Puzzle #384 - A Learning Experience (Every Second Straight)

I believe that I've mentioned that I'm making 1 puzzle for every genre that PuzzleDuel has, to submit in bulk and provide quality puzzles for everyone. Well, I recently got to Every Second Straight, a loop genre that I only knew from the site. To make matters worse, I solved all prior examples by intuition and tweaking, and had no idea where to begin logically. I suspect many solvers of my puzzle were in the same boat, though I promise there's a clean path through this puzzle with the right knowledge.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface      PuzzleDuel interface

Solving tips after the break. And by tips, I mostly mean revealing the biggest secret this genre holds.

Puzzle #383 - Assisted (Yajilin)

I'm not completely sure why, but tonight I decided to try to use semiexp's pzprrt tool to create a fair Yajilin with a difficult to execute theme. I then tested the solve afterwards to make sure it was reasonable and found that there was not only a nice path through, but the difficulty generally increased throughout the solve. The tool assistance definitely helped, but this puzzle wouldn't have turned out as well as it did without the constructing experience I already had to help guide me in directions I knew would be useful. Enjoy!

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #382 - Subdivided (Slitherlink)

Very minor mechanics spoiler for The Witness below the break.

Puzzle #381 - What. (Non-Consecutive Futoshiki)

Recently (and by recently I mean a couple weeks ago, because I'm slow at updating my blog) wand posted an automated tool for 6x6 and 7x7 non-consecutive Futoshiki puzzles. Futoshiki is a subset of Minarism, so... I played around with it a bit and made an extremely unfriendly 7x7 that I don't want to share, and this 4 clue 6x6. Surprisingly, this one actually has a very nice solve path! I definitely recommend giving it a try before playing with the tool yourself.

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #380 - Fixed (Pipelink)

Hi again jkitty, I finally made a vanilla Pipelink. I was curious if it was possible to make a non-trivial puzzle with only one clue type and orientation, and I think I succeeded.

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #379 - Plus One (Yajilin)

I may have forgotten to post my large Yajilin that was posted to GMP while I was going through the puzzles from Hexagony. This one was really fun to make, even though I ran into a lot of issues with resolving the 6x6 areas uniquely. The original version of the puzzle did not have symmetric clue placements, but once I had working logic I liked I moved most of the clues to equivalent locations and added a few useless ones to make everything fully symmetric.

Enjoy the puzzle!

Puzzle #378 - Twin Snakes (LITS)

One of my LITS puzzles was posted on GMP "today"! I like the break-in and theme on this one quite a lot, even if it falls very quickly once getting that break-in like many LITS puzzles do.

But yeah, like usual, no direct link or image since this puzzle is hosted offsite.

Puzzle #377 - Not So Simple Loop

Recently, Logic Showcase 25 on Puzzlers Club concluded, with the prompt being to make a puzzle with a non-square grid. I made a last minute Simple Loop.

Or, you know. A not so simple loop going through 6 different tilings that penpa has. No interface link here, just a loop puzzle that was a lot of fun to make- if any given part wasn't working out, I could just trash it and move to the next one! That actually did happen once, too. I'm quite happy with how this ended up turning out, even if I never want to see another triangular grid again.