Puzzles #480 & #481 - Heyawakes for the Hike

Heyawake Hike recently concluded on LMI as the 8th daily contest since their revival. The puzzles were made by Sam Cappelman-Lynes and are generally very excellent, I'd highly recommend trying them out. I'd also like to congratulate nishinanntoka for a phenomenal performance as well.

But first, here's a puzzle I made.

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This is definitely the sort of design that looks like it would be unfair, but there's some surprisingly neat logic to be found here.

Anyway on the competition - I managed to win! (I recorded a video but halfway through it loses audio for no reason so it's useless)

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Just like Nurimisaki Nomad, I made a trophy shaped puzzle to celebrate. Unlike Nurimisaki Nomad, I actually made this before attempting the final puzzle to try to practice a bit. And I basically never practice for competitions - it psyches me out too much to do anything more than solve a couple puzzles to get into a more deduction-focused mental mode.

In other puzzling news, I also crossed 2700 rating on puzzleduel (being the third solver to do this, after Ken Endo and Freddie Hand) and then reached 2738 (and counting???) in the process of clocking the first? 3000 rating full week (Caiji logged 3200+ on the same week but didn't attempt the hardest puzzle) and dominantly winning Doubleshow 7. If this first week of the new year goes well I may reach an astronomical 2750 which would, I believe, be the highest rating peak in the history of the site, done at a time when the competition is fiercer than any past peak. Even if not, I reached 2700 which has been a pipe dream for a long time, considering my peak before October was about 2650. I don't know what happened to me these past few months but something must have clicked.

Puzz.link update!

So, puzz.link updated today to import around 40 new genres from pzprxs! I've made puzzles in a few of these genres before, and took the time to go back and update the old no solution check variant links I had with full links. The penpa links provided still exist and I haven't switched out any of the images, just links. For completions' sake I'm reposting those puzzles below - if you've solved my blog up to this point, you've seen all of these before. If you're going backwards, you'll see all of these in the future.

If you're visiting from puzz.link/db? Hello! Enjoy the puzzles :)

Pentominous (previously appeared: #201, #335 - Logic Showcase 22, #308 - Pentomino Puzzle Pack. #317-#318)

https://puzz.link/p?pentominous/10/5/k7k7p7g7i7x7h

https://puzz.link/p?pentominous/7/5/h6r3gag5r1h

https://puzz.link/p?pentominous/9/9/y72ma0n1gcg8nb4m56y

https://puzz.link/p?pentominous/5/5/zk00080gg0

https://puzz.link/p?pentominous/10/10/zzzzz080gi14o1g000000000c006o03o00030o06c

Snake Pit (previously appeared: #156 - Typed Logic, #459)

https://puzz.link/p?snakepit/9/9/q8g6g4r2h3h4j3g3j5h6h2r4g5g7q0000001090a01390a0109030000

https://puzz.link/p?snakepit/10/10/s7i8j2g4h8m6h2j9i4j6i3j8h6m9h4g8j8i6si00ik102b6266007in0022626f036ii00i

Rassi Silai (previously appeared: #460)

https://puzz.link/p?rassi/25/7/4j1la977ak3eel888845mmm8bddd8miqq004e48s208g0uecpp44408000vg3002

Anglers (previously appeared: #246-#248 - Puzzle Zodiac)

https://puzz.link/p?anglers/6/6/n1m1h1m1z7cn9c

https://puzz.link/p?anglers/9/9/p1k1i1i1r1g1g1g1r1i1i1k1s9g9la77g7g6h96g6l7ai

https://puzz.link/p?anglers/10/10/i1m1i1q1h1w1h1w1h1q1i1m1m77n-14-14j66j99j99j55

Statue Park (previously appeared: #118-#121 - Logic Showcase 13)

https://puzz.link/p?statuepark/7/7/pa9061a0f700lg010//t

https://puzz.link/p?statuepark/9/9/632l009690n1f05ig0232007963/9/11g/12o/13s/22e/14u/23lg/22u/23mg/23eg

https://puzz.link/p?statuepark/13/10/o90ji00000000iaf9900000000ejogi00000000hkoq9//p

https://puzz.link/p?statuepark/11/11/0008006202600i06i000i006i000k260226020000/12/13s/22m/14u/23lg/23mg/15v/24lc/24lk/32ng/33ie/33j6/33ji

Light and Shadow (previously appeared: #159 - Typed Logic)

https://puzz.link/p?lightshadow/10/10/-18q9g-17w-17g-15zpcg-10w-16g-30q7

Puzzle #479 - Not a Cursed Yajilin

I promise that this Yajilin puzzle has a fair solution path, even if it doesn't look like it would.

