I'm having an interesting experience. Decided to start with the ones marked easy, took too long on l-t-l, broke the small regions and ran out of time on my second go and I'm the fastest in tapa for now. Not bad on b&w either. Wonderful puzzles so far :) Thanks everyone for the fun!

Curious question. I've been a lurker here doing puzzles after the fact and decided to register to try these ones during the contest. However, I have clicked to start a puzzle that I have no knowledge of and want to cancel and go to a different puzzle (namely the Braille Word Search, I accidentally started the Star Battle puzzle instead not knowing the mouseclick in that spot would start it). There seems to be no way to cancel; I either submit the correct solution or the timer is eternal. Does it end after a period of time has passed? Can the puzzle be cancelled (I won't be solving it, and looking at it now can't even place the first star)?

EDIT: Reading above this post, I see I must wait an hour. I had already tried what I knew would be a wrong submission hoping it would mark the puzzle "complete" but - obviously - it didn't. Is there any way to not have this submission count as a penalty since this puzzle was started by accident? Or are penalties only for individual puzzles - i.e. you lose 10 out of the 250 points, for example, for each wrong solution submitted for that puzzle only?

Cyclone


Edited by Cyclone 2012-01-22 5:09 AM

You can start next puzzle now. Refresh the submission page first.

Edited by debmohanty 2012-01-22 5:14 AM

Samurai Sudoku is now available.

I guess you'll get a penalty for something only if you submit it correctly in the end.

nice-Puzzles.However-I'm-wondering-why-I'didn't-get-points-for-the-last-puzzle-even-after-submitting-it-correctly(it-showed-up-as-correctly-completed).Is-there-any-time-restrictions-which-I'm-not-aware-of?

Edited by harmeet 2012-01-22 6:17 PM

Harmeet, Richard, Swaroop, (and others who submitted in last 2 hours),
The score page is now updated to have your latest submission counted.

Graffiti Snake is now available.

Really fun test concept and a lot of very nice (large, but not very hard) puzzles. Thanks to all the authors and for Deb for having the grand concept.

Congratulations to Psyho and motris, who are the first two competitors to solve all 10 puzzles apart from our live testers.

ETA : nyoroppyi is the 3rd competitor to solve all.

Edited by debmohanty 2012-01-23 11:58 AM

I solved my kakuro too, honest I did, that brings me up to 10 as well! ;)

A small clarification about the score page - The score page displays partial score.
That means you can see the puzzles that you have solved. You can not see others' timings for puzzles you haven't solved. This has several implications, most importantly, the rank you see is not your final rank, even if you stop solving.

Thanks to all involved with this. I found it very enjoyable.
Just a quick question. Now that I've finished I can see a "w" against one of my scores and against those of other people who have finished. Is this supposed to represent the worst puzzle? If so it is not against my worst time or that of others.

I should perhaps look at the IB and find a second puzzle that I could perhaps solve

2706 minutes on a puzzle! All in a row, too. I'll let everyone know tomorrow if I still have a job.

Yes, "w" is worst puzzle. There was a bug and "w" was misplaced for some. It is fixed now.

We also have added a feedback tab to the score page.

Is there a source for Different Neighbors puzzles that can be practiced? The instructions refer to IPC 2010 (Indian Puzzle Championship 2010), but there are no Different Neighbors puzzles there (just "Box", with some similarities but also big differences). Thanks.

Edited by PuzzleScott 2012-01-25 8:59 AM

Check

http://forsmarts.com/pdf/fpb_04.pdf
http://diogen.h1.ru/cgi-bin/contest/result.pl?id=13


Also see other forum thread

Actually issue 5 ( http://forsmarts.com/pdf/fpb_05.pdf ) contains the giant version of Different Neighbours, which could be a better practice in this case :)

Edited by forsmarts 2012-01-25 6:19 PM

In the instructions, it says the puzzles are "large, not hard". That, I can accept. However, when I (an average solver) need over 2 hours to do a puzzle, with no indication that amount of time might be needed, that's something to be avoided in future. I wouldn't normally start a 2 hour contest at 11:45pm, but expecting a 30-45 minute puzzle, it didn't seem unreasonable at the time.

Don't get me wrong, the puzzles are all (well, mostly) brilliant, so thanks to you and the authors for providing this mind food :)

I no-one is confusing PuzzleScot with PuzzleScott!

There is no way to get confused, thanks to your signature

Thanks for your input on specifying the expected solving time for puzzles. We certainly didn't think about it. I'm not exactly sure how we want to implement it if/when we do Marathon2. But I realize it will be very helpful to participants.

A possible solution could be to have an 'average solver' among your testers. (I'm happy to offer my services)
If the average solver is taking over 60 minutes of concentrated effort, it's probably too hard, and needs more clues to simplify a little.
Likewise, top solvers taking over 30 minutes is a sufficient clue too.

Once you realise you're not going to make it in under 60 minutes, you can put the puzzle away and solve it the next day. So I don't really think the harder puzzles are a problem. Though I admit I also expected to have a better chance at solving the puzzles that were labeled "hard" in under one hour.

To be embarrassingly honest, I didn't read all the instructions about scoring before I started! Hence my Kakuro/Sudoku being abandoned and returned to without pressure. I had naively assumed it was the total solve time that would be counted, like in all other contests.