Sorry, didn't respond regarding Slalom - 2 vs ratings while the test was running. I didn't want much focus on 1 wrong puzzle.

I assume your question is about LMI ratings, and we'll include the results in the ratings. When there is wrong puzzle in a test running for 48-hours, there are not many options which is fair to all.
One option we discussed is to "Not announcing about the puzzle / neither to change the pdf". This way all players would have hit the road block in Slalom - 2. But we quickly discarded this option because we wanted to make sure that the 75% players who were going to participate shouldn't face the same frustration that the initial players faced.

In any case, as Zoltan mentioned, all players who have submitted Slalom - 2 before it was fixed get 30 points. This is close to being fair, but I realize there are some more players who solved Slalom - 1, spent some time on Slalom - 2 but didn't submit because they couldn't solve and assumed that they were making a mistake.

I posted this in a hurry.
I rechecked the database, and found that MellowMelon took more than couple of minutes to crosscheck all his answers before clicking on "Claim Bonus". So even if he had got all 33 correct, he would have been placed 2nd.

One more point to note is that MellowMelon didn't get any benefit for completing before 15 minutes. We probably should have had partial bonus in this test, given that there were way too many puzzles.

I think on a test with 33 puzzles, there should certainly be diminished time bonus if a person submits early with a single mistake. But that bonus would only start after the solver hits claim bonus obviously. I found that end test button a good addition but it will really only get tested on a contest where many more people finish early.

It would probably also be good to add the "claim bonus" time into the rollover info on the score sheet because time to last correct submission can be misleading.

Edited by motris 2011-08-01 12:10 PM

Yes, we'll get it added in the next test.

Regarding number of players completing the test, I think the test was well timed (although there were lot of apprehensions because of example puzzles' difficulties). 3 players completed it and 2 more were close to complete it.

I think you have to consider deu like one of the original participants. His English is not much better than my Japanese, and would not have seen any errata. That was clearly the case in one of the UKPA recent contests, so I urge you to reconsider his result.

I could have finished all puzzles without that wrong puzzle, as I wasted 4 or 5 minutes on Slalom 2 and needed 1 more minute to finish Star Battle 3. But this is not a big thing for me, because the test was very good as a whole. I especially liked Heyawake 2, 3, Slalom 3, Hitori 3 and all Star Battles.

Dear puzzlers!

With this message the test has finished officially. The scores are available.
I'm very happy that more than 170 people started the test and 5 hungarian puzzlers.

Congratulations to motris, xevs and MellowMelon.

I would like to mention three more solvers: ppeetteerr and deu also solved 32 puzzles. And uvo with 30 solved puzzles has finished on the 6th position.


Thank you for the ratings. They are very useful us.
The puzzles with the highest rating were Star Battle-3, Cave-3, Slalom-3. (I realy happy because 2 of them are my puzzles :) )
The top 6 rated puzzles are special. This show me that it was a good idea to make an easy, medium and special puzzles from each type.

Thanks again to all participants, LMI, Deb Mohanty, Gyorgy Istvan, who provided me a lot of help.

I hope everybody could find some enjoyable puzzles :)

Best, Zoltán

It was perfect this way. Many thanks for having considered this.

A very good test indeed. I didn't have enough time to try all of the puzzles but the ones I solved were really fun. In particular, I "forgot" to try the third Star Battle, but n°1 and 2 were excellent. I am going to do this last one in the afternoon and expect it to be at least as good as the two others.


It was certainly a good idea. It reminds of Thomas' Decathlon in 2010, another much appreciated test.

Three months to wait until Eger... It will be long.

Thanks to all puzzle authors for this nice test. The concept of standard puzzles in cube shapes was nicely planned and executed.
Can we hope to see some more 'preview' tests before WPC/WSC?

Special thanks to Zoltan who coordinated the whole stuff and also for administering the test during the weekend while I was away.

just as a suggestion can after every test from now a pdf file that contains solution to the puzzles be uploaded.
(by solution i dont mean step wise but the final filled grids)