Well, I just solved the puzzle but never got in the situation you describe, so I will just examine an hypothetical case. Let's say (all this happening before you determine which is the correct rule) you have R2C1/R2C2=39 and R4C1/R4C2=359. It is tempting to say that either R4C1 or R4C2 contains a 5, but it is a wrong assertion. Indeed, there is one cell (R2C1) which can be affected by the "small neighbours" rule, so you could perfectly have a unique rectangle 39/39/39/39. If it happens that the rule is the one of "small neighbours", then there cannot be a 9 in R2C1 and the unique rectangle is broken.

I hope I made it clear enough, I wrote this a bit in a hurry.

Thanks Bastien for clarifying. Even I didn't catch the situation Akash is describing.

As-is, it is little dangerous to apply unique rectangle to variants. In this test with 2-rules, it is probably little early if you apply unique rectangle before 'determining' the correct rule.

@Akash, to specifically answer if you can apply uniqueness rule, all I can say is all sudokus are designed to have unique solutions :-)

One side note on examples : the difficulty of examples vary a lot, and has nothing to do with difficulty of actual puzzles

With Sum10/Multiple, are all black marks given?
I.e., is it possible in Sum10 that two neighboring numbers sum up to 10 and have no black square between them?
Is it possible for Multiple Sudoku that two neighboring numbers are a multiple of each others but have no black square between them?

All black marks are not given. So converse rule does not apply.

Edited by debmohanty 2011-09-25 11:44 PM

@deb and bastien. thanks a lot for clarifying my doubts.

Is there a double solution in Greater/Lesser sudoku in Instruction Booklet? 7's & 8's in Box 6, 8 and 9.

Not for me because of the 7 between L8C3 et L8C4.

OH ok, now I understand the rules. I think. I got it wrong first. I should always read all the rules more carefully.

All examples can now be solved online in the submission page ( http://logicmastersindia.com/M201110S/ )

While testing the sudokus, Rakesh asked me if it is allowed make 2 copies of the booklet. I didn't answer his question, but I think he printed only a single copy.
There is discussion in sudokuvariante forum that one of the strategy could be printing 2 copies, and solving using different rules on separate copies.

The reasons I'm bringing it up here is
1) I want to make sure that everyone knows that this is a strategy that some player might want to follow
2) More importantly, I feel, just like an offline competition where only one set of printout is allowed, one should use only one set of printout for this test.
3) Most importantly, without revealing much about what to expect in actual sudokus, I can say that printing two copies will not help one solving faster.

Edited by debmohanty 2011-09-28 7:54 PM

Announcements

1) Bonus points

Players submitting all 12 correctly will get .9 points per minute
Players submitting all 12, but 1 incorrect with maximum 3 incorrect digits will get .6 points per minute saved.
As usual, bonus points will be computed from the time "Claim Bonus" is clicked.
So, click on "Claim Bonus" as soon as you think you are done.

2) Sudoku Booklet

Password protected sudoku booklet is uploaded.
It has 6 pages. Each page has 2 sudokus. There is no cover page / points table.

3) Read the instruction booklet carefully

There are more rules than a usual sudoku test has. So please read the IB carefully.
Converse rules doesn't apply to all Sudokus.
Please ask here in case of doubts

4) Score page

As usual, the link to score page is : http://logicmastersindia.com/M201110S/score.asp
The score page will not show bonus points until the test is over

I read this on Hideaki Jo's blog first. I'm not sure I understood well, because I'm not a specialist of japanese translation . I thought it was an interesting point, so I report this on my forum. Thanks for clarifying (and for reading sudokuvariante ) !

Fred

Precisely the same reason I posted in this forum :-) and my French is probably as good as your Japanese

Edited by debmohanty 2011-10-01 6:47 AM

Attention :
If you are solving online, you need not submit again using paper mode. It consumes time and error prone.

Excellent puzzles. Thanks for the fun test!

Deb - Really well done, nice set of puzzles. Enjoyed it! Cheers, Dave

Really nice and very beautiful puzzles Deb!
I enjoyed
- the grids themselves and
- the solving
both very much!

Thanks

Wonderful as expected................Thanks a lot Deb for making me enjoy the weekend

Really nice puzzles. Was just probably 10 seconds away from completing an LMI test for the first time. Ah well guess I'll have to wait longer :P But really enjoyed it.

Big fan of this variant test. Not a fan of killer sudokus, or non-9x9's in contests. When you stay within the constraints of the usual and just add little extra constraints you can rely on all your standard sudoku techniques and just look for the extra direction. First time I have ever bonused on LMI, so very happy about that as well.

Love this site and appreciate all the time that you put in constantly to keep me and all the other world puzzlers entertained.

Much thanks.

TheSubro

The puzzles are very well designed. Thanks a lot Deb.
Though I am not a fan of sudoku I enjoyed the test a lot.
I liked one thing about the test i.e the two variants concept, in usual tests each sudoku is of only one type but in this I guess almost all the variants are covered in such a way, that to solve you need to know both the variants mentioned for each sudoku, thus making everyone to learn more than one variant (atleast in my case) :)

Thanks
Ravi.

Very enjoyable test, although can I put a request in for 6 extra points? I finished the Sequence/Palindrome puzzle early on in the test, but I noticed I hadn't input the answer when I was checking everything at the end. I hurriedly input the answer key and pressed 'submit' with about 6 seconds remaining but I was told that I couldn't submit as the test was over. It hardly makes a difference to my position but at least I will feel my time solving that puzzle wasn't wasted!

Thanks

Rodders

Sudoku A or B is now over. Thank you everyone for taking time to participate. Hope you enjoyed the easy set.

Top 3 : motris (76:04), TiiT (76:16), Fred76 (84:12)
17 other players completed all sudokus correctly before time. Congratulations everyone.

LMI sudokus tests have been bit hard in last few months. Here are the number of players completing all sudokus in last 5 months - May : 0, Jun : 1, Jul : 0, Aug : 0, Sep : 0. So I decided to keep this test bit longer than needed so that many players get a chance to try and complete all sudokus. I am really happy to see that apart from the regular ones, many new players have completed the set.

About the Sudokus : Apart from Odd Even View / Outside view, most sudokus were easy. I think it was possible to find the logic to determine the correct rule for each sudoku. I'm glad that everyone generally liked the concept of A/B, but I felt I could have used more interlinking uses of the rules in some cases to make the grids more interesting. I'm not sure if I could have achieved that without raising the difficulty level. All I can say is, I'm really tempted to write "Sudoku C or D" sometime in the future.

Some stats :
# of participants : 204
# of Non zero scores : 170
# of players submitting all sudokus : 29
# of players getting all sudokus correct : 20
Average time for the 20 players : 102 minutes

3 best buddies get India top 3 positions : Rohan(97:28), Pras and Tejal.

Many thanks to Branko and Rakesh for pre testing the Sudokus. Branko's timing were especially impressive.

Thanks to David Millar for creating the logo.

Looking forward to C or D :D