Quick Puzzling Update

So, I've mentioned having a huge backlog that I haven't started posting yet. What gives? What, exactly, have I been up to? Well, hypothetical reader, those are great questions that I'm happy to get into a bit here.

So firstly, my laptop charging port was broken a couple weeks ago. This put me largely out of commission for most hobby things I wanted to do with that time, let alone things I committed to doing - more on that in a bit. I did get things fixed a couple days ago but I'm still catching up so haven't had time to prepare posts. However, one of the things I did do during that time was transcribe ALL my unused IOI puzzles worth posting into penpa or puzzlink links. All of them - there are nearly 80 puzzles in this category, so there's a lot. I still need to go through these again to pick out the order to post them, and actually write the posts/prep the images/etc. so this will have to wait until I have a bit of unbroken time. This will most likely be sometime in November / early December as the bulk of my free time will need to go towards Speedromizer prep during November. Obviously, being out a laptop for 3 weeks meant I was out a computer to practice two games for 3 weeks - when there were only 12 weeks to learn in the first place! Not good.

I've also been making a few new things - aside from the obvious work, I wrote some puzzles for another Logic Showcase, and have also been working on a themed set that I'll probably put up in a single PDF or something. And speaking of PDFs and IOI puzzles, I've decided the way I'll share some of my highlights from the game is going to be a printer-friendly PDF, sorted roughly in the order the puzzles would appear in-game, with some thoughts on each puzzle and how they fit into the game. Basically like a typical blog post, but 150+ times and without a solving link (due to the contributor agreement I signed when I joined the project). Unfortunately I don't have access to the internal puzzle database any more, so I can't check for fun anecdotes in the comments field or easily verify a difficulty, and it's also not easy to check exactly which location in-game a certain puzzle is, but I do at least know what enclave something is in and have my enclave/sidequest puzzles separate from the sandbox pile. Man, am I glad I kept a local copy of everything from early on...

Also, X_Sheep has been maintaining a fork of puzzlink with new genres and recently added Slitherlink with Sheep and Wolves, a variant I previously used in Puzzle Zodiac in this post. As I've been doing with new genres or new features, I've added puzzlink links for the new genre to that post and also to this one. If you've already solved these puzzles: great! If you haven't, or maybe haven't heard of that set before - these were the lead puzzles in the set and so the blog publications started with Aries, so let this be an opportunity to try them out. I'm quite happy with both of the contest puzzles here.

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?swslither/6/6/16b3b2a5a63b2a65a3b15a6a2b1b53

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?swslither/9/9/b2c1b2651a36535a16a52a66b5a6b535a6a5a62a3a516a3b2b5b1c1a6a3b0c5c2

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?swslither/10/10/a12c31b2b36c321d21d21d55a1b62d33d02b2a60d35d22d331c05b2b63c13a

So yeah. Lot going on, still recovering from an unexpected productivity loss at a time I really, really didn't need one.

Puzzle #701 - Dumbbell Dichotomy (Regional Yajilin)

This Regional Yajilin puzzle was yet another yet another insomnia puzzle. I'm really surprised that I managed to find this while laying in bed, unable to fall asleep, given how involved some of the logic I found is. Anyway, puzzle!

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #700 - Archipelago (Pentominous)

Let's do this Pentominous puzzle a little differently than usual.

puzz.link interface

The past few years I've played a lot of Archipelago games, which is a platform for generating and hosting multi-game, multi-world randomizers. This is one of the coolest software projects I've ever seen, that constantly expands as more people support more games. I actually played some of the predecessor - that being Berserker's Multiworld (for Link to the Past) before losing interest in that particular randomizer, and having the server sit idle in my Discord list for years.

