David designed the logo and the banner.

We'll include the sizes in the IB. For now, I can add that, each puzzle can be printed on A4 size page, and the cell sizes will still be large enough.

Yes, that was only a joke. I hope to see many new tricks in this puzzles. And all compliments for design.

Nikola

Really nice.

I agree. Looks wonderful.

Looking forward to Puzzle Marathon

I hope, that the contest will be solvable in shorter time than 8 days. I have some exam on Monday ... :)

It's clearly an 8 day puzzle championship. taking the 24 hour puzzle championship to a whole new level.

Marathon will last 8 full days. The organizers felt that holding this competition so close to the beginning of the year would mean that solvers would have ample vacation time to take the week off from work for solving these puzzles.

Actually in the 21-29 period there are 9 days ;-)

That is even more. But this weekly contest is really interesting. For example we have only 7 days per week in Slovakia.

Its a "marathon week" :P

Edited by prasanna16391 2012-01-14 8:25 PM

Slovak people are very strange

It's a leap year.

Here's a sneak peek from my puzzle in the instruction booklet: http://t.co/LjF5cnOc

I hope you all like masyu. :)

Think I have found an error in the IB. For "Loop the Loop":
"Answer key 1: For each marked row, enter the number of cells of the longest horizontally connected group of
cells inside the loop in that row. For the example, answer key is 945"
BUT the longest INSIDE the loop for the second selected row is 3... the 4 cells are outside the loop.

Or have I misunderstood and it means the longest horizontal stretch (regardless of whether inside or outside the loop)?


And for TAPA the answer keys appear to be reversed

Edited by reesylou 2012-01-16 6:11 AM

It is longest inside the loop (same as Double Decathlon). So 935 is the correct answer key. Updated pdf uploaded.

will there be any partial points for SAMURAI SUDOKU for solving some individual ones.
I know there is nothing indicated regarding this in IB but just to clarify it.

There is no partial points for any puzzle, including the Samurai.

While playing around with the rules of Black and White Loop, I made two puzzles which you can find on the Rätselportal: http://www.logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Raetsel/zeigen.php?id=000... and http://www.logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Raetsel/zeigen.php?id=000...

Does anyone have links to other puzzles of the type? I find it hard to get my head around.

Excellent puzzles rob. The 2nd one is really well made with lot of local and global solving. It is always interesting to start solving a loop puzzle from middle of the grid.

I had not seen this type, until Zoltan suggested that we include this type. He shared a smaller example as well (attached with this post)







Attachments
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BWL.Example.8X8.png (26KB - 8 downloads)

I haven't ever seen them online. they did feature in Breinbrekers, but haven't been in there in recent years. I thought I had a few laying around, which I had made. But the only ones I can find use 2 turns between different balls. I don't expect the puzzle to be as heavily clued as yours though. At least they weren't in Breinbrekers.

I don't expect mine to be typical at all, either. They're certainly quite different from the sample puzzle and the one above. Note that "heavily clued" is somewhat misleading, as "empty space" is often a stronger clue than a coloured circle for this type.

Some small questions/clarifications:

1) After 60 minutes has passed for a puzzle, there is absolutely no difference if I submit at 70 minutes or 7000 minutes? So I can just go to bed and submit it another day (if I eventually find the solution!). So no differences to scoring and no potential tie-breaking rules...?

2) As a consequence of that, is it possible to have more than one puzzle started at any time, and then they can be answered in any order?
For example, I could start all 10 puzzles on Saturday, look at them, submit one answer quickly for bonus points, then submit the other 9 during the week but with no time bonuses.

3) When you say the first wrong answer gets a 0.5 minute penalty, do you mean a 0.5 point penalty, or 0.5 minutes less time, or both?

and 4) If I submit wrong answer(s) for a puzzle but never submit a correct answer, will I get negative points or zero points for that puzzle overall?