Puzzle #164 - Knight Time (Knightsweeper Yajilin)

Logic Showcase 17 has ended, with a theme of knight move clues. So I made a Yajilin where clues give the number of shaded cells a knight move away. This placed 4th of 9, and I spent far too long trying to even find a unique puzzle while also preserving both symmetry and the opening deduction.

puzz.link interface        penpa interface

Puzzle #163 - Nebula (Castle Wall)

Alright, last Castle Wall puzzle for now. I've noticed that mine tend to focus more on segments and less on topology with what's inside and outside of the loop. That said, I definitely do use those deductions and the type is extremely interesting- much moreso than I originally thought.

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Puzzle #162 - Little Black Box (Castle Wall)

Outside clues only is a somewhat common Castle Wall theme that I wanted to try my hand at. So naturally I didn't make outside clues only and put a box in the middle. This should be slightly above easy, as far as difficulty goes.

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Puzzle #161 - Initialism (Castle Wall)

I'm not sure why I've been making a few Castle Wall puzzles lately, though I'm glad I have been because I'm finally starting to really see how clues can combine when making these, without having to put them in and try to work out the implications from there. Originally, the stray 2 left clue in this puzzle had a given color but on my testsolve I found that it was both unique and reasonable without that information, so I grayed it out.

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Also, if you're on the Puzzlers Club Discord- this will look familiar, because I posted it in the logic race channel. I'm writing this before any solve times are reported, so I wonder what the fastest time will be...

Puzzle #160 - Duology (Castle Wall)

Man, Castle Wall is a very difficult type to ensure uniqueness on. I wish there was a bit more to this solve, but I like most of the deductions here.

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Puzzle #159 - Dark Type (Light and Shadow)

The Typed Logic puzzle competition on LMI just ended, and I contributed 5 puzzles to the set, representing Fighting, Poison, Ground, Dragon and Dark types.

Nobody on the constructing team seemed to have much idea what to do with Light and Shadow, myself included. So I decided to just try to make a fairly sparsely clued puzzle, and ended up hitting on an interesting consequence of the rules while toying with given placements that I subsequently built the puzzle around. This one was worth 50 points on the test.

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Thus concludes my contributions to Typed Logic. If you haven't already checked out the rest of the puzzles, I highly recommend them! The Stostone, Skyscrapers, Yajisan-Kazusan and Icebarn are especially well done, but I greatly enjoyed sitting down and giving the full booklet a testsolve once it was ready.

Stay tuned, because I also recently finished constructing puzzles for a contest of my own...

Puzzle #158 - Dragon Type (Castle Wall)

The Typed Logic puzzle competition on LMI just ended, and I contributed 5 puzzles to the set, representing Fighting, Poison, Ground, Dragon and Dark types.

When we were deciding what puzzle genres to use for each type, Dragon proved to be a tough one to nail down... except for me. I immediately thought of Castle Wall and pushed for it to be included, culminating in actually sitting down and making one for the first time. This was also worth 60 points on the test, though it's easy pickings for anyone with a little bit of experience with the type.

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Puzzle #157 - Ground Type (Cave)

The Typed Logic puzzle competition on LMI just ended, and I contributed 5 puzzles to the set, representing Fighting, Poison, Ground, Dragon and Dark types.

For the Cave puzzle, Jamie Hargrove had already made a very difficult one that was deemed too hard to use, so my goal was to make a fairly easy Cave with a nice visual theme. Even during the contest, it seemed to come through that I was going for a Pokeball shape. It turned out a little harder than I anticipated and was worth 60 points, though I think some of that is the size.

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Puzzle #156 - Poison Type (Snake Pit)

The Typed Logic puzzle competition on LMI just ended, and I contributed 5 puzzles to the set, representing Fighting, Poison, Ground, Dragon and Dark types.

This Snake Pit puzzle went through quite a few iterations before finally managing to un-break it, since my original break-in was actually completely wrong. It still turned out fairly tricky and was worth 60 points.

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Puzzles #154 & #155 - Fighting Type (Rock Paper Scissors)

The Typed Logic puzzle competition on LMI just ended, and I contributed 5 puzzles to the set, representing Fighting, Poison, Ground, Dragon and Dark types.

First up, I made a Rock Paper Scissors puzzle, and then a second smaller one if the first wasn't interesting enough. The first ended up being used for the contest, and was worth 30 points.

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Neither one of these is that difficult, but they also weren't meant to be that difficult. Personally, I actually prefer the second one!

Puzzle #153 - Yang and.. Yang? (Yin Yang)

It amuses me that I've posted 4 Yin Yang links on this blog, but no Yin Yang puzzles. Until now.

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For some reason, most single color Yin Yang puzzles seem to go with black circles. I felt like going with white due to that all black Statue Park I made, and I thought the aesthetic looked nicer here.

Puzzle #152 - Three Ways (Nurimisaki)

Well. I finally got around to making a Nurimisaki puzzle. Hopefully this is somewhat tricky. There's a very clean path through this puzzle, but I wonder how many will actually find it?

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Puzzle #151 - Another Hybrid (Skyscrapers Sudoku)

At least for now, this is the last of my puzzleduel puzzles. I wanted to include a number placement in my set, to go with the object placement, loop, and shading puzzles I'd already cooked up and so I elected to try Skyscrapers Sudoku as I'm reasonably comfortable with Skyscrapers construction at this point.

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Congratulations to Freddie Hand for winning this puzzle, with an astounding time of 53 seconds... which is incredible given PD number input!

Puzzle #150 - Discord Request (Hybrid Loop)

This is the last time I ask the Puzzlers Club Discord for ideas of what to make... I got some very silly prompts (penalty Heyawake with a 150 clue, for one) and a couple ideas that I really liked for this milestone, such as a 15x10 grid and placing a 150 within it with 1 5 0 clues. TheGreatEscaper also suggested a hybrid puzzle, and so I made this. It's... probably the hardest puzzle I've made yet, again. And it was also probably the hardest puzzle for me to make that I've made thus far, too.

puzz.link interface         penpa interface

Rules: Draw a loop that travels through all cells. In each numbered room, at least one of the following three conditions must be met:

Detour: The number indicates exactly how many times the loop must turn in its room.

Haisu Loop: The number indicates exactly how many times the loop enters its room.

Maxi Loop: The number indicates the exact length of the longest visit in its room.

Any coloring in the penpa interface is for theme highlighting only. Thanks to TGE for testsolving this, especially identifying 3 different points in the intended path which were broken. Fortunately, all of them ended up being fixable without compromising the path.

Puzzle #149 - Special (Akari)

Puzzleduel recently ran a contest on a series of larger than normal puzzles. Before it was announced I had created and submitted this Akari for use as a daily puzzle. I didn't think 17x17 was too large for a normal day, but apparently it was. The best solve time was 4:31, though in puzz.link I would expect skilled solvers to come in under 2:30 easily.

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puzzleduel link (not recommended)

This puzzle was inspired by some things I saw while going through every Akari on puzz.link, a task I have since completed. If everything goes according to plan, puzzle 150 will be a big one...

Puzzle #148 - Bittersweet (Double Choco)

Given how popular Double Choco has been lately, I'm surprised it's taken me this long to post one. They're hard to make due to juggling both placed numbers and dark/light cells and aesthetics in both departments. Ultimately, I'm very pleased with this puzzle despite not having all the even numbers on one side and the odd numbers on the other side.

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Wen: i only just noticed the theme

Wen: which is pretty magic tbh

Wen: nicely done :)

If that isn't a glowing review I don't know what is 😇