Then NewSoupVi and Jarno implemented Sigma's Witness Randomizer into Archipelago, and Vi has continued adding new features and quality of life for over 2 years at this point. I really do recommend giving it a try if you want to play an old game in a new way. If you know me, you know I'd done a good amount of speedruns of that randomizer before, so this was a push back into the multiworld space - and at that time, there were about 15 games supported. There's now about 60, and a ton more unsupported or work in progress games. I've even been helping get an implementation for Ape Escape together, having done all the logic (nobody knows that game better than me) and recently even helping with code now that the project has changed hands and I was given direct write access.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, I made a puzzle using the AP logo as my grid shape, and everyone should go look into it to see if the project is interesting to them. Someone is even working on a world for Simon Tatham's Puzzle Collection with a lot of support for choosing what types of puzzles show up. Now if you'll excuse me, at the time of this writing (September 15th, 3:17 AM) I need to get to sleep so I can wake up in time for a Touhou event where I'm planning on doing an AP game using an Impossible Spellcard Manual and Bumper Stickers, followed immediately by an Ape Escape community game on the most recent world for that - which includes a starting gadget option implemented entirely by me. (update a couple days later: both went very well!)

Happy solving!

Puzzles #697, #698 & #699 - The Shape of an L Dissection

These three are.. a bit strange at first glance, so I'll present the puzzles first with a brief explanation, and then a longer description afterwards.

One night I couldn't sleep, as often happens, and started thinking about puzzles, as also often happens. I ended up thinking about trying to specify a large empty area for a puzzle with only a single rule: divide the grid into L trominos. That's it. I pretty quickly found an empty 6x6.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

I then wondered if this construction could tile vertically - it could not, but I did find an empty 6x8 - surely this was as big as it could go.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Just as I was about to give up and try to go back to sleep again, I had one last idea, and by some miracle it actually worked, and I found a way to specify an entire empty 7x7 space with just L tromino tiling. I wonder if bigger is possible?

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

But why was I even thinking about this sort of shape dissection in the first place? Well, it turns out to have the same answer as to why I jumped straight to region division for LS56, which turns out to be the same reason I gravitated to Light and Shadow-likes a couple years ago. Lunarch has been working on another puzzle game for the past months, and I've been hard at work on the puzzle side of this game as well. There's so much more than just this little teaser shows...

In other news, as of about today I can share up to 172 of my Islands of Insight puzzles, as long as I only provide static images for those puzzles, and do not myself provide a means of solution checking those puzzles. I'll have to filter through my archives for what I consider the best of the bunch, and I'll probably put together a single PDF collection of some of my highlights from the game. This is completely separate from the unused prototype puzzles I alluded to however many posts ago, which will have solving interfaces and solution checking.

I've been busy, even when this blog hasn't been. It's been hard to find the drive to keep updating it given the overlap with what I've been doing for work (spreadsheets for organizing and the like), but I'll try to keep on top of things at least a little better going forward. No more 6 month backlogs. I hope.

Puzzle #696 - Overlooked (Hotaru Beam)

When I was assessing my puzzle backlog for this archive dump, I found that I had an extremely strong milestone puzzle for #700. However, I only had enough puzzles to get to 699. So I asked the Witness randomizer community for a puzzle type to make, and the exceedingly more likely to be sharing the same brain cell as me Exempt-Medic suggested Hotaru Beam. This was an excellent choice, and even moreso considering I somehow had never made one before this!

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #695 - The Other Backlog (Castle Wall)

Last year before the World Puzzle Championship, I printed off or started a few GMP ebooks to get some practice on a few key genres. One of those was Castle Wall, where I solved about two thirds of the book on the plane ride to Toronto. But that left me with some loose papers of unsolved puzzles that just sat there for ages, as I caught up with and finished the puzz.link database, worked through parts of Toketa 11 that I got at the event, the usual contest routines... until, at the time of this posting, about a month and a half ago. I finally just sat down and started finishing these ebooks, and in doing so I obviously did Serkan's giant Castle Wall at the end of the book. There was one particular section that I kept wanting to make a particular deduction that was very close to working, and ultimately was never used in the solve. So naturally, I made a puzzle using that deduction.

puzz.link interface

Now I just need to find progress on the last 4 pencil Tapa LITS in Toketa....

Puzzle #694 - Large Areas Only (Norinuri)

Nearly every Norinuri puzzle has to rely on either low numbers to fill space, or large ? numbers to fill space. At one point, I tried making one with only 10 clues, but couldn't quite finesse a solution grid. In the attempt I did find this one with only large, but not excessively large numbers, and it turned out there was a nice way to clue it, too.

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #693 - One, Two, Slitherlink!

