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)
From a long long way back
I'm republishing an English word puzzle from a long, long way back. The solution is an object.
EDIT: Fixed typo
+++++++++++++xxxxxxxxxxxxx
x+x+x+x+x+x
EDIT: Fixed typo
A Wheat & Chaff foursome
Wheat and Chaff is one of the many intriguing original types of Inaba Naoki. I came across the English name and rules in Naoki's pages on Otto Janko's site. These puzzles are much easier, and less elegant than, the aforelinked puzzles. So hopefully, I'll make it up through quantity.
If the title sounds somewhat familiar, that's intentional. I suspect the URL of that page (which is different to the title) explains why that is the most visited post on this blog by a factor of seven. So I'm just making sure that foursome isn't the actual SEO honey. If I'm right, then I probably should publish puzzles in groups of three, and grow a bigger, if somewhat frustrated, readership.
Symmetry + Symmetry = Asymmetry
This irregular sudoku is rather difficult. I would be interested in knowing how long it takes to solve. Also, the interactive environment this time is the scanraid solver, so I wonder how many will succumb to temptation.
A brilliant alarm clock
I'd like to take some time today to praise the CASIO DQ-850 alarm clock. Yes, really.
A couple of years ago, I had to buy my parents an alarm clock. Again. New clock springs are made of dry leaves, or so it felt after their OCD cranking busted yet another. Digital clocks seemed to be beyond their device handling skills, resulting in them being afraid to switch it off for the weekend, and needing help to deal with DST. Battery operated clocks with analogue faces proved to be easily susceptible to both normal wear and tear and the occasional drop. Drops were much more common than you'd think, as all such reasonably priced alarm clocks had poorly accessible controls, thus necessitating handling (and fumbling) in the dark.
I found the DQ-850 in the very back of the shop shelf, with tags indicating it had been laying about for a decade, and bought it for a song. And yet, it is superbly designed for the elderly in your life. Since this is a blog filled with problems, take a look at it and see if you can figure out why it's post-worthy - my answer is after the fold :
Break over
Not that I'm likely to go back to a regular publishing schedule, but it'll hopefully be more frequent than the past few days. If it's any consolation, I have been writing puzzles for a different medium this week, and some of them may find their way here eventually.
Anyhow, on to the rules for today's puzzle: Place the 12 free pentominoes onto the blank space in the grid. Numeric clues indicate the number of pentominoes in the 8 adjacent cells.
Anyhow, on to the rules for today's puzzle: Place the 12 free pentominoes onto the blank space in the grid. Numeric clues indicate the number of pentominoes in the 8 adjacent cells.
Reflect link
Another Nikoli experiment. Draw a loop joining orthogonally adjacent cell centres. All points where straight loop segments intersect are given as crosses, and must be visited. The loop may not touch itself (stop sniggering) at any other point or way. The loop must visit all cells with triangles, and must turn at those points. Some of these triangles may be marked with a number, which indicates the total number of cells visited by the straight loop segments meeting there.
I have never actually seen one of these problems before in any medium, so I have no idea how close these are to the typical problem of this sort. The first one is an easy introduction to the rules, the second one is just a bit meatier.
ShakaShaka!
I have to say I love this puzzle's name. The rules of ShakaShaka are kind of odd, so read carefully. I'm rather fond of this one: the logic flows smoothly, it's nicely Q-shaped for a similar commemorative reason to a prior puzzle (minus the drink), and didn't take forever to make.
Hidden Halfgrid
Draw a loop that contains exactly half the grid by connecting orthogonally adjacent dots. All cells with the same letter have the same number of sides used by the loop. All cells with different letters have a different number of sides used by the loop. Packs a decent punch for the size and clue density. And yes, I win no points for elegance.
Masyu 3 - now with added pzv
(Rules). Medium, I guess. There's a uniqueness fix that I'm not too crazy about in there.
You may notice that clicking on the picture brings up the wonderful pzv.jp site, where you can solve the problem online. I was considering the much more capable janko.at applet, but board entry is currently manual, and the Java requirement means some users will miss out.
You may notice that clicking on the picture brings up the wonderful pzv.jp site, where you can solve the problem online. I was considering the much more capable janko.at applet, but board entry is currently manual, and the Java requirement means some users will miss out.
Counting
Count triangles of all sizes in the picture. This is one of those things that is achievable in either a minute or an hour, depending on prior experience. Since it's rather hard to verify one's own answer for this sort of activity, I'm going to spoil the puzzle for lovers of Early Byzantine history: the answer is the year Gainas fled from Constantinople.
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