Puzzles #249 & #250 - Ophiuchus (Word Nurikabe)

My favorite comment on the Puzzle Zodiac thread before it started was "No Ophiucus? (13th Zodiac sign)... :( That puzzle will be Snake puzzle..?" just because I knew that I had included a snakelike Word Nurikabe themed on Ophiuchus. It seemed like the splash image I used for the instructions booklet having a hidden symbol in the middle went unnoticed by most people. I poured a lot of time into making this final puzzle on the test interesting, difficult and fair with a stunning theme and it absolutely paid off. I think it's my favorite puzzle that I've made to date and I hope you give it a try.

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Yep, I went with a vanity puzzle for the example. My only other requirement was that the grid wouldn't be rectangular, as I knew that the main puzzle grid wouldn't be.

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Puzzle 25 on the test, undervalued at 100 points, and themed on A SIGN- Ophiuchus, specifically. As mentioned above this is probably my favorite puzzle that I've ever made because there's so much going on here despite only having 13 letters a grid with nearly 200 cells. Only 7 people solved this puzzle during the contest- and Ken Endo himself even missed it despite having over a half hour to work on it.

Some closing thoughts on the contest as a whole- I think it went mostly well. The puzzle grid typo in the puzzle booklet for the second puzzle weighs heavily on me as an error that shouldn't have happened, and I've learned my lesson that my personal testsolve needs to be on the final booklet, not the final puzzle images. It turned out a little harder than I expected (I was anticipating 5 finishers, not 1) but not by much- and I didn't sacrifice quality at any step of the process. Will I be writing any more contests on my own? Probably, I have a couple of ideas. It takes a lot of time and additional effort to get a contest together, though looking back I'm extremely proud of the set as a whole. Lots of mixed feelings here.

Keep an eye out for more from me- I've got a bunch of variant puzzles coming fairly soon!

Puzzles #246, #247 & #248 - Pisces (Anglers)

Pisces is literally a fish. Anglers is literally a type that has fish in it. What other choice could I reasonably make for the Puzzle Zodiac? All three of these were quite interesting to make, though I'm not convinced the type has all that much potential. Or maybe I just don't know how to tap it?

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Oddly, the example puzzle turned out to be the hardest one to make. I'm not sure how much of that is because of my chosen layout, though.

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Puzzle 23 on the test, worth 20 points, themed on the Pisces sign. Having 5 and 8 on two sides, and 6 and 9 on the other two sides just kind of happened as I was constructing this one. 12 fish on a 9x9 grid is surprisingly dense!

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Puzzle 24 on the test, worth 30 points, and themed with pairs of each clue. The benefit of cluing this way is that I didn't have to worry about parity, but the downside was that it was tough to specify uniquely while maintaining the theme. Somehow 19 ended up working well!

Puzzles #243, #244 & #245 - Aquarius (Aquarium)

Aquarius was the actual easiest pick for a Puzzle Zodiac type- it had to be Aquarium. I briefly toyed with Ripple Effect but it really did have to be Aquarium.

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Like with the Double Chocolate, I themed the example on the fact that it is an example, and made sure to show that water level did not have to be consistent across a room, if there were no walls in between. It might or might not be the standard for the genre- I don't actually know, I just know that it's what I'm familiar with.

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Puzzle 21 on the test, worth 20 points, and themed on the Aquarius sign. I attempted to make a 9x9 with the sign as two solid regions without much success in making an interesting puzzle, and so I dropped down to 7x7 with a bunch of 1x1 regions. I think that there's one key step required here that's a bit less obvious.

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Puzzle 22 on the test, worth 30 points, and LMI themed. I... actually made this before I checked that LMI would be willing to host the contest, so it's a good thing that they were!

Puzzles #240, #241 & #242 - Capricorn (Icelom)

I really wanted to include a crossing genre in the Puzzle Zodiac test, and Icelom was the first one I hit on a good idea for as it doesn't require all ice cells to be visited. I matched it to Capricorn on looking up what sign is allegedly associated with ice, and that's what came up as the answer.

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The example puzzle I used- again, playing with different symmetries. Most puzzles of this type don't put numbers on ice cells, but as with LITS and internal borders I had no such preconception and thought it could make for some nice puzzles.

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Puzzle 19 on the test, worth 20 points, themed on the Capricorn sign. As with the other less abstract symbols I focused on finding the right aesthetic balance first, and then made a puzzle on top of it. I wasn't great at topological deductions when I made this puzzle so it's fairly simple to solve. It still has a smooth path and I knew having some easier puzzles on the test was a good thing.

