Login Register WSPC 2017 • Schedule • Participation • Location • WSC • WPC • Contact •Search •Recent





Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November
   LMI Tests -> Monthly Sudoku and Puzzle Tests52 posts • Page 1 of 3 • 1 2 3
anurag
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-20 2:51 PM (#5999 - in reply to #5983) (#5999) Top




Posts: 136
10020
Location: India
'some cells (and not circles) will be blackened ' would have been much better.
I like fishermen at war and kropkuro..wonderful combi. but hey,whats common b/w akari and nansuke? Is the akari logic going to help fill in nansuke in
anyway, or viceversa? Or they are independent (that would be dull)..And i cant imagine finding quick openings in LITS square! I have same question about Majilin that i have about akari.Any help in progress?

Edited by anurag 2011-11-20 2:53 PM
Administrator
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-20 3:04 PM (#6000 - in reply to #5999) (#6000) Top


2000100050020
Location: India
anurag - 2011-11-20 2:51 PM

'some cells (and not circles) will be blackened ' would have been much better.

Better in what sense?
anurag
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-20 3:14 PM (#6001 - in reply to #5957) (#6001) Top




Posts: 136
10020
Location: India
better in making sense to the contestant.It was confusing.
anurag
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-20 3:14 PM (#6002 - in reply to #5957) (#6002) Top




Posts: 136
10020
Location: India
better in making sense to the contestant.It was confusing.
ch1983
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-20 7:26 PM (#6003 - in reply to #5957) (#6003) Top




Posts: 3

Location: Germany
Hi, thanks for this great test.
I liked the puzzles a lot, although for the first time I had problems with the solution code: I really had to search for the very hiding letters of the alphabet (in Yajilin for example my loop goes once straight over the letter so that it got invisible). And to be able to read the Kakuro-clues I had to install another printer.
Nevertheless a very good test.
yureklis
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-20 7:47 PM (#6004 - in reply to #6003) (#6004) Top


CTC & TVC Author & Organizer

Posts: 183
10020202020
Location: Turkey
Great test Tawan. Your puzzle are really enjoyable, and the idea is very elegant! Thanks for your puzzles!
prasanna16391
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-20 10:33 PM (#6005 - in reply to #5957) (#6005) Top


2021 World Sudoku+Puzzle Convention Organizer

Posts: 1780
100050010010020202020
Location: India
Really nice test. My only problem is that I solve on computer using paint and stuff, so in the fusion ones I had to use two different tools and keep switching, which put me in a state of confusion throughout the test :P Hopefully I'll get a printer soon...
motris
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-20 11:57 PM (#6006 - in reply to #5957) (#6006) Top




Posts: 199
10020202020
Location: United States
Beautiful puzzles (the kind of twisted classics I wish the WPC had).

Horrible answer entry mechanisms. I had to look back at the pdf in almost all cases where gray letters were used.
Akuma21
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-21 3:30 AM (#6008 - in reply to #5957) (#6008) Top




Posts: 22
20
Location: ITALY
Very nice test!
Can someone send me the entire solution of Searchdoku?
StGeorge
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-21 3:31 AM (#6009 - in reply to #6006) (#6009) Top




Posts: 11

Location: Bulgaria
motris - 2011-11-20 8:57 PM
Horrible answer entry mechanisms. I had to look back at the pdf in almost all cases where gray letters were used.


I had the same problem. I thought it was only an issue with my printer, but apparently I wasn't alone.

I only managed to solve 10 puzzles (got stuck on the majilin...) but they were very good. A lot of them combined types that I'm better at with ones I can barely do at all, which was a turnoff for the test because I didn't have time to practise, but with my rate of solving I didn't even get to them.

Good test, thank you.
debmohanty
Subject: RE: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-21 6:20 AM (#6011 - in reply to #5957) (#6011) Top



1000500100100100202020
Location: India
No more participants at this time. But the score page is not frozen yet. As many players mentioned, answer keys were problematic. So we need some extra time to revisit all wrong submissions. I expect that the complete results will be out in 3 hours from now.
debmohanty
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-21 6:23 AM (#6012 - in reply to #6008) (#6012) Top



1000500100100100202020
Location: India
Akuma21 - 2011-11-21 3:30 AM

Very nice test!
Can someone send me the entire solution of Searchdoku?
Please check attachment.



