Puzzle #303 - Oh, Nine (Araf)

Yep, it's another puzzle of mine published over at GMPuzzles, this time an Araf. I'm extremely happy with this construction- it took some work to get the theme to function at all in a non-trivial way. The solve path is also surprisingly varied for the theme of only using the digit 9.

Check out the puzzle here.

Puzzle #302 - Electric Fence (Barns)

Lately, my puzzle constructions have been inspired by what other people are making. In this case, someone on the Chip's Challenge Discord made a Barns puzzle in the form of a CC2 level, and I had an idea to show a bit more of what could be done with the type.

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Puzzle #301 - Miniature (Yajilin)

There was recently some discussion on Puzzlers Club about low clue Yajilin puzzles, so I took the opportunity to make a few miniatures. This one isn't a low clue, is low difficulty, but high in elegance.

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I said I made a few miniatures, which is true. I made three more Yajilins (4x4, 5x5, 6x6) with low clue counts, and I also thought it'd be nice to share a bonus Kurotto I made, too :)

4x4      5x5      6x6      Kurotto

Puzzle #300 - Colorblind Loop

For my 300th puzzle (wow I made it to 300 yay!) on this blog, I'm sharing the second half of my secret solver gift for wen, called Colorblind Loop. It's inspired by Bram de Laat's Four Color Loop, where instead of using 4 loop genres with numbered rooms, I decided to go with 4 loop genres that use black and white symbols. The rules are a little lengthy but shouldn't be too hard to understand as it's mostly just 4 standard genres mashed together.

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Colorblind Loop: Draw a single non-intersecting loop orthogonally connecting cell centers. Each region obeys one of four constraints, to be determined during solving. Adjacent regions may not require the same constraint. (note that this means a region may satisfy multiple constraints, but only one will be required)

Constraint 1: Black and white circles obey Masyu rules.

Constraint 2: Black and white circles obey Balance Loop rules.

Constraint 3: This region obeys Moon or Sun rules. The region may only be visited once. During this visit, all circles of one color will be touched and all circles of the other color must not be used. Travelling around the full final loop, the color of the circle used in all regions with this constraint must alternate. (no such restriction applies to non-Moon or Sun regions)

Constraint 4: This region obeys Kuroshiro Loop rules. All cells in the region must be used. Any loop segment that enters this region must not turn between circles of the same color, and must turn exactly once between circles of different colors. (this includes visits to the region that do not touch any circles!) The loop may turn or travel straight freely on a circle.

I really like some of the things I managed to fit into this grid, both aesthetically and logically. Total construction and testing time on this was probably about 10 hours, which is a bit less than last year- though some of that was due to making errors last year, while this construction process was surprisingly error free!

Puzzles #296 - #299 - Not-So-Secret Solver (Masyu, Balance Loop, Moon or Sun, Kuroshiro Loop)

I participated in the Puzzlers Club Secret Solver event again this year, and this time was assigned wen (who I've seen have an account name of wen1now somewhere, though I can't remember where), someone who has made some pretty insane puzzles. I decided to break out an idea I'd had lying around for a while and successfully constructed it- but more on that tomorrow.

I had about a week left until the deadline and thought it'd be funny to send some vanilla puzzles first, framed like they were the entire gift. The "real" puzzle would then be an extra surprise after solving the rest. I'm not sure entirely how it went over, so I hope it was amusing and that the initial set of 4 wasn't disappointing! The link I originally sent can be found here and the rules for each of Masyu, Balance Loop, Moon or Sun and Kuroshiro Loop can be found on their links.

Happy solving!

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The Masyu didn't end up very challenging, as early on I decided to focus more on a fairly restricted aesthetic theme.

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Like with the Masyu, the Balance Loop aesthetic ended up driving much of the solve. Most of my effort went into resolving the right side uniquely! This is probably my favorite of these 4.

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This Moon or Sun was a fun challenge to construct- limiting placements in this genre takes some creative region stretching to make it work nicely.

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Kuroshiro Loop can take on a life of its own when constructing, especially when targeting an arrangement of givens that looks like something. I ran into a few situations where I needed a circle to be both colors simultaneously, but eventually found a nice way to change the N that resulted in a unique puzzle with a nice solve path.

Puzzle #295 - Stand Divided (Easy as ABC [no 2x2])

I was a bit inspired by Fuzuli for this puzzle, which is a similar latin square type to Easy as ABC in that there are empty spaces. So I decided to try to make an Easy as ABC where no 2x2 square can be filled with letters- and once I settled on a break-in, I spent over an hour trying to make the rest of the theme work the way I wanted it to.

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Puzzle #294 - The Other Snake (Slitherlink)

I made another Slitherlink puzzle. It turned out pretty tough. I really like the break-in I came up with here and most of the rest of the solve- there's one part that I don't like as much, but at least it's still thematic.

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Puzzle #293 - Bounce (Simple Loop)

A couple weeks ago, the Chip's Challenge Discord was discussing a few levels that behaved like Simple Loop. The most notable of these were my own Pairing Off (demonstrating an entry/parity argument in the corners) and David "pieguy" Stolp's the wrong parity (which has 1920 different solution paths from some local ambiguities, but is still a fascinating experience to solve). I said that I'd learned some tricks that could result in making a level of that style that was even harder, and whipped up this puzzle to demonstrate. I also made a second puzzle beforehand to outline a different deduction, which is similar to a prior puzzle I've posted so I'll just include it here as a bonus. The intended step can be circumvented there, anyway.

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Seasoned veterans of the type will see what I'm going for here without any trouble.

Puzzle #292 - BABA IS CEDE (Easy as ABC)

Easy as ABC is a type I've tried constructing a few times in the past, usually with A-F trying to theme it around the word facade without success. This particular construction was something I made after yet another failed attempt at that theme, since I decided it would probably be easier to make a 7x7 than an 8x8 or even 9x9.

This solve ended up working out way better than I expected it to.

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Puzzle #291 - Runespoor (Hebi)

Hebi is a really strange puzzle genre with some neat deductions available. This puzzle was inspired by a combination of thinking about how strings of odd lengths can't normally be uniquely clued by their center alone (the direction is ambiguous) and solving another Hebi puzzle using a bunch of 4s. Thanks to Eric Fox and Jamie Hargrove for testing this one for me to reassure me that it's unique!

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I'm not totally back to posting regular puzzles, but I do have a few more on the way, including my secret solver constructions, ending at puzzle 300.