Seven Samurais is now over. Results are as usual available here

deu had a perfect 7. He finished with 01:57 to spare. Several others came close, but had typos. ppeetteerr and nyuta take next 2 positions. Congratulations.

Out of 229 players, 157 players solved at least one puzzle (and 1 player was disqualified). Thank you everyone for participating.

Not very encouraging results among Indian players. Rohan, Harmeet and Prasanna take the top spots.

About partial scores : Given the nature of the answer keys, there were lots of wrong submissions. We believed that some of them are typos. So we have been bit lenient this time and awarded 80% to some entries which we thought are typos with some amount of certainty.

Thanks Andrey for all the effort you have put for the contest. Request you to share your thoughts about first contest at LMI.

ETA : deu's score is 815.63, not 815.91

Although my performance was pretty bad, I really enjoyed the interlocked puzzles; it is something like "1+1+1+1 is more than 4".

Thanks Andrey so much!

Congratulations to Hideaki, Peter and Nagata for taking the top three in this test. Thanks to all participants.
The durations seemed to be too small and after first participants I was afraid nobody could solve all puzzles. So I'm glad to see seven solvers with 28 submissions. But only Hideaki solved all puzzles in time and without mistakes.
It was my first test at LMI and I'm very impressed by Deb's efforts on holding it. He changed scoring system especially for the contest and helped me a lot in all matters. Thanks Deb very much.
I hope to repeat this experience in future and make at least one more contest here.

Yin-Yang is my favorite too. It was a first samurai which I prepared for Moscow Cup competition and it starts the idea.
My second favorite is Easy As ABCD - I had most troubles creating it. Every second clue added to the puzzle led into conflict with previous and I discovered new solving idea. Of course most clues in the final puzzles do not need for unique solutions, but puzzles so was hard enough.
Fences was the most doubtful puzzle - the loop at overlapped parts seems to break rules (it even not a loop :) ). But I think example gives complete picture of the idea.

Thanks for very nice puzzles, i think that the best puzzles were Ying-yang and slitherlink (and this was totally beautiful!!!)

Congrats deu for the double win.

Nice Test as always. There seems to be mistakes in the score table, it shows 151.50 Bonus Points for me which are undoubtly false, but nevermind, they don't seem to be included in the sum.

It's not a bonus - it's a points earnad at the extra time. You submitted your answer for Easy As ABCD in 2 seconds after end. So all your Easy as ABCD points counted as extra points.

Extratime penalty is a thing which I want to discuss. In this test this penalty was relatively high so solvers should consider this extra time not as solving time but only as a time to enter answer keys. This was a vision which I thought before, but after some remarks from solvers I see the other idea - extra time could be considered as a time which allows more solvers finish the test. In this case penalty should be less then now - it should correspond in value to bonus for "before-time" solvers.
What do you think?

I definitely agree with that. I was racing against time at the end with Yin Yang and ended up not submitting it at all because I didn't see a profit, even though I solved it pretty fast as a standalone puzzle. I would definitely like to solve more puzzles in the test and if I get penalized I don't mind as long as I get some value for the solve.
Anyway, great puzzles. I got stuck for a massive time on the Fence, and after the test got over realized that the first grid itself I solved was wrong. Solved as Easy as ABCD perfectly for two grids and yet somehow managed to repeat a letter somewhere in the 3rd grid and gave it up. My favorites were Yin Yang and Star Battle, one for enjoyment level, and one for being my quickest solve by far :P

Very good puzzles Andrey. I would vote for Yin Yang and Star Battle as my favourites.
All grids had very good use of the overlapped regions, and that was what makes these samurais stand out. I had a tough time solving Fence (during and after the test)!

I look forward for another test by you :-)

Practice for "copy-paste"?

I had fun. I ended up doing better than I thought I would at the start. Fences broke me up in the beginning, so put it down after a while. My favourites were the Easy as ABCD, the Battleships and the Fences.
The Yin Yang really broke me up. I made a correct deduction, except then I made another mistake which i didn't notice. So I thought my first deduction was wrong and wondered how else it could work. Eventually realised there was no other way and solved it, but it really cost 10 minutes too long to solve.
Fences were the hardets for me. I eventually realised the main logic deduction relating to the overlapping areas in Fences, but I had already solved A and B almost completely by then.