Logic Masters Deutschland e.V.

on 30. July 2021, 02:08 by StefanSch
@FryTheGuy: I just wanted to tell you, that I solved 15 of your puzzles. It was a hard job with a lot of fun ;-)
I like the idea to spotlight "outstanding puzzles" and I hope that there will be a mechanism to do it in a smooth way. Sometimes I commend a puzzle as "My puzzle of the week". But you can't realy filter by comments.

on 28. July 2021, 21:57 by FryTheGuy
@Realshaggy @CHalb

I understand the reason for not showing a rating with too few votes, but very hard unrated puzzles by new setters will never get enough votes to get a rating (no matter how amazing they are).

I would have never found Rainy Day Sudoku without Sudoku Explorer recommending it. Maybe you could consider some way to give a puzzle a rating with only 5 votes instead of the usual 10 votes if it has been more than 3 months since the puzzle was published?

on 28. July 2021, 21:49 by FryTheGuy
@glum_hippo

I pasted the list into the following google doc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18C9WH0qACD-X7lYe-z1aE1o2l5dhIKhqNS_SjgMuk4I/edit?usp=sharing

8 of the puzzles ended up with >=98% rating!

Only 3 puzzles did not end up getting a rating.

If you have a full day to dedicate to one of the best puzzles I have had the pleasure of solving try Rainy Day Sudoku 12 (squared) & 35 (recommended by SudokuExplorer):

https://logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Raetsel/zeigen.php?id=0003ZU

on 28. July 2021, 20:48 by Realshaggy
Thats still not what he asked. These are the puzzles that have a "beauty" rating (>10 votes) but no difficulty rating yet (<=10 votes). There is no way to see the beauty rating of unrated puzzles. That would bypass the purpose of not showing the rating before a certain number of votings.

on 28. July 2021, 20:37 by CHalb
Sorry, I didn't read your question thoroughly. Here you get the puzzles with the highest rating in beauty, that are unrated in difficulty: https://logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Suche/erweitert.php?sort=schoen&suchdifvergl=kl&suchdif=1
These are only 9 at the moment.

There is no way to see any information about ratings with less than 10 votes and no intention from our side to establish anything in this direction. Realshaggy was with his comment faster than me in correcting mine :-) .

on 28. July 2021, 20:29 by CHalb
SudokuExplorer wrote it below: You can find puzzles without rating in the difficulty by searching for puzzles with difficulty less than 1 star. In the Advanced Search on https://logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Suche/erweitert.php . Here a permanent address for this: https://logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Suche/erweitert.php?suchdifvergl=kl&suchdif=1 I don't know how to look for puzzles not rated in beauty.

on 28. July 2021, 20:14 by glum_hippo
Now I wish I'd seen the list of puzzles, contest or no contest. Is it transcribed somewhere in the forum?

on 28. July 2021, 20:11 by FryTheGuy
@CHalb

Any chance you guys could add a way to search for unrated puzzles which have a high number of "very nice" ratings?

For instance if a puzzle has only been solved by 3 people, but all 3 people rated it very nice I would love to be able to find those puzzles.

on 28. July 2021, 18:58 by CHalb
Thank you :-) .

on 28. July 2021, 18:34 by FryTheGuy
Removed the contest, sorry!

on 28. July 2021, 13:08 by CHalb
Hi FryTheGuy, I’m contacting you on behalf of the managing board of Logic Masters Deutschland.

Please remove the hunt/contest-part from this puzzle since it does not match our Terms of use. Our concern is about the following two excerpts from it:
“Every user of the webseite who is logged in may upload single puzzles in the Rätselportal without addressing a contest hereby.”
“Further using the Contest Engine, contests may be uploaded. Only members of the association without outstanding payment are authorised to do so.”

Furthermore we don’t like this way of promoting puzzles from someones personal point of view especially involving money. As has been stated below you can write about such campaigns in our forum. And as also already posted below: Who is interested in searching for unrated puzzles can find them via our Advanced Search on https://logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Suche/erweitert.php as well as e.g. puzzles of certain difficulty.