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Puzzle 20 on the test, worth 40 points, and themed logically again. I don't have many comments on this particular puzzle, other than that it's laid out in a very specific way to have a very specific deduction involved, that's well worth finding.

Puzzles #237, #238 & #239 - Sagittarius (Sashigane Fillomino)

As Sagittarius is an arrow, I knew that for the Puzzle Zodiac I needed a type with pure arrow clues. The most common type like that is Sashigane, and as I wanted a common type, uncommon type and variant in each class of puzzle, I decided to combine it with the Fillomino rule. I've seen a few puzzles with this variant before and so I knew it added some interesting depth.

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I tried for a while to make a 6x6 example without much success- like Foursight, this type really needs some room to move in order to work.

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Puzzle 17 on the test, worth 30 points, themed on the Sagittarius sign. I wasn't sure if I would be able to manage making the puzzle with just an arrow out of arrows, but after the top left worked out I really did try. I ended up with about 6 solutions, and so added another arrow in the corner to resolve the rest uniquely.

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Puzzle 18 on the test, worth 40 points, and a failed attempt at an anti-symmetric (sum to 10) theme. I thought I had it at one point but there were two solutions, so I adjusted the back half of the solve, and made sure to maintain the focus on only circled number clues as a counterpoint to the prior puzzle. I love it when a puzzle genre can be used to make such different puzzles as these two, and I think that shows through most of this set.

Puzzles #234, #235 & #236 - Scorpio (Cave)

If you couldn't tell by now Cave is one of my favorite types, and it fit well with Scorpio for the Puzzle Zodiac. I apparently have a bit of a knack for constructing these, as I provided one for the Typed Logic contest as well as a couple I can't share yet for other sources.

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Originally, I tried to have 8 unique numbers for the example puzzle, but after tinkering with it a bit I settled on this arrangement. A pretty open solve, again to introduce the genre.

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Puzzle 15 on the test, worth 20 points, themed on the Scorpio sign and with only odd numbers. Cave is such a flexible type with its visual and logical theming available- I found this one tricky and was leaning towards 30 points until it was testsolved in under a minute. It's still probably the hardest 20 pointer on the test, however.

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Puzzle 16 on the test, worth 50 points, and themed in the logical path. This construction was some good practice in specifically trying to force things to happen a certain way. I'm quite pleased with how this turned out as I ran into a lot of problems trying to keep the givens arranged in a way that would facilitate what I was looking for.

Puzzles #231, #232 & #233 - Libra (Minarism)

I'm running out of ways to introduce the Puzzle Zodiac but I'm only halfway through posting the puzzles from it help

Anyway part of my genre selection was to have 3 each of shading, loop/path, region division, and number/object placement puzzles. Even within those types, I wanted variety- and with 1.5 object placement and 1 latin square, naturally I went for another latin square in Minarism. Ripple Effect was something I considered here, with Balance Loop for Libra, but things matched up better and had a better aesthetic balance like this, I think.

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For the example puzzle, I went with an antisymmetric theme which is always interesting in a type like this. The solve is pretty straightforward and the construction is like this more to look nice and for my own enjoyment than anything else.

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Puzzle 13 on the test, worth 20 points, and themed on the Libra sign. I wanted to focus more on the difference clues here, and started with the 1-5 string along the top and built from there.

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Puzzle 14 on the test, worth 70 points, and symmetrically themed. Minarism is one of those types where placing the same clues symmetrically doesn't result in the same deductions. As is probably obvious, as a counterpoint to puzzle 13 I went with an inequality focus here. This slot had the only puzzle other than the Foursight example I scrapped, because when constructing it I imagined the break-in and everything after it wasn't deducible. Somehow it still turned out unique, but it wasn't suited for posting on this blog, let alone a competition!

Puzzles #228, #229 & #230 - Virgo (Star Battle Sudoku)

As much as it's not my favorite thing to solve, I knew for the Puzzle Zodiac I should include some sort of Sudoku puzzle. So when browsing variants I spotted Star Battle Sudoku and thought that it would be a perfect fit, merging number placement and object placement into one puzzle. For the puzz.link interfaces, the highest placeable number(s) represent stars, and the solution should contain (1-5 and 1 star) or (1-7 and 2 stars) in every row, column and region with no stars sharing an edge or corner.

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For the example puzzle, my goal was to make sure that it was fairly easy. To that end, I placed an S into the givens because why not?

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Puzzle 11 on the test, worth 20 points, and nicknamed "5 star confusion". This is a puzzle that just kind of ended up working out, as I placed in some numbers arbitrarily and deduced as much as I could, which was most of the grid. My only goal was to have 5 and star disambiguated by the Star Battle touching constraint, and this was free points for most people.

