Litigation grounds between the 33:00 and 35:00 marks on yesterday's television.
T&Errible Hitori?
Grant Fikes finds this puzzle extremely trial-and-errory, even if you spot patterns. I, of course, beg to differ. Do comment. (Rules.)
Shutter sudoku
Rules are painted on the picture. Lines extend across the central gap. Marks between triangles are not given. Hints regarding the placement of triangles are available if you mark the text after the bullets, which are after the page break. Apologies for the less-than-stellar image quality.
Another Word Toy
Four unit cubes have a single Greek letter written on each of their faces. All following words can be read along a long face of some 4✕1✕1 parallelepiped formed by them. Rotated letters may not stand in for others. Group the letters into cubes.
ΑΞΙΟ ΒΑΖΟ ΘΙΓΩ ΙΔΕΑ KAΒO ΚΟΜΗ ΛΥΝΩ ΝΥΦΗ ΠΟΛΥ ΣΙΓΑ TAXY ΨΥΧΗ ΩΡΕΣ
Dragon
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to hack the dragon's head into pieces. Specifically, the five-cell pieces below. Pieces may be freely rotated or flipped over.
Since this is a CR 21 encounter, feel free to use any of the weapons below (mark to read the relevant hint):
- You need to flip over the following pieces: none
- From top to bottom row, the number of points where exactly three pieces meet are: 0 2 2 1 1 2 1 2 0 0 0
- From top to bottom of the right edge, the length of border between pieces along the imaginary diagonals which cross at each point add up to: 2 3 3 1 1 0 1 1 0 3 1 1 4 4 1 3
Tohu Wa Vohu
Apparently I still remember this Italian puzzle type with the vaguely Hebrew name. Rules go something like this: Fill all cells with one of two symbols. Equal numbers of each symbol are found in each row and column. No more than two identical symbols are allowed to be consecutive in any row or column.
Blowing off steam Nuribou
This Nuribou was written when I couldn't for the life of me get a much cleverer puzzle of the same type to work properly. Probably of average difficulty, although one edge may give you trouble. (Rules)
Skewed balances
You are given weights 1,2,3,4,5,6,9. Discard one of them, and hang the rest on the scale below, so that it balances as drawn on one of the pictures below. Then switch two of the weights around, so that the scale balances as shown on the other picture. Judging by the reaction of my local guinea pigs puzzle group, this is a bit trickier than it looks.
Perplexible followup
David Millar is kind enough to feature one of my puzzles on his puzzle blog. No, not this one, the other one. It's an old puzzle, and I haven't made any Ice Barns (rules) in quite a while, so I decided to make another one for the sake of new visitors who like the one up on Perplexible. You can find a few more (and, frankly, better) puzzles of this type elsewhere.
This one is both easier and more typical of how solves of the type feel than the Perplexible one. Clicking on the picture opens the puzzle up in the wonderful pzv.jp environment.
This one is both easier and more typical of how solves of the type feel than the Perplexible one. Clicking on the picture opens the puzzle up in the wonderful pzv.jp environment.
Territory
Yet another Nikoli rarity. The original Japanese name of なわばり is pronounced nawabari.
Partition the grid into rectangles by drawing along grid lines. Each rectangle contains exactly one clue. The clues describe how many of the four sides of their cell are drawn.
Partition the grid into rectangles by drawing along grid lines. Each rectangle contains exactly one clue. The clues describe how many of the four sides of their cell are drawn.
Tunnel Vision
Tunnel Vision = Wild Labyrinth + Corral Clues = Build A Maze + regular expressions + Corral Clues.
The longer version of the rules goes something like this. Find an open, 1-cell wide path of edge adjacent cells which visits all cells exactly once. This path is entirely forced by drawing walls on grid lines. A clue inside the grid indicates the number of orthogonally visible cells, including the cell itself. Visibility is obstructed by walls. Clues on the outside indicate the length of walls along the grid line in order of appearance. Consecutively clued wall segments may not overlap, nor share corners. A single wall length may be replaced by ?. Any number of clues, including none, may be replaced by *. An unclued line is equivalent to *. A line with no wall segments may be clued as 0.
To the best of my knowledge, Riad Khanmagomedov invented this puzzle type, and Grant Fikes added the regular expressions. The idea of inserting Corral-style clues inside comes from a previous post.
The longer version of the rules goes something like this. Find an open, 1-cell wide path of edge adjacent cells which visits all cells exactly once. This path is entirely forced by drawing walls on grid lines. A clue inside the grid indicates the number of orthogonally visible cells, including the cell itself. Visibility is obstructed by walls. Clues on the outside indicate the length of walls along the grid line in order of appearance. Consecutively clued wall segments may not overlap, nor share corners. A single wall length may be replaced by ?. Any number of clues, including none, may be replaced by *. An unclued line is equivalent to *. A line with no wall segments may be clued as 0.
To the best of my knowledge, Riad Khanmagomedov invented this puzzle type, and Grant Fikes added the regular expressions. The idea of inserting Corral-style clues inside comes from a previous post.
Fiddly Norinori
Rules. I started out trying to make a Norinori with a bit of a bite to it, and I think I bit off more than I'd like, as a solver, to chew.
Hitor misses
Yes, I know these Hitori puzzles (rules) break a design convention. Tricky if you haven't seen this sort of thing before.
