Don't think we ever really decided if there is such a length restriction. That will be a nonissue on the test.

The snake has "a head and a tail". Technically it would be of length at least 2. But I'm sure the authors won't make such joke puzzles ( http://kitkatksun48.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/fillomino-snake/ ) :P

Thanks for the excellent puzzles. This is up there with my favorite tests of the year. The Nonconsecutive, No Rectangles, Skyscraper were all superb. I unfortunately broke both Liars towards the end and couldn't get any submission in. I dunno about others, but at least with Liars I find paint far less error prone, and I solved both Liars fairly easily on paint later. Its difficult to mark the digits as true or false and then write over them on paper, compared to simple colour-coding in paint.

I'd love it if this Fillomino contest became traditional like the TVC. There seems to be a lot more ways to experiment with this puzzle.

The only thing I personally don't understand is that the penalty stands for entering the key in the wrong puzzle,etc. Not to sound bitter but to get a penalty for a puzzle I didn't even actually submit the answer to during the test is a bit harsh. Instant Grading is a nice way to show typos and such, but any reason why this time the penalty stays for these errors unrelated to puzzle solving?

And I second that.

How do we enter multi-digit answers? Eg: I am getting 10 as one of the 'digits' in a circle, but cant submit the solution since the total 'digits' is greater than 8. Could be a wrong solve from me, maybe.

@lenson, enter the unit digit (right most digit) in such cases
so 0 for 10, 1 for 11, 2 for 12, 3 for 13, so on ....

Enter only the last digit, as per the answer key instructions. A 10 should be entered as 0.
EDIT: Beaten :O

Prasanna: The basic rationale is that the warning about no manual entry correction was stated up front. Those who account for that and take the extra time to check the little things like that lose time in comparison to people who make small goofs and get forgiven for them later.

Edited by MellowMelon 2012-10-27 12:16 PM

Thanks for a really fun test! After enjoying FF1 so much last year, I made sure to give this one a whirl, and it certainly didn't disappoint.

As a merely sub-superhuman solver, I was happy to put away all the 6-point-and under puzzles (except Classic 4), and it was a thrilling finish to successfully crack the 'splurge' hard puzzle I picked to focus my last 15 minutes on, Walls (Bottom). Just couldn't resist, that empty grid of tetrominoes screamed "I'll be your favorite!", and they were right.

Like FF1, I look forward to working through the remaining gems in a more relaxed state over the next few days. Congrats Grant and Palmer, and thanks again!

Well, my opinion is that that gets penalized enough if you just don't award the points. Now say, someone puts X puzzle's key in Y's entry. If the person doesn't get points for X, then thats enough, and if it does later get changed, that means the solver took the time to change it anyway.

Anyway, I know it was mentioned up front, I'm not asking for a change, I just wanted to know why thats the case.

For Fillomino Skyscrapers

I made for OAPC 9, you can find here: http://oapc.wpc2009.org/archive.php?id=49

Also you can see: http://www.sachsentext.de/en/taxonomy/term/160

Thanks for the test. Really enjoyed walls, nonconsecutive, sum, and the last classic.

Pretty happy with how I did, although I'm not sure how I managed to break 5 puzzles (which were luckily all quite easy to fix.) -10.2 points is a lot...

Amazing puzzles in this. I'm EXTREMELY satisfied with my performance, considering my sub-400 rating. My favorites would be Classic 4, Hard Nonconsecutive(but I broke it), the Sum, and the Hard Walls (YAY http://kitkatksun48.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/fillomino-wall/).

Amazing test. Hard walls and hard liar were my favorites, though just about everything was great. Thanks for all the puzzles.

Amazing puzzles. I should have interpreted the penalty warning as "your final score is multiplied by (100 - 2 * penalties)%" instead of "the puzzle's score is multiplied by (100 - 2 * penalties)%" before I decided to try submitting (intentionally) an incorrect answer (and costing me 1.8 points) :P Enjoyed bottom Nonconsecutive the most, with bottom Skyscrapers placing a close second.

