Yes, it is three hours.

Primarily I planned to enable four hours of time because I wanted to give the chance to most of you to finish all puzzles. These sudokus are really not easy to solve and my experience from creating puzzles for dozens of contests is that the results spread the more the more difficult the puzzles are in average.

I believe only the very very best in the world (if participating) will be able to overleap 300 points by finishing within two hours.


Stefan

It looks like this tournament will contain harder sudokus than my test diagonal vision .

Having been stuck during more than 30 minutes in an official competition on a little killer (having found only 7 digits) created by Stefan Heine should perhaps scare me, but I look forward to this uncommon test.

Fred

in Irregular Navigation Killer do the cells covered by a compass have different numbers or can they repeat?

They can repeat. (They repeat in the solution to example also)

Otherwise, it would just be an extraregions sudoku (compass covers 9 cells)

On the Little Odd Even Diagonal Killer, are all the possible rectangles and circles marked?

You never know ;-)

(And you dont need to know)

No online solving this time as well. Tried to make some changes to the flash code, but the compass is creating bigger problem than birds and fishes.

any particular reason for giving examples in 6*6 grid in IB even though the actuals would be in 9*9...would have been really helpful in the actual test if the examples were 9*9 too......:-p

Well, the point of the IB, as the name suggests, is only to instruct. As long as you understand the rules it's done its job. If you want to practice Killer Sudoku, we had a Killer Variations test earlier. http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/?test=M201204S (obviously, not with the same variants, but you'll get more familiar with Killer anyway)

Edited by prasanna16391 2012-08-23 10:42 PM

And yes, there is a particular reason to this fact, which is quite obvious : preparing one set of 9x9 puzzles is already lots of work; preparing two, even if the examples are of a simpler conception, means of course that much more work.

Thank you!

Some of the contest puzzles took me more than one week of work. Another reason is that I want to give at least 100% to create the best I achieve from the variant setting. To produce an other 9x9 set for the IB would result puzzles that could not meet my claim.

One remark: In the 'Non consecutive little odd fish killer' (what a name...) you write something abaout the "main diagonals", but it isn't true at all...

Greetings to Hamburg: Jörg

It is true! :-) But in 6x6 it is not possible (I think) to create an non consecutive with not repeating numbers on the main diagonals. That is why I wrote "In the example, digits on both main diagonals may be repeated" as the last sentence in the IB.

Definitely impossible indeed, since 6x6 nonconsecutive sudokus have to obey one of these two patterns :

Superb grids. Its really difficult to set a time for difficult puzzles, because one puzzle may cost you quite a lot when you finish...

Edited by prasanna16391 2012-08-26 4:11 AM

So players who have already participated can freely post about the puzzles / difficulties / anything else about the test, and they are encouraged to do so now, without having to wait till end of the test.

fellas ...got really depressed and dejected solving these sudokus...clearly these sudokus were not meant for beginners or people who have just crossed the beginner stage..the sudokus were in a totally different level to an amateur like me...broke my head over 3-4 sudokus and eventually managed to solve just one though i partially filled the others...could not even get a look at the 41 and the 56 point sudokus...solving these types of killer sudokus makes me think that guessing is not after all a bad alternative ....all in all these sudokus looked insanely tough atleast to me...but nevertheless a good experience!!!

Great. I'll start off by saying, I enjoyed the test as far as solving goes. As for the 3 hour format, well I personally think this would've been great in a Marathon-like format. I solved 6 of the grids in 70 minutes before starting the Non Cons- Odd Fish variant, and I got stuck on that one for the remaining 100+ minutes. In between(after some 60 minutes of trying), I decided to submit the other 6, and then take a break. Got back in 5 minutes, and then completed it with 8 minutes to spare. Totally, 104 minutes.

I'm not saying it was that difficult, I got back and solved it with a fresh mind later and it is just as "easy" as the others. Its just that, out of the 7, I did 6 pretty fast and I feel like thats all been wasted due to the 7th one. I see janoslaw had a similar experience, and maybe Kota too in the middle, I don't know. If this were a single-Sudoku-submit format like Puzzle Marathon, Sylvain and Hideaki would still be at the top, but at least the gap won't be so huge for those of us who just blundered in one puzzle, as we'd still get the bonus for the rest at least. A really difficult set does that, you miss one thing and you end up staring for long spaces of time.

All in all, probably my favorite set of Killer variants ever(which is saying a lot since Killer's my favorite Sudoku variant anyway), but I'm not happy with my performance, and also don't feel like I got full value for it, even though I finished an LMI test for the first time.

@kishy72, Thanks for your feedback. I have no hesitation in agreeing that this is very tough test if you are a beginner or have limited experience with Sudokus.
At the same time, every test offers different experience and I'm glad that you enjoyed the ride.

Full marks to you for such wonderful grids..... efforts put in are clearly visible....thanks for the nice test!!!

Now coming to the difficulty of the grids.......infact non consecutive fish is very difficult compared to the points allotted to it.....atleast i could not crack it till now....i am not able to get the right start....even birds i have to try again....i wasted full 1hour in these two puzzles and achieved nothing....
But getting continuous 3 hrs spare time is really difficult atleast for me.....
But overall a wonderful test.

Neeraj -

I didn't see this till after the test but, its quite easy. Sum up all the given diagonals, and since the main diagonal is 45, all the rest of them should add up to 360. This gives you, for example, R1C1 + R9C9 = 4, because all the other diagonal clues above and below the grid add up to 356. I'm hoping you already figured out that R1C1 is 1/4 (because the 8 clue is either 3-5 or 2-6, which eliminates all those numbers for R1C1)