Puzzle GP 2023 Round 7 - Overall Feedback

I enjoyed this round a great deal, and even highlighted a few standout puzzles in another post.

However, I also made way more errors in this round than I usually do.

Firstly, I made a bunch of errors because I didn’t check whether a puzzle had bonus rules. E.g. I tried to solve puzzle 10 Pentominous [sic.?] (Star Battle) as if it was just a Pentomino puzzle.

Feedback: Of course this is ultimately my fault. But from a puzzle design perspective, you could prevent hybrid puzzles from becoming visually mixed up with evergreen puzzles by drawing at least one component of each rule from the start. For example, I wouldn't have made that error in puzzle 10 if at least one star was already drawn into the grid.

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Secondly, I misinterpreted the Canal View puzzle by mixing up whether shaded or unshaded tiles were “canal” tiles. This happened because puzzle 6 (Masyu + Canal View) came *before* puzzle 11 (Canal View), and in the former the *un*shaded tiles were the canal tiles.

Feedback: Again, this error is ultimately my fault. But from a puzzle comprehensibility perspective, I would’ve been less likely to make this error if the evergreen puzzles (Word Search, Snake, Kakuro, Canal View, etc.) had come *before* the hybrid puzzles in the puzzle order. Either all evergreen puzzles before all hybrids, or at least all evergreen puzzles before their corresponding hybrids. Example order for the first 6 puzzles: Battleships, Masyu, Canal View, Battleships + Masyu, Battleships + Canal View, Masyu + Canal View.

PS: In the instruction booklet, the canal cells are shaded for illustrative purposes, which made my error with puzzle 6 even more likely.