Someone shared with me a giant and quite difficult Slitherlink using only 1 and 2 clues. You know the drill by now, I wanted to try making one that was a bit more reasonable in scope, and for a bonus challenge, I did so without any border clues as those can given some really easy freebie deductions. If you know one specific rarer pattern, this should be pretty straightforward.

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #692 - Speedwriting (Cave)

I wrote this Cave puzzle in 5 minutes after a brief discussion about trying to write a good puzzle in 2 minutes. I had most of a puzzle at that time, but elected to try to finish it off more nicely rather than just throw out a half baked puzzle. I got a bit lucky with a deduction in this just kinda working, and putting this post together - including getting links, getting images, tagging and scheduling - took longer than making the puzzle featured here.

Kind of insane.

puzz.link interface

I definitely don't regret having this blog set up as an archive of my puzzles, but man is it a lot of work sometimes.

Puzzle #691 - Variant Masyu Day!

It's Masyu da- I already made this joke. About two and a half months ago, a couple people in Puzzlers Club were making meme Masyu puzzles with the variant rule that circles didn't have to be visited, but any circle that was visited had to be satisfied. These were memes because the solution would frequently avoid touching any circles, sometimes even just being a simple 2x2.

So I made a much harder puzzle to show that this variant did not have to just be a meme. It was a bit of a struggle, though, since I decided to start making this on my phone and quickly regretted that decision.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzle #690 - Masyu Day!

It's Masyu day! Because any day can be Masyu day if you post a Masyu that day! (hi wolog)

puzz.link interface

Okay, so the real context for this puzzle is somebody - this was so long ago I don't recall who - posed the idea of collaboratively making a Masyu puzzle where one person places the black pearls and then another makes the puzzle unique with white pearls. I wasn't sure it would work too well, but then I had the idea of trying that relay-style approach here to end up with a different kind of theme than I usually would, and ended up with this pretty neat puzzle.

Puzzle #689 - Chocolate Season (Choco Banana)

I recall making this Choco Banana after my friend Rever solved one with the same 1-2-3-4-5-6 pattern, and said that it could only resolve one way. I saw another way, so I made this puzzle to make it resolve another way. This is still such a good type I need to make more of and keep forgetting to make more of.

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #688 - Not So Simple Loop

I made this Simple Loop so long ago I don't remember why I made it. Let's see what my comments I have next to it in my puzzles spreadsheet say. "In PC, Rook mentioned not knowing parity for Sloop. So I made a Sloop using parity." Amazing insight, past me. The comment on the very next puzzle starts "this wasn't meant as an April Fools puzzle" so uh, oops 6 month delay.

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #686 & #687 - Sixty Second Misfits (Pentominous, Statue Park)

Like I said yesterday, I made two unsubmitted puzzles for The Sixty Second Logic Showcase. I didn't submit the Pentominous because the theme ended up a bit imprecise and I didn't think it would do well in voting for that reason, despite being a fine puzzle. I didn't submit the Statue Park because even though my timing calibration was wrong, even I knew this one would be too long. I knew it when I started making it that it was almost definitely going to be too long, but I had an idea I wanted to try.

puzz.link interface

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #684 & #685 - A/B Testing (Fillomino, Cross the Streams)

My other two submissions for The Sixty Second Logic Showcase are a bit different. In both cases, the puzzles turned out much harder than I expected or wanted them to, so I had to add clues to nerf the puzzle. In both cases even the nerfed puzzle was something I knew was overshooting the difficulty side of things, though again my incorrect understanding of the timing component of scoring meant I wasn't too worried about the overshoot if the quality was way up there. And I felt for this Fillomino, it was. The Cross the Streams I thought had an outside chance of being quick enough for a secret reason but would almost definitely be the slowest puzzle in the set if not enough people caught on. Somehow I'd never made one of these before either!

I'll show and link the original version of the puzzles first - I'll include an image of the nerfed versions I submitted at the bottom of this post. I will not be linking the nerfed versions, however.

puzz.link interface

puzz.link interface

The Fillomino here took a half dozen aborted attempts and as many hours across a few days of trying, while the CTS took a much shorter time due to the nature of the puzzle. Honestly I think the Fillomino took me more time than every other puzzle I made for this showcase combined, even tomorrows' bonus pair!

