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An LMI player | An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-14 10:07 AM
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Posts: 170 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Country : Germany | rob posted @ 2015-03-14 3:42 PM
Lots of fun as usual, thanks to the other authors and the organizers. After a poor start on the Turning Fences, I'm a somewhat surprised at how well I got through. Even some of the "easy" puzzles were hard enough that I felt I was solving a bit beyond my level, which usually leads to breaking a puzzle or two. As for individual puzzles, apart from the lovely Hidoku, it's hard to rank them. They were uniformly excellent. (I chose "fairly balanced" for the puzzle types due to the lack of Sudoku or other latin square puzzles.) Regarding my contribution, I'm a bit unhappy that it turned out to be clearly too hard. By the time we figured this out, it was too late to fix. I feel like the solve is both a bit too hard in terms of individual steps, as well as too linear. Add to that it's a type that does not seem to lend itself to guessing, and it's not particularly well known. I'm most worried this will turn people off the type, if this is the first puzzle they see. Do try some easier ones, I think it's a very elegant and rich puzzle type. On that note, I'm quite sure that it is in fact suitable to large grids; it should be quite straightforward to construct a puzzle of half the difficulty. | ||||||||||||||||||
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Posts: 9 Country : Finland | UllaE posted @ 2015-03-14 3:51 PM
Thank you all who participated in creating this contest! My special thanks will go to Riad Khanmagomedov for creating the Scrabble with Loop; personally I don't like crosswords etc., but this individual puzzle had quite many names of my friends from WPC/WSC and, thus, it brought in to my mind many happy memories :) | ||||||||||||||||||
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An LMI player | An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-14 5:22 PM
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Posts: 2 Country : Slovakia | macko posted @ 2015-03-14 5:45 PM
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Posts: 315 ![]() ![]() ![]() Country : The Netherlands | Para posted @ 2015-03-14 5:53 PM My ranking is better than I expected. It all felt a bit slow today, but I guess that still matched what others did. I still felt a bit overwhelmed by the size of some puzzles, which is why I don't generally like really large puzzles. But I still enjoy competing in this. As for the puzzles. Statue Park: I had a bit of a slow start, missing an opening in the left top corner for a bit. Once I got over that step it was a smooth solve. I enjoyed it. Fillomino: This one didn't go that well. I got stuck near the end, because I made a small error. I spent about 5 minuted fixing it. When I found my error I felt like an idiot. Nurikabe: I didn't find a nice logical path for this one. I kind of just ended up trying to pack in the 6's in the bottom till it worked. I might have missed something. I knew this wasn't going to be my puzzle, too many people with experience solving large nurikabes Meandering Numbers: I enjoyed this puzzle. I never really got stuck, but it's sometimes hard to find the right region in these puzzles. Turning Fences: I hoped I had a chance to get first time on this one. But some small mistakes made me lose a few minutes. The lack of 0s and 4s, probably made it a harder puzzle. Regional Battleships: I wasn't sure what kind of puzzle this was going to be, but it turned out to be a kind of Star Battle type. The construction was pretty well done. One of my favourite solves in the set. Regional Coded Snake: I took ages to get started. I thought the opening wasn't very straight forward, but maybe I missed something. Then I broke it at the end. So I restarted. Halfway trough the solve I realised how to fix my old solution. That's why I missed out on the hour mark. I thought the combination of the regions, Snake clues and Coded clues was a bit much for a competition. I don't mind combining a lot, but not that much a fan in competition. Still a nice solve when I don't mess up. Scrabble with Loop: I think was a fun puzzle. I think throwing in a Loop into a Scrabble makes me solve it a bit faster than normal. Word puzzles aren't my thing, loop puzzles are. I had fun with all the names of puzzlers. Hidoku: I had fun solving this puzzle. I have written a few of these puzzles and know to just treat it as a path puzzle and just use the numbers as guides. In this size it's sometimes a bit hard to find the right places to makes progress, but got here in the end. I liked the long unclued path. I figured it was somewhere given the largest clued number. Summon: This was a monster. It took me about 50 minutes to find the right opening. I thought I had found something, but that in the end gave me nothing. Then when I found the right opening I still made a few mistakes, usually involving not realising a number was already in a larger area. And after that I also ignored one clue, which finally got me to the end. It was really well constructed, but maybe a bit too hard for this purpose. Over 2 hours is a bit much. Thanks to all the writers. I again enjoyed myself. | ||||||||||||||||||
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An LMI player | An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-14 6:44 PM
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Posts: 12 Country : Spain | -.ferchx.- posted @ 2015-03-14 8:41 PM
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Posts: 164 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Country : Slovakia | greenhorn posted @ 2015-03-14 11:24 PM
All the puzzles were very really nice, but most of them was too difficult. After solving all of them within 30 hours I am frustrated more than ever before. | ||||||||||||||||||
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Posts: 6 Country : ITALY | terroneamilano posted @ 2015-03-15 12:13 AM I had problems in submission of Battleship. As you can see I submitted several times in few seconds the answer. I understood only later how to send it. If it is possible, please don't consider it as a wrong submission. | ||||||||||||||||||