Also there is something fishy. kumara answered a 6-point puzzle within 7 seconds. Did kumara hack the puzzle booklet or something? The puzzle booklet's password has entropy of 64 bits anyway, so... (Sorry, couldn't resist putting the xkcd reference :P )

Edited by chaotic_iak 2012-10-28 3:51 PM

We already have figured this out. It is simple case of having multiple userids, so kumara will be disqualified (not for the first time, unfortunately)

I was planning to give this test a skip after taking part in sudoku cup earlier...but i am happy that i managed to scrape in just enough time to take this test...loved the snake fillomino very much....puzzles are meant to be solved for fun and i cant think of a better example than snake fillomino as the paragon of fun for this test...and skyscrapers fillomino was good too...clean bowled though seeing the second skyscraper fillomino..i wonder how people even start doing such fillominoes without a number and still manage to complete it in a decent time...would love a walkthrough this time for the second skyscraper fillomino...overall a CLASSY monthly test!!!!!Great work melon and grant!!!

Great puzzles, thanks to both authors. I think all my WPC training has my brain humming along nicely now.

But who is this "sai" who put in an unbelievable world-champion-like performance on their first ever test...? Or is it someone that competes under a different name usually?

Well, we have exactly same thoughts ever since the test started (because sai was the first official competitor). It will be nice if sai fills up his/her real name.

I don't understand who sai is though I'm a Japanese...

This is the great set! There are many interesting puzzles!
But, the grids of PB are too small to write numbers in.
I hope the size of grids is bigger in the next FF!

As best we can tell, sai is the same as gorogoro from crocopuzzle and formerly went by Sphinx at nikoli.com. Given his track record, we're treating the performance as legitimate.

We'll think about making the grids larger next time, but it's hard to do so without doubling the page count. I made the grids as large as they could be while still making all the formatting/positioning work.

Impressive performance, then! There are no Fillomino puzzles on nikoli.com, and the ones on croco-puzzle, based on a sample size of three specimens, are mostly artless, albeit more likely to contain implied polyominoes than the ones generated by Tatham's applet. As a Japanese person subscribed to nikoli.com, it is imaginable that sai solves many artful Fillomino puzzles in print in Nikoli's beautiful publications, and has developed killer Fillomino skills as a result. :)

Fantastic test! I loved the hard Walls, and I was literally laughing out loud while solving the sum from all the cute combinations and the lovely "impenetrable sum walls". The No Rectangles were lots of fun too.

I agree with Kota and would love to see bigger grids, even if it means the larger page count, especially for things like Liar that seem to require more notetaking (at least for me).

I also found the darkness of the circles to be a bit obstructing to my eye; I had to keep reminding myself that polyominoes could cross the circles.

I look forward to spending some time later to finish the remaining puzzles -- especially the second snake, which I "proved" was unsolvable at least two or three times, as I kept coming back to it hoping I'd see something else after doing one or two other puzzles. I'm sure I'll be very embarrassed when I see how it's supposed to work!

Quick note: The frequency of misplaced submissions surprised us. In hindsight, the fact that the answer key format is the same for almost every puzzle on the test probably doesn't make things any easier. We have now decided to credit these answers. At this point we believe all such answers, claimed or not, have been appropriately dealt with now.

With no more participants now, Fillomino Fillia 2 is officially over.
Password removed from puzzle booklet.

ETA: For the record, the password was fOxyaNIMaljOinsyeLLowIshFruit

Fillomino-fillia 2 is now over. Thanks everyone for your participation in the test. We hope you enjoyed the puzzles, those you solved during the time and those you did not. 222 players participated, with about 75% of them submitting puzzles.

Congratulations to EKBM, sai, and deu for topping Fillomino-fillia 2 by finishing in 77, 85, and 101 minutes respectively. Very impressive performances from all 3 of them. After a number of impressive runs in past tests where time bonus got lost to errors, EKBM's win here is well-deserved. Also worth mentioning are uvo, xevs, S_Aoki, and Kota, the other players that managed to solve all 18 puzzles. Japan had a very good showing on this test (well, it is Fillomino).

Other players worth mentioning are tamz29, Prasanna16391, and swaroop2011, who participated in FF1 last year and dramatically improved on that performance for FF2.

Amidst other discussions like your favorite puzzles, one thing we are interested in hearing from players is your opinion of the grading, including the penalty amount and the stricter manual grading compared to most tests. Any feedback on this would be appreciated.