And here are the nerfed versions - the Fillomino gets an extra pair of clues that smooth out the toughest part of the solve (but it still has a lot of steps) while the CTS gets more concrete values and less uncertainty in a few key clue rows. I don't think either of these changes moved the needle all that much.

Puzzles #681, #682 & #683 - More Showcase Backlog (Kurodoko, Tapa-Like Loop, Rail Pool)

Continuing the backlog, these were some of my entries for The Sixty Second Logic Showcase, where the prompt was to make a good puzzle that the median solver would take... sixty seconds on. I'm really happy with everything I made for this showcase, but in hindsight I should have attempted a more scattershot approach for estimating timing, as I misjudged where the median would be. All of my estimates were spot on relative to each other, but they were also about 50 to 60 percent longer than I had guessed, from assuming a larger overlap with logic race. Due to the combined scoring on votes and timing, and the timing component being a quadratic decay instead of a linear decay like I had misread, I placed very poorly in the final rankings despite doing pretty well in the unranked votes only ranks.

Anyway, onto the puzzles I submitted that I have one version of!

I started with a Kurodoko with what I hoped was an interesting logical theme. From my own timings I expected to hit about 1:10 with this which was close enough, but ended up at 1:50, and multiple people mentioning they got stuck after a couple opening steps. Unfortunate.

puzz.link interface

Since I thought that might be a bit long, I originally tried to aim smaller and stick to that logical theme idea with a 9x9 Tapa-Like Loop. 9x9 quickly didn't work for the theme I was going for, but loop puzzles can be speedy, so I was fine with going 11x11 if I thought the solve was straightforward. This one ended up being the closest to a minute timing-wise, but was still an overshoot.

puzz.link interface

My last puzzle and again an attempt to go easier was a 62 themed Rail Pool. This was the puzzle I was the most off-estimate for, since it's a less common type and thus the median solver has to take longer to find more common steps. I don't think it's a coincidence some of the closest puzzles were extremely common types, but again I don't regret trying something a bit more out there. Perhaps I should have gone even further in the obscure direction and made a 7x7 or something? Somehow, this is the first time I actually made a Rail Pool, too.

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #679 & #680 - Twin Snakes (Slitherlink)

I also made two Slitherlink puzzles as potential submissions for Logic Showcase 56, but elected not to submit either. I don't remember which of these was better than the other, but I do remember that if I had other good slitherlink ideas or other similar ideas for other genres, I was going to throw it in. Ah well, it is what it is.

puzz.link interface

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #673 - #678 - One to Eight Collection

So, I've been sitting on this one for a while. As I write this, entries are open for Logic Showcase 66. I constructed this set of 6 puzzles for Logic Showcase 56, with the task of constructing 1-6 puzzles with 37 or fewer cells. I immediately thought of revisiting dividing a 6x6 grid into eight regions of sizes 1 to 8 each. Some of these clue types were obvious - Palisade and Checkered Fillomino - some took a bit more thinking - Symmarea and Kropki Pairs - and some were much more experimental - Thermo and Difference. If you only do one of these, do the Thermo, it's absolutely my favorite. The Symmarea was the biggest struggle to construct - turns out even finding a solution with rotationally symmetric 1-8 regions is hard. The most disappointing is the Difference since I needed the "cheater" even clues to avoid killing the puzzle extremely prematurely.

Rules for the puzzle are in the first link, and reproduced at the bottom of this post.

penpa interface (all in one)

Divide each grid into 8 regions, each having exactly one region of size 1 to 8 each. Each grid has its own set of rules.

