Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Puzzle #336 - Failed Practice (Cipher Skyscrapers)

The third round of the Puzzle Grand Prix was held last weekend, and in some slight preparation for the puzzle I was most scared of, a Cipher Skyscrapers, I made one. But then the ending didn't quite work well without a hacky patch and then I didn't notice that the patch broke everything so there were 0 solutions... which I suppose matches my GP experience as I finished the round. But I broke the Skyscrapers and had to redo it and also had answer key errors on both Shakashakas resulting in a (for me) poor showing. Hopefully I can make that up in future rounds and get a clean finish on a tough one.

Anyway, solve as a regular Skyscrapers puzzle where each letter (A-D) stands for a different number.

Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Puzzles #332 - #335 - Small Packages (Variety)

With the results for Logic Showcase 22 out (I did not do well and I have literally no idea why), I can finally share my entries for it. First up is a chimera I've wanted to make for a long time, Tapa and Tapa-Like Loop! For a while I wasn't sure if it was going to be possible to make one of these on a 6x6 grid that wasn't trivial, but I managed to find this arrangement using a couple question marks to bridge the gaps. I'm honestly shocked that this didn't do better, I think it was one of the best puzzles entered in the showcase since an interesting chimera on both sides is tough enough without the size restriction.

I also made a standard Minarism with a nice flow and visual theme. It's nothing too special, but there's nothing wrong with simple, elegant designs.

Lastly, I made a last minute Pentominous with some tricky bits to pin down, themed on the word UNITY. The Tapa chimera was definitely my favorite of the entries yet all three of these received the same amount of votes.

Sunday, March 28, 2021

Puzzles #329, #330 & #331 - Puzzles from Concentrate

I know, I know, I didn't put the puzzle types in the post title today even though I usually do. In my defense, writing out Cipher ShikakuFive?Cells and Ringring would have made it way too long, even for my standards, so you'll have to settle for the tags. These were made for or around the time of Logic Showcase 22, either as entries or in response to people discussing entries. The requirement was to make a puzzle using 36 or less cells.

First up, a Cipher Shikaku. Standard Shikaku rules, except each number has been replaced by a letter, different letters represent different values and the same letter must represent the same value. Pretty obvious why I rejected this one- I had 3 that I liked a lot more. There's not much substance here though it's pretty amusing that it works at all.

Secondly, I tried revisiting one of the very first puzzles I posted on this blog, a Fivecells/Palisade puzzle where the areas must be size 1-8 exactly once each. I couldn't quite get something overall satisfying out of it- everything felt too clue dense and my first attempt was broken. After it was brought to my attention, I made this antisymmetric one to replace it- low difficulty but it has a nice flow.
Also, someone entered a Fillomino variant where each shaded cell must contain a different value- which is an idea I wish I thought of. I wasn't quite able to make one of those I liked, either, though I did make one that worked that I preferred to the showcase entry. Maybe I'll have one of those to share soon?

Lastly, here's a Ringring. Low clue 6x6s were being discussed, and an idea I had didn't quite work on that size grid. So I tried it on an 8x8 and it didn't play nice, so I tried a 7x7 which was just right.

Saturday, March 27, 2021

Puzzle #328 - Sweet Duel (Honey Islands)

I hadn't submitted a puzzle to PuzzleDuel in a while. So I made a Honey Islands (6 islands, 6 hexes) themed that way. This one was... divisive to say the least.
Hexagons are fun.


:)

Saturday, March 20, 2021

Puzzle #327 - Shikaku Summit

Recently, Walker Anderson posted a 10x100 Slitherlink that was pretty neat. Someone else posted a Tapa with the same dimensions, so I thought I'd give the size a try with a Shikaku puzzle. I tried to vary the themes throughout with a few parts that resolve mostly on their own as a sort of checksum- hopefully you enjoy solving this as much as I enjoyed making it. Link before the image because, well, it's a tall image.

Friday, March 19, 2021

Puzzles #321 - #326 - Serpent's Tower (Snake and Variations)

A while back I made a Chip's Challenge 2 level featuring a few Snake puzzles, using doppelgangers to enforce walking along the correct path in each room. As a result, these are generally easier than my usual fare as I needed to make sure they were plausible to solve Witness-style without wrong moves!
Naturally, I started very small to introduce the basics. For the authentic experience, start in the bottom right and only shade cells adjacent to there until you're done.
Then I took it a step farther in the level with two possible starting locations (the second was in R7C6). It was supposed to be fairly trivial to determine the correct starting location, and so I've simply put the puzzle here.
Variant puzzle: Form a loop instead of a path. In the level, this room was entered moving right. It might be a little mean as there's a more structural deduction to really get going here.
Variant puzzle: Instead of outside clues, there are numbers inside the grid. These numbers may not be shaded and give the number of shaded cells surrounding them. As usual, this puzzle started at the bottom and was meant to be a step back in difficulty from the prior.
Variant puzzle: In addition to the previous set of rules, the snake must travel straight over all white circles and turn over all gray circles. Designing this puzzle for the CC2 level was extra challenging, as you could only see the bottom half before having to make the first move from the lower left. From that, I made sure that the start was evident from just what was visible.

That was the last Snake puzzle from my CC2 level, but I do have one more lying around as a bonus. Warning: may not have a clean logical path, but it probably does?

I still have another half dozen unposted puzzles I can post soon, though I'll spread those out one at a time.

Sunday, March 14, 2021

Puzzle #320 - Happy Pi Day! (Chocona)

It's March 14th, pi day, and so obviously I had to make a puzzle themed on pi. So I made a Chocona for the added play on chocolate pie, which is an excellent dessert. This one shouldn't be too tough to crack.

I actually have a small pile of puzzles that I've made that I haven't got around to posting yet- they're coming soon™.