(SearchDoku.png)



Attachments
----------------
Attachments SearchDoku.png (80KB - 3 downloads)
motris
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-21 6:38 AM (#6013 - in reply to #5957) (#6013) Top




Posts: 199
10020202020
Location: United States
You've missed marking the key word BADMINTON which, without E's and not outside the grid, needs to be one of the sudoku diagonals. The all E exterior made for a very interesting puzzle; one of my favorites on this test.
debmohanty
Subject: RE: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-21 8:56 AM (#6014 - in reply to #5957) (#6014) Top



1000500100100100202020
Location: India
Yes, I missed marking BADMINTON

Tawan has sent me the solution booklet, but this puzzle is missing there. This image is from my solving, and hence the missing line on BADMINTON.

Bit of story there. The original SearchDoku was too cumbersome and less interesting. I was discussing with Tawan to drop the puzzle from the set (the set as a whole looked very difficult to me even otherwise). But then Tawan came up with this very interesting puzzle within couple of hours, and there was no way we were excluding the new one. This one uses both the puzzles (Word Search and Sudoku) nicely. There is a clear logical path as motris shared. One of my favorites along with Anglers and Fishermen at War.

My only concern was (/is) language-neutrality of this puzzle. Just for completeness, the original puzzle used Swiss words.
debmohanty
Subject: RE: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-21 9:33 AM (#6015 - in reply to #5957) (#6015) Top



1000500100100100202020
Location: India
Detailed results now available at - http://logicmastersindia.com/M201111P/score.asp

motris is one only player to have solved all 24 puzzles and he takes the first position. MellowMelon and xevs both have solved 22, they take the next two positions. The scores are very close after that.

243 players (a whopping 52 from the USA) participated in this test, and 194 players have got non zero scores. Thank you everyone for participating.

Thanks Tawan for an entertaining set of puzzles.
debmohanty
Subject: RE: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-21 9:41 AM (#6016 - in reply to #5957) (#6016) Top



1000500100100100202020
Location: India
About answer key issues - The most apparent problem was the loop puzzles in Set7. With light grey letters being overwritten by the loop, many players missed couple of letters, especially I and J. As it can be seen from the score page, there are lot of manual overrides for these 3 puzzles.

I don't think the answer key itself was a problem there. We had used it rather successfully in 2010 Decathlon. The marking of the letters were the real culprit.
tamz29
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-21 11:03 AM (#6019 - in reply to #5957) (#6019) Top




Posts: 225
10010020
Location: Thailand
Phew, Puzzle Fusion is over.
Deb probably hears this after every test but I owe a huge thank to him for running Puzzle Fusion and spreading it across many forums. I was surprised by the number of participants since this was held very shortly after the exhausting WPC/WSC.

I’m happy to see that no puzzles broke, although several did just hours before the starting time. As Deb mentioned, the original Searchdoku had a Maori-named New Zealand Birds theme which made the grid rich in vowels and most placements were done on ‘feel’ than logic. I surprised myself at how better this one worked out.

About the disastrous answer keys, I really didn’t want to use length of line segments in row/column (in Japanese Puzzle Land) since this is very prone to guessers. I agree with Deb that the real culprit here is the faint lettering and how it is badly placed in the centre. Several people asked for claims in the Akari (namely the column 4 light bulb) that we really couldn’t give points for. Of course – that row was chose on purpose.

In all, this has been a great experience for myself and will be a huge step in improving my future in puzzle construction. I thank everyone who took their time in taking this test.

rob
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-21 1:53 PM (#6021 - in reply to #5957) (#6021) Top


Classics & Regions (PR 2016/17) Author

Posts: 170
100202020
Location: Germany
Thanks a lot for the puzzles, I had a lot of fun (and did quite well). There were a number of puzzles I could mention… The Majilin had a great logical solve, using both rule sets and their interactions. LITS2 is an interesting variation, the puzzle worked really well. I remember being happy I chose to do the Kakuro, a type I don't usually enjoy much. Most likely, there's an easier that better solvers would have spotted, but I found the way I broke into that Kakuro very satisfying.

The answer key problems have been mentioned. Probably, small thin black letters in the corners of cells would work a lot better.

One other thing: I felt that points per minute varied extremely between the puzzles. This is certainly in part because I'm better at some types, but I had the impression that even disregarding that, there was a large variance. What do other solvers think?

Cheers
Rob
Fred76
Subject: RE: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-21 4:17 PM (#6023 - in reply to #6014) (#6023) Top



Diagonal Vision Author

Posts: 337
10010010020
Location: Switzerland
debmohanty - 2011-11-21 8:56 AM

Just for completeness, the original puzzle used Swiss words.