Checkered Fillomino: Numbers indicate the size of the region they are contained in. Regions must be two-colorable.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Palisade: Numbers indicate the number of edges drawn around the cell containing the clue. The edge of the grid counts as a drawn edge.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Symmarea: Numbers indicate the size of the region they are contained in. All regions must be 180 degree rotationally symmetric.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Thermo: Starting from the bulb, each thermometer cell must be part of a region with a strictly larger area than the previous.

penpa interface

Kropki Pairs: Regions separated by a white dot must have areas that differ by exactly 1. Regions separated by a black dot must have areas with a ratio of exactly 2 - one is twice as large as the other.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Difference: Regions separated by a gray dot must have areas that differ by exactly the number on the dot. An E stands for an unknown, positive even number.

penpa interface

Puzzles #671 & #672 - 24HPC Extras (Slitherlink, Sukoro)

I made two puzzles for the 2024 24 Hour Puzzle Championship that went unused, one for each round. I made a Slitherlink for Epsilon in the Greek round, but we went with djmathman's massive Numberlink instead, to be funny.

puzz.link interface

I also made a Sukoro (also known as Infection) for the Cancer slot when it was empty. I said I was going to do so the next day, went to go to sleep, couldn't sleep, checked the sheet and chat, saw it was still empty, and made this puzzle. I go to post it and someone else posted a Cancer slot Tren in the time this took to make, and since I had a bunch of puzzles in the rounds already, the Tren was used instead. I really like this puzzle though, I'd never tried to make a Sukoro before and you also don't usually see clue layouts this dense for it.

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #668, #669 & #670 - 24HPC Zodiac (Little Killer Latin Square, Antiknight Tomtom)

I also contributed several puzzles to the Puzzlers Club rounds at the 2024 24 Hour Puzzle Championship this year. We authored two rounds, each with 24 puzzles. The first round had one puzzle themed on each Greek letter, while the second round was a double zodiac (signs and animals).

The other half of this round was themed on the Chinese zodiac animals. Rat went unclaimed for a long, long time, so I elected to make a puzzle using the Little Killer sudoku variant rule. Rather than make a sudoku and deal with regions and larger grids or irregular regions, I went with just a Latin Square. Here's a quick example puzzle I also made for the instructions booklet: the rules are pretty straightforward. Place a number from 1 to N (where N is the side length of the grid) into every cell, so that there are no repeats in a row or column. Arrows outside the grid give the sum of all the numbers inside the grid that they point to.

penpa interface

And the actual competition puzzle, worth 20 points. I tried to make it really tricky, but ended up missing a case so the logic is really messy and honestly the cleanest way is just a bifurcation, unfortunately. It's still unique and still a puzzle I made, so here it is.

penpa interface

I also claimed the spot for Horse with an Anti-Knight Tomtom; like with the IPC Killer Doppelblock, I didn't know which genre I wanted to use beyond a latin square type, but Tomtom quickly proved its worth and potential for some crazy theming. I ran into so many dead ends from only a few cages in this construction and it was really painful, even with using f-puzzles to help speed through "easy" anti-knight steps. The final puzzle is actually unique without the 21 cage, but since it's worth 110 points with the extra clue... yeah I think it's necessary for a good puzzle. Reminder everyone, harder/minimal cluing is not always better.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzles #665, #666 & #667 - 24HPC Zodiac (NIKOJI, Nurimisaki, Balance Loop)

I also contributed several puzzles to the Puzzlers Club rounds at the 2024 24 Hour Puzzle Championship this year. We authored two rounds, each with 24 puzzles. The first round had one puzzle themed on each Greek letter, while the second round was a double zodiac (signs and animals).

Even though I've already done a Puzzle Zodiac before and wasn't too enthused by this theme, I still made 3 puzzles for the zodiac signs side of things. NIKOJI is otherwise known as Gemini Block, which was a type I was unaware of at the time of my original Puzzle Zodiac. The bottom row not being a word was kind of annoying, but I tried using Qat to find any words that could work and none existed. This was worth 30 points in the round.

puzz.link interface

Cats like to curl up in corners. Nurimisaki is a type all about corners. It's a bit of a stretch but I like the genre and had originally thought of the type for PZ, even though I went with Akari at the time. I checked with some solver assistance to see if there was any way of avoiding the extra circle in the top left corner and unfortunately found that it was impossible to specify that corner without another clue. Puzzle is worth 25 points.

puzz.link interface

To round out the comparison, I grabbed Libra to make a Balance Loop worth 50 points. This was one of the biggest missed opportunities of the original PZ in the name of genre balance, and while I don't regret my old choice of Minarism... this Balance Loop is way, way better. I did have a working version without that center clue at one point, but this required neutering a lot of the logic in the second half of the solve, so I sacrificed the purity of the theming for the sake of a much better puzzle. In general I skewed a bit larger on grid size this 24HPC to try to prevent undershooting round length again, and as a whole we succeeded -  the rounds were maybe a bit oversized, but well within acceptable ranges for the 24HPC as a whole.