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Puzzle 12 on the test, worth 50 points, and themed on the Virgo sign. It took me a very long time to hit on an arrangement of givens that looked like Virgo, and even once I did I had way too many givens to make an interesting puzzle and I kept running into dead ends. Eventually I removed some givens and tried moving the symbol around the grid before finally hitting on this arrangement. The rest of the fill took a bit of work to resolve, too. Ultimately any sudoku contest regulars blasted through this puzzle in no time and often earned over 20 points per minute. Does that mean it was overvalued? I don't think so- I balanced the points around more general puzzle people, which means that anyone who specializes in a type would earn more points per minute, compared to making a couple puzzles bad points per minute for most people.

Puzzles #225, #226 & #227 - Leo (Akari)

Fun fact about the Puzzle Zodiac: my original thought for Leo was Nurimisaki, not Akari, playing on cats hiding in corners instead of chasing lights. Both contest puzzles here are 10x10, the only time in the contest that both puzzles of the same genre are the same size. Even still, the second one is probably a good bit harder?

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The fun thing about making example puzzles is that I didn't have to worry as much about an interesting solve path as much as demonstrating the key points of the type. I enjoyed trying to add in an aesthetic flair for these.

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Puzzle 9 on the test, worth 20 points, and themed on the Leo sign. As usual for the zodiac themes, I placed down the blocks first and then tried to clue it in an interesting and non-trivial way.

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Puzzle 10 on the test, worth 30 points, and no real theme beyond the L shaped blocks. I had a lot of trouble trying to come up with a good theme for this puzzle, and an even harder time trying to make it non-trivial. It's really easy for an Akari clue to break all the logic up to that point...

Puzzles #221 - #224 - Cancer (Foursight)

So this is probably the weirdest and least thematic pick for the Puzzle Zodiac, but I swear I have a good...ish reason for it. So all the way back last year when I was first making Foursight puzzles, I hit on a nice given layout that, once I'd made the puzzle, I realized looked like the Cancer symbol. Afterwards I had an idea to theme a set of puzzles around all 13 zodiac signs, and shortly after had the idea to turn it into a contest. So when I sat down to pick the rest of the types for it, shading puzzles were the hardest to pick by a longshot just because of how strange this pick was.

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My first attempt at an example puzzle... didn't go so well, so I made a second one to replace it for the instruction booklet.

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Second attempt at an example, with a bit more interesting theming and logic. Still not the greatest example, in hindsight, but Foursight is not a type that works well on small grids.

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Puzzle 7 on the test, worth 40 points, and themed on the Cancer sign. The puzzle that started it all, over a year ago... according to my personal spreadsheet, this was the 64th puzzle I made. The next number for a puzzle on this test? 116. Anyway, this isn't that tough for a Foursight but the type is inherently a slow and tricky solve.

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Puzzle 8 on the test, worth 70 points, and themed on the main diagonal. I knew from the time I made the previous puzzle that I wanted to have some larger empty spaces and settled on this layout, but it took me until construction 136 to actually get around to making this puzzle. There's a couple parts that are tough to see here and this was the second least solved puzzle on the test- not really surprising to me given the type, however.

Puzzles #218, #219 & #220 - Gemini (Double Chocolate)

One of the easiest genre picks for the Puzzle Zodiac was Gemini. Double Chocolate literally has double in the name! I tried to keep a balance of different types of puzzle in the contest, and region division ended up filled first due to another obvious choice later on.

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I themed the example puzzle on the fact that it's an example. Probably overclued, but I wanted to make sure that it showcased a reflection to make it clear that those are allowed.

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Puzzle 5 on the test, worth 30 points, and themed on the Gemini sign. It took me longer to settle on a shaded cell pattern for this grid than it did to make the rest of the puzzle- I've always been partial to different kinds of symmetry for shaded cells and numbers in this type, as it can result in some wildly varied kinds of deductions.

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Puzzle 6 on the test, worth a whopping 80 points, and themed vaguely on a chocolate wrapper. This is one of those grids where a couple things just kind of worked out, in large part due to the logical theming. But still, those corners gave me a ton of trouble and I kept running into endings that were impossible to satisfy at all when constructing this.

Make sure to check back tomorrow for the Foursights- they won't show up on puzz.link/db, which is where I know most of my traffic comes from :P

Puzzles #215, #216 & #217 - Taurus (Araf)

As I think might be clear by now, for Puzzle Zodiac I tried to pick puzzle genres that were at least somewhat thematic to the zodiac sign they represented. For Taurus, the most defining feature is the two large horns, and that reminded me of Araf for some reason.