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Posts: 18 Country : Germany | Nola posted @ 2015-03-15 12:31 AM
Maybe the difficult puzzles should get more points than the easier ones instead of 50 points each. Yes, the opinion about difficulty is different, but the overall order was quiet correct and maybe the number of solvers can be an additional hint. | ||||||||||||||||||
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Posts: 59 ![]() ![]() Country : United States | bob posted @ 2015-03-15 4:21 AM Three favorites--scrabble with loop, meandering numbers, summon. The summon puzzle was quite hard, but it had a satisfying learning curve for me. This was a new puzzle type for me. Overall quality--simply excellent. Beautiful thematic construction and several novel puzzles/variants to me. No website or printing problems whatsoever. I found the puzzles somewhat unbalanced. In particular, the Regional Coded Snake was utterly impossible for me, far more difficult than summon (the second hardest). Normal snake puzzles are a bit of a slog, trying out various bits and pieces until all of the numbers fit. But, here there is only a code. So it is trial and error and error and error and error and error... I put in over 6 hours over three separate evenings just on this one puzzle, far more than any of the others, and far beyond when it stopped being fun. I gave up for the first time ever. Just gave up. Ugh do I detest snake puzzles. Every change I tried would break one of the complex rules, usually on the other side of the board. So it was a bit of a wash...the snake puzzle attempts detracted from some of the pleasure from solving the others. Just my opinion...some people seem to have a natural intuition of where snake segments go and where the critical spots are. I most definitely do not. The other puzzles seemed appropriately categorized although the Nurikabe seemed not so easy. Rules, points, scoring--doesn't really matter. I solve mainly for fun and for the challenge. I do respect those who can fly through these things. Thank you, authors/constructors. And thanks LMI for setting this up. I do enjoy large, hard puzzles occasionally, and they are hard to find even on the internet. Most puzzles are snacks, these are banquets. Bob | ||||||||||||||||||
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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Country : India | Administrator posted @ 2015-03-15 10:37 AM Puzzle Marathon 2015 ends tonightPlease note that the Puzzle Marathon ends at 3/16/2015 5:29:59 AM IST | 3/15/2015 11:59:59 PM GMT | ||||||||||||||||||
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Posts: 1 Country : China | PuzzlePanda posted @ 2015-03-15 3:46 PM
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An LMI player | An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-15 3:56 PM
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Posts: 29 ![]() Country : United Kingdom | Nilz posted @ 2015-03-15 8:29 PM
This is always one of my favourite contests, so thanks to everyone involved. However, I think I did prefer last year's marathon, overall. This year's puzzles just seemed slightly too difficult- in particular, I found a large jump in difficulty between the easy ones and the medium ones. There was still some nice logic in some of the hard ones though, so I probably would've enjoyed it a lot more without the pressure of the clock! | ||||||||||||||||||
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An LMI player | An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-15 8:34 PM
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Posts: 35 ![]() Country : The Netherlands | Bram28 posted @ 2015-03-15 10:40 PM
Always my favorite annual contest!!! Many thanks to the authors for the beautifully crafted puzzles! I found the puzzles on average harder than in previous marathon contexts though, so for average puzzlers it was hard to stay under an hour for any of the medium/hard puzzles. As a result, the final score and ranking was very much determined by the easy puzzles alone. | ||||||||||||||||||
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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Country : India | Administrator posted @ 2015-03-15 11:29 PM ExtensionBased on multiple requests, we are extending this contest by 24 hours. So it now ends at 11:59:59 PM GMT on 16th March.Timings on submission page shall be updated soon. | ||||||||||||||||||
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An LMI player | An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-15 11:45 PM
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Posts: 102 ![]() Country : United States | ghirsch posted @ 2015-03-16 2:28 AM Could someone give some tips on how to start the summon (once the competition is over of course)? I was very lost on that one and basically made no progress on it. | ||||||||||||||||||
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Posts: 42 ![]() ![]() Country : United States | PuzzleScott posted @ 2015-03-16 3:25 AM There should be no restriction when a puzzle can be started. Currently, when one puzzle is started, other puzzles cannot be started for some time period. The only purpose this serves is to remove options and cause annoyance for people with limited time. | ||||||||||||||||||
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Posts: 29 ![]() Country : Canada | ksun48 posted @ 2015-03-16 3:51 AM Great puzzles! Especially liked the Hidoku, Fillomino, and Statue Park. I'd say the Summon and RC Snake seemed too hard for an LMI contest, but they were fun anyway.P.S. I don't think the score sheet is sorting my 11315:21 on RC Snake correctly :P | ||||||||||||||||||
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An LMI player | An LMI player posted @ 2015-03-16 3:54 AM
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Posts: 102 ![]() Country : United States | ghirsch posted @ 2015-03-16 4:41 AM One way to fix this issue would be to have incorrect answers add time to the clock instead of just giving a penalty. That way if people really want to skip puzzles they've already started, they could just submit incorrect answers until the timer is over an hour, as opposed to waiting however long. |