Sun & Moon
Draw a loop visiting all cells exactly once, by joining adjacent cell centres with horizontal and vertical line segments. No corner is formed between two consecutive identical markings. Exactly one corner is formed between consecutive different markings. Turns on the markings themselves are ignored by the previous two rules.
Word Toy
4 toy cubes have one letter written on each side. The Greek words below can be formed using the 4 cubes. Partition the alphabet into cubes.
Test solve data suggested I underestimated solve time by a factor of 3. Consequently, I'd like to know the Internet's experience.
ΑΒΓΟ ΒΗΧΩ ΔΙΚΗ ΖΕΣΗ ΘΕΟΣ ΚΕΝΟ ΛΙΜΑ ΜΕΤΑ ΠΟΘΩ ΠΡΙΝ ΦΟΛΑ ΧΥΝΩ ΨΗΛΟ ΨΥΞΗ
Test solve data suggested I underestimated solve time by a factor of 3. Consequently, I'd like to know the Internet's experience.
Expired Rings
I have a stock of puzzles intended for a contest that didn't happen. This one is the most obviously dated:
Write all digits from 0 to 9 on every ring. Any given clue is the result of addition, subtraction, multiplication, or exact division between the numbers to the immediate left and immediate right of the cell the clue is close to.
This was the final puzzle of the test, since I like tests to end on a high note for puzzlers rather than authors, and easier puzzles make hitting that note easier. This was also the last to be written, since I realised I was rather light on arithmetic content. Thanks to fantom for pointing out a typo in the original version.
Write all digits from 0 to 9 on every ring. Any given clue is the result of addition, subtraction, multiplication, or exact division between the numbers to the immediate left and immediate right of the cell the clue is close to.
This was the final puzzle of the test, since I like tests to end on a high note for puzzlers rather than authors, and easier puzzles make hitting that note easier. This was also the last to be written, since I realised I was rather light on arithmetic content. Thanks to fantom for pointing out a typo in the original version.
Greek Sudoku and Puzzle Championship writeup
This post ended up as a wall of text, so look under the fold at your own peril.
TL;DR version
I did much better at sudoku and much worse at puzzles than I anticipated. Puzzles were of modest difficulty but rather neat. Test format leaves a lot of room for improvement, including typesetting, problem type selection, and examination format. Still, fun overall.
TL;DR version
I did much better at sudoku and much worse at puzzles than I anticipated. Puzzles were of modest difficulty but rather neat. Test format leaves a lot of room for improvement, including typesetting, problem type selection, and examination format. Still, fun overall.
Easy Heyawake
Rules - for this problem, the no three rooms rule degenerates into "white stretch may not contain two boundaries", as per link. Also, the pzv environment solution checker may not work properly, due to the non-orthogonal rooms.
Medium Nuribou
(Rules) This one is much easier than the previous, and it does have a bit more of the Nurikabe vibe.
Hard Nuribou
Nuribou (ぬりぼう) is another rare Nikoli type. The rules are:
Paint some empty cells black so that they form strips of width 1. These strips do not share sides. If they share corners, then they must be of different lengths. All remaining white regions contain exactly one clue. Clues give the area of the containing region.
This really shouldn't be your first Nuribou, so of course it's the blog's first.
EDIT 1/6/19 : It has been reported that a 2-long strip in the lower left quadrant may be placed in two ways. This does not effect the remainder of the solution.
Paint some empty cells black so that they form strips of width 1. These strips do not share sides. If they share corners, then they must be of different lengths. All remaining white regions contain exactly one clue. Clues give the area of the containing region.
This really shouldn't be your first Nuribou, so of course it's the blog's first.
What day is it again?
Rules. Another new type for the blog. Often called Corral, but I'll go on and refer to the type by the alternative name of Bag. Again, uniqueness shortcuts exist, but the puzzle isn't nearly complex enough to tempt anyone.
A moderate fence
So long as I'm thinking them up, I may as well post. And yes, another one whose pattern got derailed along the way.
Another easy Fences
A friend is writing an introductory leaflet for this type of puzzle (rules), so this me thinking of what sort of puzzles would belong on that. Not terribly exciting stuff, but oh well - at least this one is pretty enough.
Another easyish Sudoku
Sudoku are my go-to type for filling up long gaps in posting. There are a couple of points of low bandwidth, but I expect the overall shape will provide plenty of guidance on where to focus.
Fillmat
(Rules, example.) Sparse clues (in this case, 9%, but I expect better is possible) suffice for Fillmats. Whether this leads to pleasant puzzles is another question entirely. The puzzle below is of at least medium difficulty.
A connecting wall
BBC's Only Connect is one of the most amusing gameshows around, mostly because of the great playalong factor. The Wall is its most popular round, where players partition 16 clues into 4 groups of four, then name what links them together. This is a rather nasty example I made some time ago.
Another Lightup
I suspect that for most people, this puzzle will fall through trial and error. There are three small patterns which give exact definition to the larger one, which I suspect is one (or two) too many. (Rules)
An easy Tasquare
Another rare Nikoli type. Paint some empty cells black. Black cells strictly form squares. Unpainted cells are orthogonally contiguous. Clue cells share side(s) with at least one painted square. If the clue contains a number, that is the total area of orthogonally adjacent black squares. (Rules, example here)
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