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #664 - 24HPC Ripple Effect

I also contributed several puzzles to the Puzzlers Club rounds at the 2024 24 Hour Puzzle Championship this year. We authored two rounds, each with 24 puzzles. The first round had one puzzle themed on each Greek letter, while the second round was a double zodiac (signs and animals).

As construction was wrapping up there were a few missing Greek letters. None of the puzzles so far used the grid shape for the theme, and Ripple Effect is always a fun type to do on irregular grids. This puzzle ended up being only worth 25 points which is a bit lower than I would have expected, but I guess most of the solve path is pretty straightforward, and even though it's "10x10" there is a lot of empty space.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzles #662 & #663 - 24HPC Loops (Nagare, All or Nothing)

I also contributed several puzzles to the Puzzlers Club rounds at the 2024 24 Hour Puzzle Championship this year. We authored two rounds, each with 24 puzzles. The first round had one puzzle themed on each Greek letter, while the second round was a double zodiac (signs and animals).

I don't remember why Psi got a Nagare puzzle. My notes apparently say it's a play on wind/pressure/Pounds per Square Inch/PSI/psi, but that's a huge stretch. Despite the size, this one is only worth 25 points, because the type is honestly pretty tame and hard to make difficult. Can't really complain too much though, as this was a struggle to make work at all honestly.

puzz.link interface

For Omega, yyao had made a pretty basic Simple Loop with a note to replace the slot in the case of a better puzzle. I thought All or Nothing would be a pretty fitting genre and had even written it down as an idea locally, so as construction was wrapping up and the round was tending a bit easier than desired, I made one to finish off the Greek round. I still have one puzzle left to share from the round, though...

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #660 & #661 - More 24HPC Shading (Light and Shadow, Aquarium)

I also contributed several puzzles to the Puzzlers Club rounds at the 2024 24 Hour Puzzle Championship this year. We authored two rounds, each with 24 puzzles. The first round had one puzzle themed on each Greek letter, while the second round was a double zodiac (signs and animals).

I made my now-standard Light and Shadow for Lambda, after some research into what lambda was usually used to represent. Turns out it's often used for light, which provided justification for the genre pick. This one ended up being worth 60 points, which I think is pretty fair for the size. I remember being quite happy that the underside of the lambda was all question marks, which always provide some fun reachability options.

puzz.link interface

I also made an Aquarium for Rho with only row clues. Because I thought it would be funny. I did put some consideration into what genre with row/column clues would be a good pick, but nothing else seemed quite as promising. This puzzle tested pretty breezily at only 20 points, which is about what I was aiming for.

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #658 & #659 - 24HPC Domino Kurodoko

I also contributed several puzzles to the Puzzlers Club rounds at the 2024 24 Hour Puzzle Championship this year. We authored two rounds, each with 24 puzzles. The first round had one puzzle themed on each Greek letter, while the second round was a double zodiac (signs and animals).

Very early on I grabbed Beta and made a variant Kurodoko where instead of shading single cells, you shade dominoes instead. This variant does result in a bit of struggle for uniquely specifying the orientation, and can also sometimes have long-term propagations that break the puzzle way in advance. I'm pretty happy with how this 40 point puzzle turned out. I also wrote an example for the type, since it wasn't a classic type.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzles #655, #656 & #657 - IPC Extras (Yajilin, Masyu All Cells)

Like last year, I helped contribute to the Indian Puzzle Championship this year. If you're interested in seeing the rest of the set, including bonus puzzles, check the link for details on how.

I had a couple extra puzzles I made that weren't used for competition - two alternate Yajilin options I didn't offer (since I liked the one that was used to much for the slot), and an All Cells Masyu meant for round 2 - logical optimizers. It didn't fit the round theme that well and there was already a puzzle with a similar vibe, so instead you get it as just an All Cells Masyu puzzle. Yay!

puzz.link interface

puzz.link interface

puzz.link interface      penpa interface