Best regards
Christian

on 24. July 2021, 21:43 by Piatato
I have now solved all the puzzles on the list, and I must say that it has been a fantastic journey. There are some amazing puzzles out there!

Having this list of puzzles to go through has added a sense of purpose that has helped me stay motivated for solving some of the more terrifyingly difficult puzzles. I am not sure that I without that would have had the grit to keep working on puzzles such as Sum Compass Sudoku, N-sums Counter or - especially so - Rainy Day Sudoku. These are all superb, mindblowing puzzles that I am very happy to have experienced and solved.

From another perspective, it is also great for the setters that their efforts are recognized and that a particularly good puzzle gets the high rating that it deserves. I was very proud when I noticed that one of my puzzles on the list now has got a 98% rating. I had a feeling that it was a good puzzle, but it is something else to get the confirmation through such a high rating.

All in all I have got a lot out of this contest. The competition and potential prize money are of secondary nature - the pleasure of solving high quality puzzles, and the joy of seeing a great puzzle getting rated is what I enjoyed the most. I hope that something similiar will happen again in the future!

Thanks to FryTheGuy for putting together the list and taking initiative for the contest!

on 20. July 2021, 17:26 by FryTheGuy
@marcmees

I spent a full day reading the comments on hundreds of unrated puzzles, organizing the unrated puzzles by the number of positive comments the puzzle received.

These 22 puzzles were the ones that had more than one extremely positive comments.

on 20. July 2021, 08:06 by marcmees
It should be possible to find a different way to attract the attention to nice but overlooked puzzles than by offering money. I only solve puzzles for fun. With more than 1000 unrated puzzles, the choice of the 22 puzzles here seems a bit random.

on 19. July 2021, 23:23 by Tom1i
@uvo: I am sorry, if I offended you somehow. I didn't mean, that I considered it a bug at all. I just meant that listing the puzzles very difficult along with very easy puts the very difficult ones at a disadvantage. They require more dedicated solvers and thus have fewer takers and they take considerably more effort and time to solve, so some might skip them if they're in a hurry in favor of an easier puzzle. But either difficulty have the same exposure time on the first few pages. That to me seems odd for a site that has such a high standard in puzzle quality and has produced so many wonderful setters and puzzles.

on 19. July 2021, 22:17 by uvo
"The thing that has bothered me about this site from the start is, that all puzzles are put into the same bucket."

It's a feature, not a bug.

on 19. July 2021, 21:03 by Tom1i
I think FryTheGuy has a point. For me the thing that has bothered me about this site from the start is, that all puzzles are put into the same bucket. It is significantly more difficult and time consuming to set a 5 star puzzle than a 1-2 star one. Some setters will spend weeks perfecting their puzzles and
for someone like that, it can be really saddening to see it get only a handful of solves ever. I solved a puzzle by a fairly new user DanjerBob, who spent weeks creating a very difficult puzzle with his own ruleset. I was the only solver - and he hasn't been back in two months time now. If this kind of contest should be continued in some fashion in the future (which I hope it will despite FryTheGuy's thoughts right now) I really hope it will focus almost exclusively on new setters and more difficult puzzles (4+ stars). The very talented setters are usually well known, and as a consequence their puzzles typically get more attention.

on 19. July 2021, 20:49 by bigger
I'm totally on board with this idea. If someone could do the idea hunt as I did, it would be interested to see what he found. Also, compared to the previous contest, this one is so much better (even though I'm a little disappointed in the 20 puzzles) At least, he's doing something to support other setters on the site.
Still I think for each entry, the puzzle should comes first. Afterthought and recommendations and other stuff should be put below the puzzle. It's a puzzle portal, not a forum. I still want to see the puzzle first, contest later.

on 19. July 2021, 20:20 by FryTheGuy
Of the 6 puzzles which have gotten ratings since I posted this contest, 4 of them are now >=98% approval rating.

Multiple setters has sent me personal messages thanking me for drawing attention to their puzzles.

To me, this is proof that the system is broken, because it means that without my effort it is very likely no one would have ever taken a second look at these amazing puzzles.

Now that these puzzles have ratings more and more people are solving them because they show up in the list of best unsolved puzzles.