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For the example puzzle, I wasn't sure what kind of theming I wanted to go for until I had the thought of placing a 1234 in the top corner. I didn't dare dream that this sort of theming would end up creating a unique puzzle, but it did!

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Puzzle 3 on the test, worth 30 points, and themed on the Taurus sign. I tinkered with placing givens on the border at first to try to get the layout correct but ultimately couldn't find a way to make it look nice except this 6x6. Once I had the layout in place, it was easy to embed a few deductions for a fairly smooth solve.

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Puzzle 4 on the test, worth 50 points, and themed around partial arithmetic sequences on the outside edges, and a hidden logical theme. Araf can always be a bit of a fiddly type to get to resolve the way you want it to and this puzzle was no exception. It's always a good feeling when the acceptable lower and upper bounds for a clue are equal- see if you can find the one I'm referring to!

Puzzles #212, #213 & #214 - Aries (Slitherlink S&W)

My puzzle contest over at LMI, Puzzle Zodiac, concluded recently. The consensus seems to be that the set of 25 puzzles (and 13 examples) is of extremely high quality, and also quite tough as a competition set. This consensus is borne out in the results, as the contest had only one finisher! One of the toughest puzzles in the set was the second Slitherlink (Sheep and Wolves) puzzle, and I'm very pleased with how all of these puzzles turned out. For the puzz.link links, all sheep (S) are replaced by a 4 and all wolves (W) are replaced with a ?.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

This was the example puzzle for the type- I wanted to make a relatively simple puzzle with a touch of antisymmetry.

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Puzzle 1 on the test, worth 30 points, and themed on the Aries sign. I started by placing down all of the sheep and wolves, and then tried to keep the pattern largely intact with numeric clues to specify the rest of the puzzle. It turns out there's a lot of interesting deductions that follow from the layout here.

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Puzzle 2 on the test, worth 60 points, and themed around a domino pattern with sheep and wolves on opposite sides. In contrast to the other slitherlink, where I used the variant rule to drive the layout, I wanted to use the variant sparingly but still have it drive large parts of the solve. My favorite part of the solve is how the left side resolves- there's some intricate steps to discover that I put a lot of effort into trying to create and preserve.

Puzzle #211 - Surprising Collision (Yajisan-Kazusan to Ringring)

Logic Showcase 19 recently concluded, which tasked constructors with making a Yajisan-Kazusan puzzle without any trivially unsatisfiable clues. Somehow, both me and someone else elected to make a relay puzzle to the same genre- Ringring! Relay puzzles involve solving one puzzle and using the solution as input for another puzzle. In this case, the Yajisan-Kazusan shaded cells must be solved as a Ringring puzzle. This puzzle placed in the middle of a strong field of entries, and I think it has a nice flow to the solve.

puzz.link interface      empty Ringring interface      penpa interface

Puzzles #208, #209 & #210 - Medusa (Snake)

When I make Snake puzzles, it seems they turn out pretty non-standard. Something about the usual style just doesn't seem to click with me. The first one today is heavily themed around one specific deduction, the second one has no outside clues and a hopefully interesting solve path, and the third one is more visually themed and quite difficult. There do exist a set of reasonable deductions and lookaheads to solve it, though I wouldn't fault anyone if they don't find them.

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One more puzzle until I'll start posting the Puzzle Zodiac puzzles here.

Puzzles #204 - #207 - Four Sided Fantasy (Shikaku)

I made a few Shikaku puzzles to experiment with unclued circles, as cluing every circle can easily short-circuit deductions and logical paths. These are also fairly easy to make quickly without compromising being interesting and varied, so that's neat too!

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Puzzles #202 & #203 - TOPOLOGY *handwaves* (Numberlink/Kaero)

Outside of the occasional Haisu, I haven't really tried making puzzles with topological arguments or solving largely topological types rigorously, and have taken to joking about handwaving any topology deductions I make. So I tried making a Numberlink and kept having trouble, and eventually turned up this puzzle.

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In between playing CC2LP1, which is the first community set for Chip's Challenge 2, I tried to make a Kaero, and it shows. You should probably try CC2LP1 if you have the game, it's really enjoyable. What was less enjoyable was finding many, many alternate solutions to this puzzle, but the final solve path has some interesting logic available.

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Puzzle #201 - VVVVVV (Pentominous)

Just a quick Pentominous puzzle I threw together this morning, inspired by a similar one using P clues by Deusovi.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

I'm going to start using Swaroop's fork of penpa instead as it's being actively updated. Past links will remain as they are and the interfaces for the Puzzle Zodiac puzzles will also remain rjudman links. Speaking of, that contest starts in 3 days!