Really loved the idea and the puzzles!

I was 90% sure I would have to skip this test but I found a few hours this evening and I am glad I did. These were very elegant combinations of classic types, with lots of good interactions between the grids. Thanks very much for these puzzles Vlad!

With no more participants at this point, Forsmarts 3² Anniversary Squared Contest is now over. Preliminary results available at http://logicmastersindia.com/forsmarts2011/score.asp Vladimir will check the last few entries before the results are frozen.

Congratulations to motris, for winning this contest with a huge margin. uvo is next with significant margin from misko. All of misko's submissions came after 120 minutes, and he lost 100 points.

A total of 205 players, out of which 155 players solved at least one puzzle and 148 players solved at least one set completely. Interestingly, tarotaro was the only player to have solved all 4 Dotted Snakes.

We haven't used Extra Time regularly in the past. But I felt many players lost lot of points because of using Extra Time. For example, xevs lost 53.2 - 18 - 8 = 27.2 points for fixing a typo during Extra time. (He made a typo at 018:50, he fixed it at 124:26) He would have got 27.2 points if he hadn't fixed the typo.

May be .2 per second was really high for this since the maximum points achieved was 835 points.

Penalty systems like this one often require a solver to calculate on the fly if they should submit or not and certainly some players will submit when it is not to their advantage.

I finished the last two battleship parts 4 minutes in extra time, around when it would have cost me about 42 points to submit. It took me 2 points of time to figure out 15+15+10 was < 42 and also now < 44 points of penalty so I never submitted. But I could have made this mistake and lost points.

I personally like extra time that operates a little more like T3ist scoring, so there is rapidly declining value for submitting in this time, but it is always worth something to submit and the competitor doesn't have to solve a separate puzzle of calculating his marginal score improvement. Perhaps 80% value for 1 minute over, 60% value for 2 minutes over, ..., 0% value for 5 minutes over.

Many thanks to all the participants! Congratulations to Thomas, it was an impressive victory.
Sorry if anyone felt being treated unfair when the claims for the points were rejected: rows and columns for the answer keys were selected on purpose. So to keep the judging consistent - all the claims on submitting wrong row/column were rejected, no matter if it felt like a trick to enter a line that could be filled in the very beginning of solving process or otherwise.
I also want to extend gratitude to Deb who created a wonderful handy engine for conducting online-contests and was very helping during the preparation to the contest and the contest itself.
All the best, come back next year for a jubilee contest! :)

In the top 20 of a puzzle test (until the last minute, I was convinced that Para will kick me out of the top 20)??? before the last 2 world champions???
I can't prevent to think that it's an interplanetary conspiracy

Fred

Some complacency resulting from my performance
I really could not believe, that I remain in the top 10. When I saw my nickname somewhere at 7th position and Thomas, Palmer, Taro, Ko or Bram still haven´t participate it become quite frustrating. I solve at Saturday morning and start with 3rd position, so I will be very sad if all these superb solvers overtake me in the last few hours. But they did not and now I wonder if somebody who is 211th in the puzzle rating could finish in the top 10.
Otherwise big congratulation belongs to the best performers and all the organisers.

Matus

Great puzzles, I loved them. Especially the skyscrapers and japanese sums.
Unfortunately I have no idea how can I solve the dotted snake. But this is a puzzle invented by me :) Thank you for the propagation. :)
This puzzle had the smallest number of submission, this calm me down a little :-)

Congratulations to motris, uvo and misko.

I've told you earlier, you should participate more often in puzzle tests

Certainly the rank of 211^th is not a true reflection of your solving abilities. Of the 12 tests considered for ratings, you have participated only once. That said, we definitely saw many top players not doing well in this test, it can't just be a coincidence.

I also want to mention that Vladimir has originally planned this contest for 150 minutes. Although I didn't oppose to running the contest for that long, I suggested to reduce the length if possible, considering that it was 3^rd consecutive weekend of puzzles at LMI (that too immediately after WS/PC). Obviously, he had calculated the the timing exactly, and my suggestion was without solving the set. May be running the test for 150 minutes would have brought the best out of everyone.


Edited by debmohanty 2011-12-06 9:21 PM

Link to solutions - http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/dl.asp?attachmentid=191&view=...

To explain my own performance, first if this test had been rated I probably would have unchecked the box. The Putnam (http://www.maa.org/awards/putnam.html) was not the only thing I had to worry about this weekend, and a lot of the types weren't ones I was comfortable with (sudoku? easy as? japanese sums?). Second, if you check my submission times, it was going pretty well, and then I stubbornly refused to skip the dotted snake until I had sunk 50 minutes into it. 420 points in the first hour, 28 in the second.

And since "last 2 world champions" was noted by someone, it seems tarotaro had a similar problem. To his credit, he did finish the dotted snake after his 50 minutes (only one as pointed out above).

Edited by MellowMelon 2011-12-06 10:23 PM

Thank you for a very interesting and challenging set of puzzles. I performed dismally, which wasn't a surprise given how much I'd struggled with the puzzles in the instruction booklet! I'm glad it didn't count for ratings. Even now I have only managed to finish two more sets, so I don't think 150 minutes would have helped me much.

I didn't have the best of solves, but I really haven't had any since coming back from Eger. Maybe I just drained everything there to perform what was above my own expectations/hopes in Eger. I also didn't exactly have the best planning yesterday. I was hoping to be home at 6 and then do some puzzling. I ended up being home at 10, without having had dinner. I had started at the end of the test booklet and 40 minutes in, I still had 0 solved grids and had attempted the last 4 types. So I'm pretty sure if Fred and Matus had seen my progress first hand, they would have stopped worrying about that time about me knocking them out of the top 10/20. This was also the point I thought, "Let's just stop, it's late, I could be doing something productive like sleeping". I eventually managed to work through 6 types completely, although making 2 entry mistakes and 1 solving mistake. I had fun solving the last 80 minutes and they were nice puzzles. Maybe I will be able to puzzle properly again next year.

Sorry, it was not a criticism of your performance, or anybody else performance. It's clear that your level is far better than your rank in this test, and it's also clear that mine is far worse on puzzles than my rank on this test. The circumstances were favorable, so I could make an unexpected rank. I think it'll not happen often, so I'm happy

I wait for a sudoku test to reassure myself completely (or not...).

Fred

Don't worry, I didn't see it as insulting. My (relatively) bad performance is due to my own shortcomings, and your good one deserves praise. But you better believe I'm going to work hard to avoid messing up like this again. :)

I'd love to see some hints on how to solve the dotted snakes. I managed to guess possible solutions to the left two puzzles by now, but I find snakes hard enough to solve without the added interactions between the grids. General snake solving advice would also be appreciated -- I often struggle on those croco snakes that some people throw out in a couple of minutes…

Also, thanks a lot for the test. I loved the concept of the test, and the puzzles that I solved. The puzzles were a bit on the hard side for me, so that guessing instead of staring in places would probably have been a good idea. In the end, I was surprised by how well I placed, since it didn't seem like a good performance. I sunk a lot of time into the Easy as ABC that turned out to be broken in the very end, and never felt fast.

The intended order of solving was starting from bottom right and going clockwise: in that case every single puzzle could be solved uniquely.

Thanks, I got through now. It turns out the two solved grids were ok. I realized some new things about dotted snakes in the process (particularly how they're close to "star battle" in some ways), though I didn't actually manage to prove uniqueness.