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This one doesn't. Try at your own risk.

Puzzles #477 & #478 - More Nurimisaki

I ended up making a couple more Nurimisaki puzzles after Nurimisaki Nomad. The type is just fun to play around with even if making aesthetic puzzles with it is extremely hard - the type often just keeps going, and also can have unresolvable ambiguities crop up late in a puzzle.

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I was really surprised to find that an empty space that large would resolve by itself from just border 6s. A pretty neat easy puzzle.

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This one has a bit more bite to it and some fun connectivity arguments. The bottom right working was also a bit surprising, but I find that there's something surprising in most Nurimisaki puzzles, when looking for areas that don't look like they should work!

Puzzle #476 - Bulletin (Double Choco)

I am extremely proud of this Double Choco that was featured in Tambox Bulletin #22. It's a theme I'd wanted to try to execute for a long while and only just got around to trying. I had a few near misses including a lot of variations with a 7 instead of an 8 that had only 2 solutions left, and this version with the 8 is a bit rougher in places than I was originally going for. That said there's still a clean logical solution path through this puzzle which is thematically a bit absurd.

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Puzzle #475 - Simple Loop

I don't have anything to say about this Simple Loop puzzle.

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Puzzles #473 & #474 - Live Puzzle Creations (Yajilin, Kurotto)

I made a few puzzles live in a Discord call with some friends to show my process a little bit. First I made a Yajilin (this was between finishing making Yajilin Yacht and the contest starting) to show how I could make 21 puzzles + rejects in 2 weeks reasonably, without sacrificing quality. I went for a flowy puzzle and ended up just adjusting to 10x11 to make it work nicely.

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A month or so later I made a Kurotto under similar circumstances. The theme I wanted to go for fought me so hard on the right side but I did eventually come up with something close to what I wanted that solved well. This puzzle was also made using network play, so I lacked undo tools - nice to prove to myself that I can, but I still prefer having undo to more easily search the possibility space for what I ultimately want to go with.

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Puzzles #464 - 472 - Counting with Tapa

One night, a friend was doing some Tapa puzzles. I decided to make one for them afterwards. And by one, I mean 9 with the same ideas. Because it amused me.

Zero   One   Two   Three   Four   Five   Six   Seven   Eight

Puzzles #462 & #463 - Tetrominous and Variation (Fourcells)

Fourcells is not as cool as Fivecells is. Tetrominous is not as cool as Pentominous. The combination of rules, however, is pretty neat even if puzzles can spiral into no solutions really easily. Solve as a standard Fourcells puzzle, but regions of the same shape can't touch.

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As a joke, I also made an Isometric Tetrominous. Maybe the fact that it was made as a joke gives away the joke but I still think it's funny.

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Puzzle #461 - Sparsity (Yin Yang)

A few months ago I decided to experiment with low density puzzles in a few genres where "low density" is not trivialized by minimum or maximum values. Yin Yang doesn't have values and proved to be an interesting case study - this wasn't the lowest solution I found but it was one of the nicest solves I came across.

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Puzzle #460 - RASSI SILAI

X_Sheep has been maintaining a fork of pzpr for a while, and adding new genres to it that may actually make their way into puzz.link at some point. One of these types was Rassi Silai, and I'd never made one before. So I did.

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Puzzle #459 - X Boxes (Snake Pit X)

Snake Pit X is such a weird genre. I spent a few hours making this puzzle originally, but I kept accidentally making bad deductions where some uncircled numbers had to be heads. Okay, so the puzzle was completely broken - but I could fix it by giving a few heads in symmetric locations! Puzzle saved! Except there was still one more ugly alternative case, that I could fix with two extra 8s. Puzzle saved, and I thought I didn't need the heads any more!

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I, uh. Did need the heads still. So even though the puzzle didn't totally work the way I hoped it would, the final product still has a nice solve path.

