Thanks Nikola, that makes a sense.

I'm really looking forward to this kind of test; it's a chance in a million for me to beat Hideaki and Kota

Edited by Yuhei Kusui 2012-11-15 5:46 PM

Links to lot of practice materials from Bram's blog and following Serkan's comment - http://puzzleparasite.blogspot.in/2012/11/puzzle-139-abc-decoder.ht...

Well my goal of leading the test at one point worked by taking it right at the start. I had fun. I enjoyed what I managed to solve.

So I'm not used to word puzzles -_-

Nice test and tribute to WPC 2012.

3 letters away from the word search (last puzzle) with one minute to go... and I discover after the test that my missing letter set was wrong, which explains why I couldn't finish it. Ouch. And for what is probably my new greatest oops in puzzle competitions, I missed the word stairs because I forgot to put my own name in.

Having the same word set for all puzzles was a nice touch, even ignoring that my name was in it. Meant that you could start picking up speed in the middle of the test as you got more used to the quirks of that particular word bank. Word Nurikabe for example seemed impossible when I tried it at the beginning, then not all that hard when I came back to it at the end.

Certainly a nice test, a good mixture of intuitive word placement thinking and some more working puzzles. Even if my name was "included". :D Was surprising to fail on the Scrabble even after spending a few minutes on it - am not used to that. Great stuff.

What a Good test! Nikola, Great Job!
But, I had a sad feeling because my place at WPC was 11th. If I had performed little better, my name would have been listed in the puzzles...

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	A bit skewed
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Just right
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

am I the only one which has replied to this questionaire?

Edited by forcolin 2012-11-18 6:41 PM

I believe you're the only one who's posted it on the forum so far. I'm sure others have voted.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Very skewed
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Too many hard puzzles
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Below Average
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Way too many puzzles (too little time)
How fair do you think the rankings were?	Most players got scores that did not reflect their performance
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

Should we say "first one", and "not only one"?

"so far"

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	A bit skewed
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	A bit hard
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	A bit too many puzzles
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

I had mixed emotions leading up to this one. I don't really like Word Puzzles and I know they're easily my biggest weakness. On the other hand, I usually like Nikola's puzzles, so was curious to see what he can do with these.

My performance shows emphatically how bad I am at these. But I did enjoy them at my own pace and solving the rest later. I especially liked Hidden Words and Word Connections. They both took me a lot of time, but were the most enjoyable logically. Word Nurikabe was a bit too difficult in my opinion. The rest were all nice.

Thanks for the test, some much needed Word Puzzle practice.

re: the questionnaire. I was a bit confused by the novelty. perhaps did not pay attention to other forum posts. I found the puzzle very integrated to each other and the idea of having always the same names very intriguing. I can understand the frustration of Kota.
I have solved now all the puzzles i did not solve in the competition and can appreciate their quality. Only one thing could be improved, the distribution of the points. The Wordsearch was not difficult but very time consuming and should have paid more than 12 points; on the other hand the nurikabe was paying very generously because, once gone through the difficult step (and the puzzle has only one) the solution is immediate; definitively not the most difficult puzzle of the set as the 24 points seem to suggest.

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	A bit skewed
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	Just right
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	A bit too many puzzles
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	Fairly balanced
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	A bit hard
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Fairly Nice
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	A bit too many puzzles
How fair do you think the rankings were?	Most players got the score they deserved
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

I think Nikola was very happy with JANA instead of KOTA though, especially in the no repeat genres as it gave that nice 9 A's.

The Word Stairs puzzle does not have a unique solution... thirty-six possible answers, by my count. Just wondering if anyone else saw this problem?

...now up to 42 solutions!?!

...132 solutions, and that's my final answer :)

Did you catch the rule about letters not being allowed to repeat in a row/column?

How balanced do you think the puzzle types of this test were?	A bit skewed
What was your opinion of the distribution of easy/hard puzzles?	A bit hard
What did you think about the puzzle quality of the test?	Very nice
What was your opinion about the answer key extraction?	Mostly perfect answer keys
How did you feel about the length / time limit for this test?	Way too many puzzles (too little time)
How fair do you think the rankings were?	Many players got scores that did not reflect their performance
What was your opinion of the booklet formatting and printing?	Just right

That sounds like a USPC counting puzzle

I'm not very confident with word puzzles normally (I leave them until last in most tests), so I thought I'd be bad at this, but I still wanted to compete. So I unclicked the 'include in ratings' box so it wouldn't matter if I was awful.
But after finishing I see this is likely to be my best result yet! How confusing :-) Now I definitely wish I hadn't played with that checkbox! Perhaps all the puzzles I did last month had a positive effect after all.

I think it is necessary to spot that there are 9 "A"s for Word Labyrinth and Snails Nest, and in Nurikabe I noticed that the E could not be HIDEAKI, because if it was you could write the name backwards IKAEDIH and get a different solution.

Thanks Nikola!