That being said, I respect that this is probably the wrong format for sharing unrated puzzles, so I will not post anything like this in the future.

on 19. July 2021, 20:15 by SudokuExplorer
One way to find unrated puzzles is via the "search puzzles" function (https://logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Suche/erweitert.php). If one sets the difficulty to less than 1 star, then you'll find all unrated puzzles. One can also search for the oldest/newest unrated puzzles, and most/least frequently solved unrated puzzles.

on 19. July 2021, 20:01 by SudokuExplorer
Personally I think this is a reasonable idea, which could be improved later on. I agree that there are too many sudokus being uploaded (10+ per day most days, and 400+ puzzles in the last two months). Unfortunately the moderators decided to not put any limit which has led to other symptoms. In particular, many great puzzles are not getting much attention, the setters of those great puzzles do not end up getting much feedback either and it remains unrated. At least FryTheGuy has taken his/her initiative to heal some of these symptoms. Writing a comment on the puzzle is a good idea, however that comment will also typically get flooded out of view.

In the past I've tried to inform newcomers about the flood and tell them to post less frequently for the benefit of everyone. However, this has become tedious now and the portal rules currently permit unlimited posting of puzzles, so I do not have any right to tell them to slow down.

Maybe in the future, the moderators can select the puzzles. Maybe next time there could be some non-sudokus in the list. Also one criterion could be that the puzzle wasn't posted soon after the previous one uploaded by that setter. If the money prize is against portal rules, then the money prize could be scrapped.

One thing I've noticed on the homepage is an image which links to a random puzzle. Maybe there could be something similar, but for unrated puzzles?

on 19. July 2021, 18:23 by ildiko
Ich habe ein massives Störgefühl. Erst die Sudokuflut (angesichts der aktuellen Situation etwas unpassend, der Begriff, aber der hat sich nun mal durchgesetzt), User die im Namen anderer Rätsel einstellen und so ihre Statistik hochjagen, fast alle neuen Autoren stellen Rätsel nur noch in Englisch ein, und jetzt wird auch noch Geld ausgelobt. Muss das sein?

on 19. July 2021, 14:13 by athin
Sorry, but I'm also on the side of those who against this idea. This more looks like an advertisement, in addition to a real money being brought upon.

People can recommend nice hidden-gem puzzles to anyone, but not in this way. The simplest way is to share to those who are interested (i.e. URL sharing), or perhaps write a comment on those puzzles (sometimes I look at the comment praising a puzzle which I haven't solved and I was glad I found it).

The puzzle here itself is completely unrelevant to "the event", which is lowkey saddening to me. At most you can do is to post this event on the LMD Forum as an idea first, ask what people think of it especially from moderators/admins, then proceed after an approval, as this might be a controversial event in my honest opinion.

I'm just a regular puzzler afterall, I also haven't been here for a long time, but I do think I need to tell what I'm thinking about this here.

on 19. July 2021, 13:09 by Tom1i
@Realshaggy: While I understand your concerns and have some concerns of my own, I'm liking this little contest idea more and more. It does not flood the forum and it puts a spotlight on some great puzzles. Some ratings may get slightly skewed in the short term, but I think the benefit of putting focus on good puzzles outweighs this. It would have been better, if the money had gone to a moderator of the forum and LMD arranged the contest, but this is second best in my opinion.

on 18. July 2021, 20:53 by Piatato
@Realshaggy On a happier note, both High Life and NOT AFRAID ANYMORE already got rated 98% :-D

on 18. July 2021, 20:42 by Realshaggy
I really don't like this idea at all. Purposly misusing a puzzle for advertising an external contest is way across the line for me.

on 18. July 2021, 19:22 by FryTheGuy
@bigger

I wanted to spotlight some of the less well known setters.

Also, my goal was to keep the puzzles relatively approachable, and most of the unrated puzzles by the more well known setters are really hard!

on 18. July 2021, 11:31 by bigger
Wow, unexpected, I thought maybe some of RockyRoer, glum_hippo, udokus, Aspartagcus or hamslice are going to be there. Btw, I didn't get the 500, Old Miles did. It's a setters' competition Afterall, not solvers'.