Updated to add two circles to smooth the solve some.

Puzzle #458 - Zigzag Packing (Symmetry Aqre)

Another puzzle type in GPQ5 was Aqre, and the variant for the genre was Erqaqre, with the additional rule that every area must be rotationally symmetric. My puzzle in GPQ5 has the same theme as this, with no clues and all regions having an even area, but that puzzle has a smoother solve path I also have a regular Aqre in there that I'm really happy with, so check it out if you want to!

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Puzzle #457 - Symbolic (Tomtom)

A while back I made a Tomtom puzzle with all given operations, since typically I give none. I like how it turned out honestly, three cell rows are really interesting.

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Puzzle #456 - Plus One (Tapa-Like Loop)

GPQ5 recently came out on GMPuzzles, and I contributed a few puzzles to it. One of the puzzles I contributed was a Tapa-Like Loop, of which I offered a few options. One was used in the book, another was saved for the website, and this was rejected for being too similar to some other accepted puzzles.

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Puzzles #453, #454 & #455 - IPC 2022 Round 3 (Kakuro, Yajilin)

I was fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to contribute to and testsolve for the 2022 Indian Puzzle Championship. The third round was for puzzle types that appeared in the LMI Daily Contest series, and I made a Kakuro and two Yajilin worth 50, 25 and 40 points, respectively.

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I started by toying with a layout until I found one I liked that would support every clue with 2 directions having the same value in both directions. At the end of the puzzle, I was fortunate enough to allow having two unclued lines that intersected, which is always a neat thing to have happen.

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As for these two Yajilin puzzles? Both ended up giving me a lot of trouble to end up working out the way I wanted them to. The IPC puzzle was aesthetically challenging to balance while the logic mostly did what I wanted (though I didn't want to include a 4, I liked what it did enough to keep it). The 2022 puzzle on the other hand was excruciating to get a puzzle that worked at all, even though the aesthetic balance was easy to get something nice for. I think this was the 3rd or 4th working puzzle I turned up and it was by far the best one. All of these are puzzles I'm really happy with and I'd gladly contribute to a contest like this again in the future.

Puzzles #449 - 452 - IPC 2022 Round 2 (Yin Yang, Minarism, Haisu)

I was fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to contribute to and testsolve for the 2022 Indian Puzzle Championship. The second round was for puzzle types that did not appear in the years Puzzle Ramayan series, and I made a Yin Yang, Minarism and Haisu worth 20, 20 and 50 points, respectively.

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First, the "everGReen" Yin Yang. I didn't want this puzzle to be too trivialized by advanced knowledge and so went with an 11x11. After plunking down the G and R, I found that a lot of the puzzle already worked very nicely and from there it was reasonable enough to find aesthetically pleasing circles for the final corners.

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Eh, it's a puzzle. There's a neat insight for how to resolve everything and I like the 1-2-3 interactions, but given the chance to do this again I'd have gone for a 7x7 or something instead.

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Here's the 50 point... no, this was actually a possible puzzle that I offered (after struggling with a 9x9 or larger with a similar theme that just kept breaking over and over) if the round was trending hard, but I honestly wanted to make something better. So I did.

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Haisu is great. Haisu deserves more attention. Though Haisu in puzzle contests is apparently cursed, as the original draft of this puzzle had 3 solutions that I patched with an extra pair of clues, despite several testsolves not catching the ambiguity. Then the wrong puzzle image was accidentally used in the contest booklet! On the one hand, fortunately it was still mostly rigorous and the extraneous solutions were in a pair, but also... it's a bit annoying having the only ambiguous puzzle in the set, even if it took multiple points of failure to get to that point. Oh well, it happens sometimes. At least the intended puzzle is good.

Puzzles #445 - 448 - IPC 2022 Round 1 (Sashigane, Kurodoko)

I was fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to contribute to and testsolve for the 2022 Indian Puzzle Championship. The first round was for puzzle types that appeared in the years Puzzle Ramayan series, and I made a Sashigane and a Kurodoko worth 20 and 40 points, respectively.

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Wait, hang on, that was the first attempt at a fairly easy Sashigane. It didn't resolve super nicely so I tried again.

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Nope, that wasn't it either. Though I'm mostly happy with the symmetric theme and lack of numbers, it's not really a competition puzzle, you know? Glad I made it, but I had to try again.

