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Saturday, September 5, 2015

Puzzle Ramayan 2016

The online rounds of Puzzle Ramayan 2015-2016 have ended! This is a national level event aimed at encouraging puzzle solvers of India to participate and compete with the top solvers to gain experience and improve competition in the years to come.

NOTE: This event serves as a qualifier to participate in the Indian Puzzle Championship 2016

The championship consisted of 8 online rounds (Sep-2015 to Mar-2016) from which the top solvers will be invited to participated in the national finals.
Championship Page

National Finals
The finals will be held on 17th July, 2016 in Chennai.

View Finals Page


Online Top-10
1. Rohan Rao - 597.3
2. Amit Sowani - 575.8
3. Swaroop Guggilam - 477.4
4. Rajesh Kumar - 458.3
5. Rakesh Rai - 411.2
6. Ashish Kumar - 374.2
7. Kishore Kumar - 372.1
8. Jayant Ameta - 344.2
9. Jaipal Reddy - 302.7
10. Devarajan D - 277.2

View Complete Results

P.S. Prasanna's name is removed from list since he has a wild card for the WPC next year on being the best Indian performer at the WPC this year.


Round 8: Placement (26th - 28th Mar, 2016)
Author: Rajesh Kumar
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Nice puzzles, but on the harder side. A little disappointed that I wasn't able to finish the set.
Horrible answer keys, I struggled a lot with it, so did a few other players.

Overall, a decent end to PR.

The Top-10 look more-or-less as expected, but really good to see Ashish and Kishore improving and a great job by Devarajan for maintaining his top-10 position throughout the rounds. Looking forward for an interesting and fun-filled finals in Chennai in July.


Round 7: Loops (27th - 29th Feb, 2016)
Author: Prasanna Seshadri
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Wow! Another wonderful round. I'm not very good at Loops, but I could solve this very smoothly. Puzzles were excellent, and a very well-balanced set and PR round. Probably the best so far.

I finished the set in 47mins, with Swaroop in 57mins and Amit in 65mins.  Swaroop now has increased his lead at 3rd place above Rajesh and should be able to hold on to it since the last round is authored by Rajesh.

Hope to end it well.


Round 6: Shading (23rd - 26th Jan, 2016)
Author: Swaroop Guggilam
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Wonderful! What a perfectly balanced round this was. Kudos to Swaroop for authoring this set, my favourite round of PR so far. Prasanna finished the set in 44mins, I finished in 58mins and Amit in 65mins.

Lot of swaps in the points table after this round. Also due to the rankings being updated after discarding the worst two scores. I regain the top spot over Amit. Rajesh is less than a point above Swaroop. A disappointing round by Rakesh allowed Kishore to move above him.

With the last two rounds to go, it will be an interesting finish, especially crucial for Swaroop, who needs to be in the Top-3 to be eligible for the NRI wildcard.


Round 5: Snake (26th - 28th Dec, 2015)
Author: Ashish Kumar
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After a great Round 4, I had an absolutely disastrous Round 5. Snakes is not a type I really enjoy, and it showed here. I scored a poor 57 points, compared to Amit's 88. Prasanna did well by finishing all puzzles just within 90 minutes.

Puzzles were top-notch quality from Ashish, but they were too hard for PR. I'm not surprised to see the participation low, but a little surprised by some regular names missing, including ones in the current Top-10.

Lot of changes in the top-10 after this round. Amit takes the top spot with a good lead, Swaroop moves to 3rd, above Rajesh, and finally, Rakesh moves above Kishore.
Its getting interesting, and I hope the remaining 3 rounds are better, way better. 


Round 4: Regions (28th - 30th Nov, 2015)
Author: Rakesh Rai
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This was one of my better performances in a puzzle contest in recent times. The puzzles were of my liking. Yin Yang, Spiral Galaxies, Area Division are in my all-time favourites, and it was wonderful to solve this set. Puzzles were really fun and it was a better set than the last 3 PR rounds.

I topped the round by finishing in 48mins and was ranked 11th internationally, which is my best rank after Twist way back in 2011. Amit did well by finishing in 56mins, Prasanna finished in 64mins and Swaroop in 83mins.

That put me on top in PR rankings and also got me my best LMI Rating in Puzzles! So, a pretty good weekend!


Round 3: Evergreens (31st Oct - 2nd Nov, 2015)
Author: Amit Sowani
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That was hard! Especially for the type of rounds expected in PR. Well, it was time to improvise. Since this resulted in a very low scoring round, the scoring system was changed to add a bit of normalization so that such variability in the difficulty of tests can be overcome to some extent.

Even though I topped the round (among Indians), it didn't feel like a smooth performance. Felt like I could've added some 8-10 points more to my score of 73.

Prasanna tested the puzzles, so you won't his name on the scorepage. Congrats to Rajesh and Swaroop for their good performances.


Round 2: Number Placement (26th - 28th Sep, 2015)
Author: Deb Mohanty
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I didn't do too well. Couldn't finish the round, and got stuck up in too many puzzles during the test.
Puzzles were really nice. Much better than Deb's SM round :-)

Congrats to Prasanna who finished the set in 72 minutes and Amit who just managed to finish it before time. I scored 97.4 points.

This was supposed to be one of the rounds I was most comfortable with, and it bombed. Hope to cover-up in the next few rounds. I also hope this is the worst performance which will get discarded (along with R1 which I authored).


Round 1: Classics (5th - 7th Sep, 2015)
Author: Rohan Rao
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Congrats to Prasanna, Swaroop and Amit for completing the set. Prasanna finished in 50mins which put him in 12th place worldwide. Swaroop and Amit were very close and finished just one second apart in the 77th minute.

Its nice to see my three team-mates, who will represent India at the WPC along with me, performing at the top among the Indians.

Congrats to Endo, Ulrich and Hideaki who take the top-3 international spots.

Overall, I'm glad the feedback was positive and most participants enjoyed the puzzles. There was some discussion around one puzzle, Hitori Blocks, being a tad harder than the rest for this set. I agree it was a little outlier, but it didn't affect rankings and performances much. Most of the results were as expected.

Seems like a good start to PR... 57 Indians with non-zero scores and totally 304 participants. I hope these numbers increase in subsequent rounds. And I'll be participating in the coming rounds! :-)

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