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Posts: 3
Location: United States | 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! |
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2021 World Sudoku+Puzzle Convention Organizer
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Location: India | MellowMelon - 2012-10-27 12:15 PM
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.
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. |
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CTC & TVC Author & Organizer
Posts: 183
Location: Turkey | 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 |
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Posts: 5
Location: United States | 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... |
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Posts: 29
Location: Canada | 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/). |
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Posts: 16
Location: United States | Amazing test. Hard walls and hard liar were my favorites, though just about everything was great. Thanks for all the puzzles. |
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Typed Logic Author
Posts: 241
Location: Indonesia | 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
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Location: India | chaotic_iak - 2012-10-28 3:50 PM
Also there is something fishy. kumara answered a 6-point puzzle within 7 seconds. Did kumara hack the puzzle booklet or something? 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) |
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SM 2020 (Math) Author
Posts: 417
Location: India | 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!!! |
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Posts: 187
Location: New Zealand | 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? |
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Location: India | kiwijam - 2012-10-29 2:52 AM
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. |
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Posts: 33
Location: Japan | 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! |
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Fillomino-Fillia 2 Author
Location: United States | 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. |
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Fillomino-Fillia 2 Author
Posts: 15
Location: United States | MellowMelon - 2012-10-29 10:19 AM
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. 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. :) |
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Posts: 31
Location: United States | 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! |
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Fillomino-Fillia 2 Author
Location: United States | 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. |
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Location: India | With no more participants now, Fillomino Fillia 2 is officially over.
Password removed from puzzle booklet.
ETA: For the record, the password was fOxyaNIMaljOinsyeLLowIshFruit |
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Fillomino-Fillia 2 Author
Location: United States | 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. |
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Posts: 42
Location: United States | Thanks for a great test. Beautiful puzzles, even though I'm still slow on them and (mis)proved that several are impossible :) Will there be solutions and/or walkthoughs published at some point? |
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Typed Logic Author
Posts: 241
Location: Indonesia | In case you want some walkthrough, I think I can (only for puzzles I've solved :P ).
The penalty amount is somewhat too strict for penalizing unsolved puzzles. Maybe count incorrect submissions as penalties only if the corresponding puzzle is eventually solved? Mostly inspired from ACM-ICPC penalty rules for programming contests where a problem contributes to the penalty only if it is eventually solved.
Anyway, amazing puzzles. Thanks for the authors to make such great puzzles. Will there still be an author guessing contest? |
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Fillomino-Fillia 2 Author
Posts: 15
Location: United States | chaotic_iak - 2012-10-30 3:06 AM
The penalty amount is somewhat too strict for penalizing unsolved puzzles. Maybe count incorrect submissions as penalties only if the corresponding puzzle is eventually solved? Mostly inspired from ACM-ICPC penalty rules for programming contests where a problem contributes to the penalty only if it is eventually solved. Well, that's a Catch-22. Oops, I submitted a wrong answer to this puzzle; should I submit a correct answer and decrease my score on the rest of the test by 2%, or not? (2% of 120 is 2.4, so it's probably worth it most of the time, but still.) :) |
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2021 World Sudoku+Puzzle Convention Organizer
Posts: 1788
Location: India | mathgrant - 2012-10-30 2:58 PM
Well, that's a Catch-22. Oops, I submitted a wrong answer to this puzzle; should I submit a correct answer and decrease my score on the rest of the test by 2%, or not? (2% of 120 is 2.4, so it's probably worth it most of the time, but still.) :)
Well, similar to the point I made during the test, I think if a person is thinking that much, and doesn't submit, that in itself is a penalty during the test.
The main point of the penalty, as I understand it, is to stop repeated tries till a solution is reached. That much is fulfilled without penalizing puzzles that aren't solved correctly within test duration. |
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Location: India | This was discussed during DD post-analysis |
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Posts: 187
Location: New Zealand | mathgrant - 2012-10-30 9:58 PM
Well, that's a Catch-22. Oops, I submitted a wrong answer to this puzzle; should I submit a correct answer and decrease my score on the rest of the test by 2%, or not? (2% of 120 is 2.4, so it's probably worth it most of the time, but still.) :)
Well if the puzzle is worth a lot and you have time then obviously you'll fix and resubmit it. The problem is that small puzzles have a relatively high penalty.
The situation with the current system that seems likely to me (it happens in most of my tests) is:
I've done lots of puzzles, and now have 3 minutes left at the end.
I rush through a 2-pointer, and with 10 seconds left I think I have a solution but am not sure.
If it's correct I get +2, if it's wrong I get -2 and won't have time to find the issue and resubmit.
So should I even bother submitting it?
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Posts: 8
Location: Greece | For me, the purpose of penalties in an instantly graded test is to resist temptation to guess the last couple of key digits; proper key choice should handle the rest. So the ideal penalty for a wrong submission should be about -2*Puzzle_value* Probability_of_guessing_last_2_digits. Tying the penalty to the overall scores introduces the described rather unpleasant meta-game; also, guessing harder puzzles becomes relatively cheaper, which seems to me an undesirable property. I would also want penalties to apply only to solved puzzles, and up to that puzzle's value. I don't have data to back it up, but I suspect most of the errors are a result of either trivial solution mistakes, or mangling key entry / extraction one way or another. If the site isn't facing a horde of furious guessers and cheaters, treating minor mistakes harshly just sours the fun. I suspect that losing a lot of points, in addition to losing a lot of time, on a puzzle you don't finish correctly goes against fun.
And what fun it was! I'd like to thank both authors for two ( well, three ) hours spent with inspired puzzles. From the puzzles I did get to solve under test conditions, I appreciated the neat frame of 3s on the last Classic, the linearity of solution in Sum and the bottom Snake, the somewhat surprising end of the bottom No Rectangles, and the strong character of the bottom Walls. Due to experience with the previous contest, I shied away from the big pointers, expecting beautiful terrors. In hindsight, I should have been braver, as these turned out much more approachable than expected.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who found the grids a bit small to work with ease. Other than constructing in flatter grids, you can give yourselves a little more room by putting the external answer extraction device on the side rather than below, or a whole lot of room by formatting instructions into a column. |
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Fillomino Fillia 2 ( 27-29 Oct 2012 )
