As there is a big majority in the poll who said that it were not better to have marked diagonal in the anti-diagonal sudoku (or it does not matter) , I'll not add them.
Sorry for the 7 people who voted for marked diagonals in the anti-diagonal sudoku, I hope you'll have fun solving this grid despite that.

Fred

I just find it handier to know any marked diagonal means different digits.

Sudoku instructions in Chinese in sudokufans.org.cn forum

Please help me out to solve this "QUEEN SUDOKU" further...
I am thereby attaching a photo of how much i was able to solve(logically).
I dont want to solve it by guess as this is the practice puzzle..






Attachments
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queen_sudoku.png (18KB - 3 downloads)

I got through this one by a complex work through of where the 9s can and can't be, first of all I'd suggest you put the 8 in R1C1, as the 5-7 pair take up the below row and the 9 in the middle omits a 9 in either of the main diagonals. After that, either just look at the 9s and think hard about the possibilities with the queen rule, or find another way and tell me as well

This grid is perhaps a bit hard for the instructions booklet. Prasanna is right, you must study the 9's and try to find a contradiction. I think it's the only possibility to crack this grid.
For example, if you try to put a 9 in R6C1, then you have a 9 in R9C3 (only option is that box), then it has to be in R8C9 (only option in this row), then in R4C7 and then you cannot place a 9 in column 8.

So you know that R6C1 is not a 9, and then it becomes easier to finish the grid.





Attachments
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queen_swaroop.png (19KB - 4 downloads)

I've just published a grid which will help you to immerse in a diagonal world smoothly, with just a classic sudoku :

http://sudokuvariante.blogspot.com/2012/03/sudoku-classique-n1.html

Fred

Hey to Prassana and Fred,
for helping it out..
Will try now and see.
It is the tough one in comparison to all other grids.
:)

grt grids....thanks Fred and Team LMI!!!

Thanks Fred for creating this great test and thanks to LMI team for hosting it flawlessly.

This is easily the longest I've stayed in the top 10 of an LMI test. That might be more to do with them being extended to Monday though

No doubt: you become a sudoku specialist !

Funnily enough my most significant steps in improving in Sudoku tests have come after I've started concentrating on puzzles. I'll just keep doing what I've been doing.

Nice to see you improving both in puzzles and Sudoku.

Not the right test to solve from back to front.... Oh well. Some impressively difficult puzzles here, thanks.

Thanks for participating.
I'll comment about the difficulty when the test will be finished. I hope you had fun nevertheless.

Fred

Thanks !
And thanks to all players for having sweated on my grids !

More comments tomorrow, I need to sleep now

Fred

Diagonal Vision is now over. Link to score page - http://logicmastersindia.com/M201203S/score.asp

Congratulations to flooser, janoslaw and TiiT for taking the top spots.

196 players participated and 154 of them submitted at least one grid correctly. The grids were tough, but it is bit surprising to see no submissions from many regular players (Rohan / Rakesh / Stefano )

Thank you everyone for participating.
And Thanks Fred for all your efforts. Will wait to hear more from you.

I did enjoy several of the individual puzzles, which showcased some pretty creative execution of some of these variations. The Pointing Evens was probably my favorite, with a 1,2,3,4 theme where each of the numbers actually mattered, not just the small ones. Many other themes were nice too even if the puzzles were less friendly.

I guess my competition complaint is that I particularly would not advertise "top players will be able to solve all sudokus earlier than 120 minutes" unless this really was a 90 minute test for people like Jan and Tiit and Kota or the winner Florian. My expectations were for some easier grids and even the first Argyle is hardly a 4-5 minute puzzle at least for me. It's possible that I'm not as good at sudoku as I think I am, or it's possible these puzzles are insanely hard. Probably some amount of both is true. But I was left with the same feeling as after Crazy Arrows of "wow, that test is insane." I loved the puzzles, but I don't know if they all belong in a competition. Maybe my views of 10 minutes is as hard as a competition sudoku should be and X- or Y-wings are as hard as a competition sudoku should get are wrong. This test certainly pushed them to the limit.

Edited by motris 2012-03-13 7:46 AM

I'll let Fred put more comments later (and Fred, correct me if I'm wrong), but from our earlier discussion, I figure that the intention was that top players should be able to solve around 100 minutes. At least the test solver's timings suggested so.

Prasanna was the first player to take the test, and looking at his score, we really thought that it is possible for top players should be able to solve better than what the final results suggest. Little did we realize that Prasanna has improved a lot in recent times.

I realize that a statement like "It is expected that top players will be able to solve all sudokus earlier than 120 minutes." look certainly misleading now. [ I had put it originally in Sudoku A/B, where I thought I should let players know that it is more like a Sprint test and not otherwise. ] May be because of that line you started solving from the end, expecting that you are anyway going to solve all sudokus. Obviously, Fred's intention was never to mislead any player.

In my case, it is not because of the toughness of the grids. I somehow did not manage to find a two hour window for the test. And since there were only a few hours left yesterday, even though I was sleepy, I started the (online) test hoping I would be able to stay awake the next couple of hours. But I did not manage it and decided to stop after hardly ten minutes - one grid (anti diagonal) was close to completion but I did not submit as I was anyway going to stop.

Congratulations to all winners and Prasanna for an impressive finish !!

Edited by rakesh_rai 2012-03-13 11:30 AM

Thanks Rakesh.

Coming to the difficulty, I tested all the grids after I completed the test. To be honest, I too expected a lot of people to finish this one, for 3 reasons.
1. I don't really think diagonals are my strength, and I'm never comfortable solving them.
2. I was about a few seconds away from submitting the Diagonal Consecutive, which means there were just 3 grids I didn't solve in the allocated time.
3. Later on, I solved the arrows one quickly enough considering its points, I took long on Argyle and Creasing but I always knew I was gonna get extremely confused on those and thats why avoided them during the test, but since they were low pointers I assumed they were easily solvable for the top players too.

Anyway, all 3 of us Deb, me and Fred expected many to finish this. I'm glad on the personal side as I've moved up, but from a tester's point of view, I apologize that I didn't really give a good evaluation of the grids, but that was not at all intentional.

Edited by prasanna16391 2012-03-13 2:18 PM

All compliments to the author. This was the best sudoku test here, premium puzzles, all of them with very nice solving path. I especially liked new outside and skyscrapers variation. Bravo Fred!

I agree with Thomas, the sentence "top players will be able to solve all sudokus earlier than 120 minutes" should not be here, nor in any other test. This should be the default. Anyway, I don't pay too much attention to it, but someone else could be frustrated. Congrats to Florian!

Nikola

Thanks, Nikola !
I'm happy that you liked the grids !