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There we go. An 8 clue, one per row and column Sashigane. Pretty sparsely clued for the type and some neat logical steps along the way resulted in a puzzle I'm really happy with as a low point contest puzzle.

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As for the Kurodoko, my first attempt at making a puzzle I liked was a puzzle I liked. I've always had a particular affinity for these two genres and was glad to get the chance to make these.

Puzzles #443 & #444 - Eye of the Storm (Yajilin)

This was the 16th and final Yajilin puzzle from my somewhat recent LMI contest, Yajilin Yacht. A solution video for the contest puzzle can be found on the contest page. Additionally, I've included the original version of the final puzzle (no link for it as it's the same puzzle with 3 clues removed) and an antisymmetric puzzle that took me 10 minutes to testsolve logically that I rejected completely from the contest for being too hard as a bonus puzzle.

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This puzzle was the culmination of the entire contest up to this point. The break-in both relies on a single clue to confer any information, and also is definitively the most involved break-in of the contest. The rest of the solve utilizes so many techniques and has its own tricky steps throughout, keeping the feel of the puzzle fairly consistent even after that wall. Like Subdivision back at puzzle 12, it's a difficulty spike but unlike that puzzle, as the final boss of Yajilin Yacht that difficulty is earned. Only 156 people solved this beast during the contest, with 95 DNFs. I believe this is the highest DNF percentage in any daily contest and one of the lowest solve counts, behind only some early Tapa and Voxas puzzles from before the daily contests took off. And yet? The quality rating was one of the higher from Yajilin Yacht, while the closest comparison for DNF rate (the 1234 Voxas) has one of the lowest quality ratings from any daily contest. It's a brutal puzzle that solvers who persevered through it felt rewarded for their effort.

And really, that's all I wanted. For the contest as a whole I wanted to make some puzzles I was proud of, solvers to learn some things about Yajilin, and for people to feel like their time was well spent. I feel that I succeeded on all 3 of those goals.

Anyway here's a buffed version of the hardest contest puzzle with just 3 clues removed. I kind of prefer this version honestly, but wanted to nerf it for the contest.

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And finally, here's an antisymmetric puzzle with a similar idea that's extremely hard to solve rigorously. I'm a little sad that I didn't get to include an antisymmetric puzzle in Yajilin Yacht itself as a result of cutting this one. It really didn't fit with the rest of what I was going for, so into the bonus pile it went.

That's all the Yajilin puzzles for now! Just kidding, I contributed some puzzles to the 2022 Indian Puzzle Championship, which had a round with the puzzle types from the daily contests. And of course, I grabbed the Yajilin spots :)

Puzzle #442 - Gridlock (Yajilin)

This was the 15th Yajilin puzzle from my somewhat recent LMI contest, Yajilin Yacht. A solution video for the contest puzzle can be found on the contest page.

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Though this puzzle was definitely inspired by a similar TGE puzzle, I still wanted to do something of my own with it and not just rely on parity steps. The one thing I'm not a huge fan of here is the presence of the 0 clue (come to think of it, I have a similar gripe with Subdivision) but the break-in is in my opinion the second coolest break-in of the contest. What's the coolest? Check the next post.

Puzzle #441 - NIce KOol LIne (Yajilin)

This was the 14th Yajilin puzzle from my somewhat recent LMI contest, Yajilin Yacht. A solution video for the contest puzzle can be found on the contest page. I'm getting so bored with typing up these descriptions why did I decide to do this on my blog and why did I let myself fall so far behind on posting ahhhhhh oh right you're not here to listen to me ramble you're here for a puzzle.

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Surprisingly, I don't have a lot to say about this one. It's another Nikoli style puzzle but in my style, was somehow the highest rated puzzle of Yajilin Yacht, and I made it to very carefully rely on the presence of a single clue that without it, almost nothing is deducible. We'll come back to that later...

Puzzle #440 - Enter the Matrix (Yajilin)

This was the 13th Yajilin puzzle from my somewhat recent LMI contest, Yajilin Yacht. A solution video for the contest puzzle can be found on the contest page.

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Enter the Matrix was my other other other favorite puzzle from the contest, after One Up (2), Breezy Street (6) and Truly Symmetric (10). Though honestly, 15 and 16 are my other two favorites just from what I managed to pull off for them. Anyway!

