of course this path wasn't particularly easy to spot (well, the puzzle was worth 140pts...).

Time for a global look on the test.

Generally, puzzles were widely appreciated and this is always a major satisfaction, being the main goal of each and every author. More of that, some of them got some emphatic comments, in particular Mixed Sudoku from Laurent Pierre (the man who depicts himself as a "beginner author") ; we can only be satisfied of that and it fully rewards the work which has been done.

My own 0-8 Killer also got some very nice comments and this is a great reward. As I said to Serkan on saturday, this puzzle caused me some torment. My original idea was to simply create a basic killer with 20/3 areas but after several tries, I couldn't get a satisfying puzzle in terms of difficulty. Then came the idea of using a different set of digits, and the "0-8" set appeared to offer lots more possibilities to play with - in particular, the sum "3" now admitted 3 different combinations, including a 3-cells one.
A few more tries later, I obtained this puzzle on which I had a mitigated feeling, certainly due to the fact that my previous attempts (with 1-9 set) had been somewhat disastrous. So, I sent the puzzle to the other authors but I remained a bit hesitant, not totally sure if it was really good or if it was just "better than the ridiculous previous attempts".
Finally, Fred and friends told me there was no issue with this puzzle and encouraged me to keep it ; I hadn't given a look at it since its creation, so I came back to it, found the solving smoother than in my memories, and did breathe a big sigh of relief.
My two other puzzles were the Arrow Sudoku (clearly not an incredible one, but I had it created some time ago and it fitted well with the theme ; some not too bad steps to find if following the main path, though) and the Consecutive. Again, not a fantastic piece of a puzzle but I had some score to settle with consecutive puzzles and designing a themed one happened to be a good way to do it.

Unfortunately, there were a few issues due to color (but as Deb said, the use of color was an exception because of the spring theme, so it souldn't happen again) and to the fact that one or two puzzles were definitely hard to solve online. That's a pity but things rarely go as well as they were intended to, and I think that, despite of these, the balance remains positive.


I agree. By the way, I also dislike these extra conversion steps but we thought that, by giving the alphabet table, every player would quickly replace letters with numbers and that it would be a "lesser issue". Unfortunately we omitted to take into consideration the fact that online solvers couldn't replace the letters with numbers ; if only we had thought about it, we would surely have adopted the solution you propose, or something very near.

I won't extent about WaterlooMathie's last post ; answers have already been given. Let's just say that problems are always far more obvious to spot once they have happened...

All in all, a big thank you to all the players who had a try on our puzzles. I truly hope that, amongst the various grids, everybody found some puzzle which fitted him/her.

Bastien