Logic Masters India - Screen Test 1

After the success of sudoku and puzzle tests on Logic Masters India, here comes a new dimension - 'Screen Test'. Screen Tests are part of most, if not all, World Puzzle Championships. In Screen Tests, the puzzles are displayed on the screen; participants solve the puzzles by looking at the screen. Typically the answer to the screen test puzzles is a number or a letter or at max few words.
LMI Screen Test is designed based on WPC Screen Test philosophy, to make screen tests available to more puzzle solvers. The first Screen Test was held on 4th/5th/6th December, 2010.
It was organised by Deb Mohanty and me!

Download Screen Test Guide
View Screen Test Homepage
View Examples
View Forum

Results

1. Martin Merker (Germany) - 1477
2. Thomas Snyder (USA) - 1450
3. Hideaki Jo (Japan) - 1394
4. Philipp Weiß (Germany) - 1386
5. Palmer Mebane (USA) - 1376
6. William Blatt (USA) - 1363
7. Kota Morinishi (Japan) - 1352
8. Masashi Sakata (Japan) - 1350
9. Sebastian Matschke (Germany) - 1346
10. Psyho (Poland) - 1339

Best Indians

16. Keshava Murthy - 1220
23. Rajesh Kumar - 1063
26. Rishi Puri - 1038
31. Ritesh Gupta - 985
44. Prasanna Seshadri - 878

There were a total of 183 participants from 35 countries.

Complete Results

Screen Test 1 is finally over and so is one hectic weekend. It was an amazing experience! Right from building on the concept to its final implementation, it was like one joyful ride. I think organising a 30-minute Screen Test is more difficult than a 2-hour test. Trust me on this! Creating enjoyable puzzles, screen-type puzzles, solvable puzzles, with varying difficulty, deciding the timing of each puzzle, etc. required a lot of thinking. Somehow Deb and I managed it. Then came the most important part. The website. Deb designed the whole thing with me giving some small inputs. When we thought we were ready with it, it had to be tested.
Special thanks to Rajesh Kumar, Rakesh Rai, Rishi Puri, Ritesh Gupta and Tejal Phatak for removing time and solving the test beforehand and giving feedback on the interface.

I am quite satisfied with the Screen Test. I dont think there has been one earlier (WPC-style), but I may be wrong. I'm glad most of you liked the puzzles and overall enjoyed the test.
Feedback of players

About the puzzles... well... the feedback statistics say that many puzzles were solvable on screen but not all. I agree some puzzles were not solvable on screen, but we decided to keep few difficult puzzles so that even the best players get tested :-)

There were some very interesting statistics of puzzles that caught my eye.
Mazes was undoubtedly the easiest puzzle, solved correctly by maximum players with the minimum average time.
I was surprised to find Cell Sudoku solved by the least number of people. That kind of grid has only one solution. Maybe players didnt find 45 seconds enough to notice it.
Missing Words was a tight puzzle. You needed to be quick to make it within 60 seconds.
Correct XV was tough, no doubt. If you see the puzzle leisurely, you should be able to find out the errors without actually solving it.
For Mastermind, I'm sure most people would've checked which solution matches to the puzzle. It is quicker than solving the mastermind puzzle.
The last 4-5 puzzles were deliberately made a little difficult, to test players who zoomed through the first 20 puzzles.
We kept Brilliant Colours at No.25 to have a colourful and bright ending :-)

Thank You all for participating and making Screen Test 1 a big success. Please give your feedback and comments as they are most welcome.
Looking forward to seeing you all at Screen Test 2, where I hope to participate! :-)