A lot of people had to bash their way through this puzzle, but some people did end up deriving the key entrance counting idea in this layout for the first time during their solve. That was my entire goal for a puzzle like this - if you know the trick, it's a fairly straightforward solve. If you don't know the trick, there's not really a lot you can look at (other than the 4 down, which kind of helps anyway) to find it. And if you can't find it, the scale is still small enough to fiddle through. Overall, this was one of one of the most polarizing puzzles in the contest. People either got it and loved it, or didn't get it and didn't like it.

Puzzles #438 & #439 - Subdivision (Yajilin)

This was the 12th Yajilin puzzle from my somewhat recent LMI contest, Yajilin Yacht. A solution video for the contest puzzle can be found on the contest page. Additionally, the first puzzle I made for this spot, also themed around paired clues, can be found as a bonus puzzle below.

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This was my other difficulty mis-step. I knew this puzzle was hard, but what I didn't anticipate was just how much harder it was than everything that came before, and by the time I realized it was too late to do anything about it. That said, this is a fantastic puzzle that, had I placed it a bit later (maybe swapping with 14) or built to it slightly better (maybe using the alternate version of 8 as 11, or making a new hard 10x10) would have been an excellent addition to the series. As it is, solve counts dropped from ~250 a puzzle to just under 200 a puzzle here and never recovered. DNFs went from a max of 27 (Breezy Street) to 71. Clearly, too much of a difficulty spike. Sorry everyone!

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The original puzzle was somehow even harder - nicknamed "Lightbulb Moment", it could have worked in the contest. Though I was aware of the potential issues and ultimately decided that I wanted to try for a less difficulty spike puzzle for number 12. Too bad I failed at that goal later, but on the other hand, you get two puzzles to enjoy now.

Puzzle #437 - Nothing To See Here (Yajilin)

This was the 11th Yajilin puzzle from my somewhat recent LMI contest, Yajilin Yacht. A solution video for the contest puzzle can be found on the contest page.

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My goals here were to make a laterally symmetric puzzle (instead of the usual rotational symmetry) and to only use zeroes. The result was one of what I view as 2 difficulty mis-steps in Yajilin Yacht, as I should have gone bigger with this puzzle, or moved it earlier. I had expected it to be harder than it was to solve and also wanted to keep it far from Sloop and the result was a drastic difficulty drop two thirds of the way through the contest. Maybe I should have cut it and gone with something else instead to bridge the gap...

Puzzle #436 - Truly Symmetric (Yajilin)

This was the 10th Yajilin puzzle from my somewhat recent LMI contest, Yajilin Yacht. A solution video for the contest puzzle can be found on the contest page.

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This was my biggest construction flex for the contest. I'd wanted to make a Yajilin with symmetric clue placements for a long while but had never gotten around to it and this was the perfect excuse. This actually wasn't as hard to make as you might expect, mostly because I picked a good starting point and focused on clues that would resolve both of their respective corners at the same time.

Puzzle #435 - Clueless (Yajilin)

This was the 9th Yajilin puzzle from my somewhat recent LMI contest, Yajilin Yacht. A solution video for the contest puzzle can be found on the contest page.

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The obligatory clueless puzzle. There was a bit more on the left side than I normally would have liked, but the right side was neat enough in how it resolved that I kept the puzzle.

Puzzles #433 & #434 - No Two Ways About It (Yajilin)

This was the 8th Yajilin puzzle from my somewhat recent LMI contest, Yajilin Yacht. A solution video for the contest puzzle can be found on the contest page. Additionally, I've included a second puzzle with the same theme that I made first but rejected from the contest for being too hard for the intended placement.

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This puzzle was actually meant to be the 4th puzzle in the contest, as I expected Tilted Square to turn out a lot harder than it did, and this to turn out a lot easier than it did.

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With that in mind, this bonus puzzle was also originally meant to slot in at the 4th puzzle in the contest - however I knew immediately that doing so would be a terrible idea and rejected the puzzle out of hand. I probably should have revisited these two after swapping 4 and 8 to see which one I liked more, since I really don't know. They both have their strengths.

