I really enjoyed the contest even though as a competitor there were several puzzles I couldn't do since I'd supplied them - with the extra 16 points I'd have safely got from the first 3 puzzles I'd have done (for me) pretty well.
I think for a tournament it is very important that we immediately delete posts here which reveal information about the test - both the two at the bottom of the first page of this forum thread say or at least strongly imply that the classics were too hard and the frameless sudoku was hard. Noticing people skipping the classics in the results table I wonder if this influenced people - at the very least it will encourage you to skip quickly once you get stuck, not look for something 'obvious' you've missed. It certainly influenced me, although I decided to try them anyway. Certainly I thought that they were all too hard relative to the other puzzles for the number of points assigned, and it would have been nice to have had an easy one.
I thought the 6x6 consecutive I'd sent was pretty hard for its size but once you write in the candidates in the top-left box and see how it connects with the top-right box it falls out pretty quickly - compared to the 8 points for the sudoku I think those are 7 relatively easy points. I think the expectation is that 6x6 sudoku will be easy, so it's a bit upsetting when they aren't.
The Futoshiki needs an x-wing, as Tom pointed out - it's tricky but definitely a much easier puzzle for 14 points than the 8-point sudokus.
In terms of the Frameless Sudoku, Deb had kindly sent 4 for the previous issue of Sudoku Xtra magazine, so I was lucky enough to have already tried them and discovered they were excellent but tough!
So I knew to skip that.
I really enjoyed the kid sudoku in the test and in the IB - I'd not tried one before and thought it was much more fun than it looked. For me I found that having both No Donkey Step and Diagonally non-consecutive in the test was very confusing - I messed up both because I kept confusing the two rules. I got confused over these when practicing in the IB too, mind. Having both in the same test was either an excellent assessment factor or a bit too much depending on your point of view.
I thought the Top Heavy puzzle was great - good fun and no difficult logic. Similarly I knew from the IB that the Palindrome Sudoku might be easy (even though jigsaw sudoku are my nemesis - I can't usually do them at all), and it was. Probably both much easier for their 20 points than, say, the 14-point consecutive sudoku, which needs much tougher logic.
Finally in terms of layout, I think getting the puzzle resolution (and size, as Ronald said) right is more important than a consistent style. I know the files I sent were vector format (no pixels) but when they were pasted in they seem to have become quite pixellated, particularly in the IB. If you're pasting from Acrobat Reader into Word then just zoom in before you copy and paste. There are also colour screen-grab artifacts in many of the puzzles if you zoom in (from LED sub-pixel aliasing) - the saturation should be set to 0 in something like Irfanview before the art is used. I wrote an article in the members section on this before.
