Personnaly, I prefer horizontal presentation of twin grids. That being said, I don't think that it makes a lot of difference for me, and it'll not bother me if the twins are presented vertically, as Richard and I made for the previous tests.
The points are:
*I think for online players grids will be presented horizontally (because of monitor's size). The question is: Should it be perfectly the same between online and paper players? or knowing that it's not the same, each player can chose the way he solve this particularly grid (if he prefer horizontally, he can solve it online)?
*The second question I've asked to myself was the printing issues. With different paper orientations on the pdf file, knowing the vagaries of the computer science: with a huge amount of different printers and drivers and a lot of different "pdf reader" software, I feared that someone could have a printing issue due to this fact. That's why we chose a vertical presentation of the twins for the last test (Technically, it's not difficult to have different page orientation with OpenOffice).

Fred

Since it doesn't take much to compile/print an extra page, I guess we can just keep both presentations in the PDF and let the player choose?

Of course this will mostly mean in my case that I'll never be sure of which one to choose and end up leaving it entirely...

Personnally I prefer only one page and use scissors to put the grids as I want ( vertically, horizontally, diagonally .....)

I believe that I am not the only person who use pencil marks during solving. The cells and grids seem to be too small and I am not able to write down all I want. For now, I rewrote the training puzzles, but it took me 15 minutes, so in such case I will be not interesting in taking part this weekend. Is it possible to make the grids larger and sharper?
Thanks a lot.

The actual test puzzle will be bigger with 1 puzzle in every page. Since this was the IB, I have put 2 puzzles on each page.

Rishi

Thank You. That will be great. Looking forward to the puzzles.

Instructions in Chinese : http://www.sudokufans.org.cn/forums/topic/413-

This is a post to inform you all that there has been a change in the title of the test. People felt that the earlier title was bringing up images of an unsavoury event of the past. Our intention was not to hurt anyone's sentiments and after discussions with fellow solvers across the world, we decided to change the title.
Our focus and passions are all towards puzzles and we intend to keep it that way.

Appreciate the inputs of Tom C, David Millar and Jason Z on this.

Rishi

If the above link doesn't work, here is the exact link

Another "5 still alive" with the rule "Digits cannot repeat inside a cage" for your training (quite different style than the first one):







Attachments
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5stillalive2.png (12KB - 6 downloads)

It seems like 8 and 3 are still alive too:

http://www.logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Raetsel/zeigen.php?id=000...
http://www.logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Raetsel/zeigen.php?id=000...

Hope it's not too far away from the original theme, but there's some specific logic which is the same, and I don't think there are many examples out there for this type.

(Puzzles by Richard Stolk in the Puzzle-Portal of Logic Masters Germany.)

Both puzzles were specialties, and inspired by the one of the fivefold sudoku test.
Sometimes a 'theme' can be a very simple digit...
The first one I made was for the 3rd anniversary of the puzzle portal in Germany, and the second was a bit too hard for the recent German sudoku championship.
Maybe they will help in preparation for this killer-test. The way to think yourself into the puzzle might be the same...

If the instructions are in German, simply click on the english flag on top-right of the screen.

Hey guys I've seen the 0-8 sudoku before but haven't understood the variation - is the purpose simply to throw people off their usual killer sudoku rhythm? Can't you just add one digit per cell to each cage and treat it as a normal killer?

Looking forward to the test

Yes, and yes.

I don't think it is a variation either, just an attempt at a paradigm shift that is unfortunately more detrimental to online solvers than paper solvers who can "fix" the puzzle. Just be sure to convert back to 0-8 before submitting the answer.

Edited by motris 2012-04-14 12:45 AM

If you do that remember to subtract 1 from every digit for the answer key.

The Killer from the spring sudoku test and the one I made were both zero killers (unclued areas) and had clear cage sum themes. So maybe it's another similar gimmick.

I at first was thinking the greater than killer would have the symbols be between cages (like on killersudokuonline.com) and not between cells.

Hmm... results page isn't showing that anybody has submitted anything, even though people have finished the test, and have actually submitted answers.

Deb will be setting that right soon..

Phew, just managed to submit my answers in time.

It was a little bit confusing that the Surprise Killer wasn't named that in the booklet but is named that on the answer key page. It took me a little while to realise the name didn't match the name on the answer key page. But I had actually switched answer pages a few times looking for the right place to put in the answer key.



It's to increase tension.

I think it has some old script remembered as it also already shows ratings before I entered them.



Edited by Para 2012-04-15 4:19 AM

Phew, just managed to submit my answers in time.

It was a little bit confusing that the Surprise Killer wasn't named that in the booklet but is named that on the answer key page. It took me a little while to realise the name didn't match the name on the answer key page. But I had actually switched answer pages a few times looking for the right place to put in the answer key.

I just copy/pasted as I had exactly the same experience. Para I owe you a beer for the copyright
Stefano

I think I noticed a typo on the Untouch submission form: the online form says to submit row 5 and row 6 but the arrows on the puzzle say to submit row 5 and column 6.

Thank you for the entertaining set, Rishi. You took a good idea and made it great with many clever variants. Good work!

Thanks Jason!

Thanks Rishi for the great set of puzzles created by you. I really enjoyed it participating in this.