Puzzle #432 - Outside-In (Yajilin)

This was the 7th Yajilin puzzle from my somewhat recent LMI contest, Yajilin Yacht. A solution video for the contest puzzle can be found on the contest page.

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"All outside" clue Yajilin puzzles are fairly common. They usually end up being either fairly trivial or fairly bashy without much in-between, and though I don't think I made it too far into the in-between here I do think I made it a little bit. Having only 4 clues is pretty neat too.

Puzzle #431 - Breezy Street (Yajilin)

This was the 6th Yajilin puzzle from my somewhat recent LMI contest, Yajilin Yacht. A solution video for the contest puzzle can be found on the contest page.

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I wanted to show I could make just about any style of Yajilin in this contest, and so the first rectangular puzzle in any daily contest had to be a Nikoli-style puzzle. I also wanted to take it a step farther and have not only a nice solving flow but also clue symmetry, which ended up mostly working out. There's one step that's a bit harder, but nothing unreasonable.

Puzzles #429 & #430 - Sloop (Yajilin)

This was the fifth Yajilin puzzle from my somewhat recent LMI contest, Yajilin Yacht. A solution video for the contest puzzle can be found on the contest page. Additionally, I made a bonus puzzle with the same layout but different clues.

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I had to make an all 0 puzzle. I had to. Since I knew I wanted this to be early in the overall contest, and with steadily increasing square sizes, 11x11 would be a perfect place to put this puzzle without tipping people off in advance. Something like 11x10 would have been a dead giveaway that something fishy was going on. This puzzle didn't go over the best - some people felt cheated out of a Yajilin, others questioned the point, but ultimately this was my contest and I was going to do what I wanted to do with it. And besides, a good amount of people got a kick out of it :)

As for the bonus? I spent a while messing around with clue values until I found one that worked fairly. More for my own constructing amusement than anything else. More puzzles never hurt though, right?

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Puzzle #428 - Tilted Square (Yajilin)

This was the fourth Yajilin puzzle from my somewhat recent LMI contest, Yajilin Yacht. A solution video for the contest puzzle can be found on the contest page.

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Originally this puzzle did use the full tilted square, with 4 additional clues. I really didn't like what that did to the corners though, so I removed them and started fresh with the 3 clue. I saw a really cool continuation from there that I had to use, and finishing the puzzle from there proved easy enough.

Puzzle #427 - Y is for... (Yajilin)

This was the third Yajilin puzzle from my somewhat recent LMI contest, Yajilin Yacht. A solution video for the contest puzzle can be found on the contest page.

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A six clue layout like this for a 9x9 was fairly ambitious, but something I felt would be possible to make smoothly. Ultimately, I was right, with another key idea being critical to unraveling the left side. It turned out a lot of people trialed or guessed through it, though, without getting the idea...

Puzzles #422 - 426 - One Up (Yajilin)

This was the second Yajilin puzzle from my somewhat recent LMI contest, Yajilin Yacht. A solution video for the contest puzzle can be found on the contest page. Additionally, I've included four prior versions of this puzzle because the evolution of One Up was interesting, to see how I got to the final puzzle.

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This is honestly one of my favorite puzzles from the contest. It takes a simple theme that's difficult to execute well and manages to avoid the most common traps, which my earlier iterations ran headfirst into.

version 1          version 2          version 3          version 4

Version 1 met most of my goals as a construction - one clue per column, at least one shaded cell behind a clue - but the regularity of the solution as well as most shaded cells being directly in front of their clues was unsatisfying. So I kept going.

Version 2 I liked slightly more, but the presence of a clue in row 2 really irked me, along with the left side instantly fully resolving. So I kept going.

Version 3, on a re-solve, is actually a pretty good puzzle. It still has a few properties I didn't love in the trivial left and the shaded positions, but I was finally getting somewhere. But could I do better by giving up one one clue per column?

Version 4 hit on a very good start to the puzzle that I ended up preserving for the final version. However, having it in columns 3-6 made resolving the rest difficult to do nicely. I likely would have gone with this version if I hadn't continued trying with the setup moved to columns 2-5 instead, which ended up working much much nicer.

Many of the other puzzles in Yajilin Yacht went through a similar process of exploration, however most of the other puzzles didn't produce completed, working puzzles along the way. Just alternate implementations of similar ideas, or things I backtracked to try a different approach.