Thank you for the very fun and challenging set of puzzles. I am always impressed by the cleverness shown by the authors, and this is certainly no different. I will single out the Greater-Than Sudoku among many worthy choices -- it was amazing in its construction!

As a Japanese, I'm proud that they provided an excellent set of puzzles!

BTW, I'd like to know the influence of difference in answer key: between this style (only 4 digits) and usual one (all digits of particular row/column).
Is there any hint from the result?

Thank you everyone for participating. 235 players participated, out of which 180 got non-zero scores. Congratulations to Thomas Snyder (all 16 puzzles, 95:54), Kota Morinishi (15 puzzles, 95:32), Tiit Vunk (15 puzzles, 110:20) and Jan Novotny (15 puzzles, 119:36) for topping this test. Kota was the fastest, but he made a mistake in one puzzle.

Here are some statistics:
- Most solved puzzle: (C1) Classic Sudoku was solved by 149 players.
- Least solved puzzle: (I10) Sum of Them was solved by 14 players.
- Puzzle with highest rating: (I8) Quad max-min has 9.33 points.
- Puzzle with lowest rating: (I2) Odd Labyrinth has 7.40 points.
- Most common wrong answer: 11 competitors sent "3619" in (I9) Coordinates Sudoku. 2 players missed bonus points by that.

I hope everyone enjoyed the test. Which was the winner for you, Classics or Innovatives?

I allways prefer to solve (and also create) new and interesting puzzles more than Classic puzzles (which I sometimes find boring). But this was not the case in this test. Authors did great job with Classics puzzles here so I can say the Classics were as excellent as Innovatives in the test. My favourite was Killer - really great "10 stars" puzzle.Thanks for the test!

Solutions booklet - Link

Now when the contest is over..can some one please post the step by step solution to Sum of Them
I could not even get a start

The start (as far as I know) is the fact that 1 can never be in a cell with a square, and a 2 can be in such a cell only at the edges of the box, because it'd have to have 2 1s diagonally adjacent around it to make it work. This all helps in the top left box to get that 1 and 2 can't be in R1C2 and R2C1, so 3 has to be in one of them, because otherwise you can't have the sum of 2 numbers <9. So 3 is in R2C1, with 1 and 2 around it, and R1C1 has to be either 8 or 9 with R1C2 being 5 or 6. For the sum rule, it has to be 6, with 1 at R2C2 and 5 at R1C3. Similar stuff should take you through it.

Here's another way to piece together the top left box in that puzzle. The key insight is that because R1C1-3 and R2C1 are all boxed cells crammed into a corner, each is the sum of the number below and the number to the right. This tells you that R1C1 = R3C1 + 2*R2C2 + R1C4 + 4. Doesn't take much thinking to realize that the minimum value of the right expression is 9 and there's only one way to get it, which immediately allows you to fill R3C1 = 2, R2C2 = 1, R1C4 = 1, and the four boxed numbers in the top left.

Edited by MellowMelon 2012-08-07 11:19 PM

This is an interesting point. In the last 20 minutes I broke 3 puzzles, one of which was Quad max-min. My error came quite late in the solve, and I had 90% of the grid filled before I realised my error. It was quite a big error, and many digits in the grid were wrong, and yet when I solved the puzzle after time I compared the two grids and the digits in A, B, C & D were all correct. If I thought to opportunistically submit the key I did have during the test I'd have ended up with 23 more completely undeserved points.

Classics were my favourite, really beautiful puzzles. Innovations were also clever, but I've always thought real beauty is to be found in simplicity. The irregular was fabulous, only just surpassed by the inequality in my eyes.

(I10) Sum of Them seemed exceptionally tricky. In four careful attempts I always reached a contradiction. Attempt 5 finally solved it.

Many great puzzles. The Innovations are delightful -- I especially liked Coordinates. Inequality seems quite hard (still working on it).

I request the authors to make another test next week.

The INNOVATIVE's were just superb i loved it. I found Classic Inequality tough as i am not getting start. Also i was able to solve 50 % of total sudokus i hope i start increasing that percentage from next test.
To respected author, one fact i would like to share i found it while solving the c4 classic sudoku i got my A,B,C,D with almost 12 cells still left to be filled. So just have look at it if it helps for the next time to choose better answer keys :)

That happens to me on one or two puzzles in every test. Its very difficult to determine keys, there's bound to be a few that go here and there for a few individuals.

Hmm that is possible. as any sudoku can be solved in multiple ways. may be one of the way is such that clues(answer keys) are obtained faster. :p

Are there other samples of these Innovatives available anywhere? (besides the Even Sandwich on p.1 of this thread). Hungry for more! :)

The Solution booklet also has a puzzle history (where the puzzle appeared first time) - but there are no links.

Well, it's only one puzzle, but today's 'friday-noon-puzzle' is an Even Sandwich Sudoku. You can find it here.

Enjoy!

I liked most of the innovatives in this test, and it's very likely that I will make some of the other variants in the future as well. I will keep you all informed about it.

Nice one, quite easy but really pleasant to solve; thank you Richard. Now waiting for the other puzzles you just promised to make!

As promised earlier, I have made a few puzzles that were inspired by this nice sudoku test. Two of my favorite puzzles (Search nine sudoku and Rank sudoku) are already included in the sudoku-advent-calender at Logic Masters Germany, two others (Clones and Between) will appear soon.
You can read more about the advent calender and links to the puzzles in another thread in this forum.