Akuma21
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-21 7:07 PM (#6024 - in reply to #5957) (#6024) Top




Posts: 22
20
Location: ITALY
Thanks Deb! I had illumation about the word badminton only yesterday evening before sleeping! :)
motris
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-21 9:13 PM (#6025 - in reply to #6021) (#6025) Top




Posts: 199
10020202020
Location: United States
rob - 2011-11-21 12:53 AM
One other thing: I felt that points per minute varied extremely between the puzzles. This is certainly in part because I'm better at some types, but I had the impression that even disregarding that, there was a large variance. What do other solvers think?

Cheers
Rob


I noticed this some during the test, after thinking I'd sunk way too much time into the Kakuro/Kropki part to finish, but I did other parts much faster to get back to the right pace. Still, my last two puzzles - the Nansuke and the Akasuke felt the hardest of the whole set and took me almost 25 minutes. I'm not surprised those are the puzzles a lot of the 22/24 finished solvers had left to go.

I think this is my breakdown by section based on my answer test timing and knowing I worked some on LITS^2 before skipping and coming back:

Section 1 - 80 points - 22:52 or 3.5 points per minute
Section 2 - 55 points - 10:48 or 5.1 points per minute
Section 3 - 75 points - 25:13 or 3.0 points per minute
Section 4 - 55 points - 16:17 or 3.4 points per minute
Section 5 - 50 points - 7:10 or 6.9 points per minute
Section 6 - 55 points - 12:43 or 4.3 points per minute
Section 7 - 65 points - 11:10 or 5.8 points per minute
Section 8 - 60 points - 11:45 or 5.1 points per minute

I didn't break out specific puzzles and I'm sure the Anglers (48 seconds for 12 points per minute) and Masyu (except for answer entry, also about 1 minute) were my highest value solves but you can see the Tapa/Minesweeper was the easiest section and Akari/Nansuke was the hardest section for me with about 2.3x difference in point value. Because some puzzles rewarded intuition more than logic, having such variance is not particularly unusual although I might have changed the value of some puzzles. Only one solver did the Akasuke (uvo's wrong answer is close though), so I might venture that at least that puzzle was harder than just a 40 given the really low success rate.
RJH0723
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-22 1:29 AM (#6026 - in reply to #5957) (#6026) Top




Posts: 13

Location: United States
Does anyone know the break in for the Akasuke?
Para
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-22 2:25 AM (#6027 - in reply to #5957) (#6027) Top




Posts: 315
100100100
Location: The Netherlands
Well, next time I´m going to make sure my printer is working properly. Most my puzzles missed a grid. I couldn´t see any of the kropki circles or futoshiki symbols.
I managed to solve enough considering the missing grids. The fisherman at war was really fun and reminded me of the anglers/pentominos puzzle in your other test.
I also really liked the Nansuke opening, but that was as far as I got. I couldn't finish it in the test, I didn't see a way to continue past the opening.
kiwijam
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-22 7:51 AM (#6028 - in reply to #6019) (#6028) Top




Posts: 187
10020202020
Location: New Zealand
tamz29 - 2011-11-21 6:03 PM
the original Searchdoku had a Maori-named New Zealand Birds theme which made the grid rich in vowels and most placements were done on ‘feel’ than logic.


I'm all in favour of Maori-named New Zealand bird themes. Kiwis in particular come to mind...
tamz29
Subject: Re: Puzzle Fusion — LMI November Puzzle Test — 19th and 20th November @ 2011-11-22 11:59 AM (#6029 - in reply to #5957) (#6029) Top




Posts: 225
10010020
Location: Thailand
My intended break-in for Akasuke was that 2003 can only be placed in either of the two right vertical rows. Then 0103 and 1103 needs to be placed in 2 of 3 possible horizontal rows (not the two columns where 2003 could fit since that would make it impossible to fill in 2003) - and there would only be one possible combination to fit the two hanging 3s. From there, the next leap is looking at 0200, 0201 and 0202. At which point the grid would have 2 of 3 places where there's a 020X pre-determined. Afterwards, using simple Akari rules, everything should fall neatly.

After solving the centre, the Nansuke's focus was that all 5-digit numbers start with 5,7 or 9. Also to be noted is that all 5-digit numbers starting with 7 has 8 as their third digit. Knowing this, simple logic is enough to finish Nansuke.

With the Searchdoku, after solving the Wordsearch part of the puzzle, you will notice BADMINTON is missing and since the sudoku grid is surrounded by E's, the BADMINTON (with two Ns) must be placed diagonally. Using crossings from the Wordsearch (especially TEAMMATE), the puzzle simply becomes a sudoku.

The 6 highest rated puzzles were all from the fused types, which is great news to me, because that means the fusion was enjoyed by the solvers.
Thank you once again.
52 posts • Page 1 of 3 • 1 2 3
Jump to forum :
Search this forum
Printer friendly version