Re: testing no-op puzzles
pnm wrote:
sjs34 wrote:
I've only done one no-op so far. I think I solved it but got no program acknowledgement that I had done so. Hopefully any pertinent bugs will be ironed out before they're included in the regular rotation.
Please see this post:
viewtopic.php?p=4039#p4039in this thread: that bug should be fixed now.
It is true that if you have solved the puzzle (in the sense of placing all the numbers correctly) and then proceed to indicate all the operators, then you no longer have to re-enter one of the numbers on top of that to get the congrats message. But I would argue that you shouldn't have to enter all the operators (or indeed any at all) to get the congrats message as long as you
haven't indicated any operator
incorrectly. Here's why:
It is great that you can indicate operators (by using Shift + left/right arrow keys) in the no-op puzzles because once you've worked out that only one operator is possible in a cage but haven't figured out yet exactly which numbers go there and so can't "pencil in" candidate numbers, then the operator in itself is still part of the set of constraints you want to remember so you can use them to make further inferences.
But as puzzlers who have solved no-ops at mathdoku.com (where there is no mechanism for indicating operators once you have determined them) will know, it is also possible to solve no-ops without indicating operators. And in many of the cages in the no-ops here at calcudoku.org, it is not necessary to actually indicate the operator because (a) it is immediately obvious which operator goes into the cage (like the "muliplied by" in the 32, 180 and 20 cages and the "plus" in the two-cell 9 cages of
the no-op for today, 2 June 2013); or (b) you find out the operator and the numbers of a cage at the same time and so can immediately fill in the numbers (or candidates, if their ordering within the cage is not immediately apparent), which makes it unnecessary to remember the operator for further use.
If you have solved a no-op without indicating all the operators along the way, then it feels pointless and tedious to indicate the operators afterwards. It would be better if the congrats message appeared immediately once all the numbers were placed correctly and no operator was indicated wrongly.
(On another note, I really like the fact that the set of operators in the correct solution is not necessarily unique – as in the solution to today's no-op, where one of the cages has two different possible operators that "suit" the numbers in the cage
But that is another story, unrelated to the point I am making.)