Puzzles #603 & #604 - Primordial Ooze (Nibunnogo)

Before WPC 2023, I ran a Puzzle Getchu!, a contest themed on Ape Escape. I had intended to queue these puzzles for posting before WPC, but didn't have the time. Better late than never!

The second level is Primordial Ooze, which is a fairly evocative name on its own. I wanted to pick a genre that would force a "blobby" solution layout, and recalled Nibunnogo from some old @pzosdc (account no longer exists) puzzles as a good Nikoli genre to go with. While the example puzzle was quite painless to make due to using 0 and 4, the 5 point contest puzzle was very tough to finagle without circumventing the intended break-in.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzles #601 & #602 - Fossil Field (Stostone)

Before WPC 2023, I ran a Puzzle Getchu!, a contest themed on Ape Escape. I had intended to queue these puzzles for posting before WPC, but didn't have the time. Better late than never!

The first level is Fossil Field, and for that I went with Stostone, making the connection between fossils being found in the ground, and the ground being made of rock, or stone. The example was actually a bit less of a struggle to make than the contest puzzle - this layout just kind of worked out perfectly on the first try.

puzz.link interface

The 5 point contest puzzle is also 6x6, with a bit of bite to set the tone. I started with the two F shaped regions, and found that with the right arrangement for the rest of the regions, I could clue the puzzle with just a 3 and a 4. Fossil Field requires 3 out of 4 monkeys to complete - this is far from the only bit of extra theming I managed to fit in here.

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #600 - Interconnected Secret

This year for Secret Solver I was assigned feadoor, someone I know is quite a good solver and constructor across a variety of puzzle types. I wanted to try to lean into as much of those types as I could, remembering the Skyscrapers and Sudoku from a GP round, Yajilin from Yajilin and Variations, and Heyawake from Heyawake Hike. The rest of the genres were picked to cooperate with the connections between grids, and lead to a final secret. I did a lot of planning before any actual construction here!

Anyway, here's all the rules. The short version is that standard rules apply for each individual puzzle, and that cages marked with the same letter must have the same pattern of shaded cells. Country Road requires all regions, and unused cells are considered shaded. Nanro (Signpost), the numbered cells are considered shaded. Skyscraper Sudoku is 1-6 in each row, column and region. Domino Yajilin counts the number of shaded cells.

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I really should have taken my own advice and not made an interconnected puzzle - it's very stressful when something starts not working, or seems like it might not resolve. I also ended up doing most of the writing over 2 days, with a few scattered bits of progress before that point. I even brought a notebook with transcriptions of the starting points (determined links) for 3 puzzles to a relatives' for Christmas Eve, and finished those puzzles there!

To think my original idea involved having to figure out the cage matching as part of solving... that would have been impossible within the time I ended up having, and especially with the other constraints.

Puzzle #599 - Eraser (Kurodoko)

My intended break-in for this Kurodoko turned out to be imagined, though the puzzle is still unique, and the layout is still striking. No point wasting the puzzle (though it could no longer be used for its original purpose), so consider this a warning: this is probably about a 3 on the Toketa scale, with some mix of pencils and erasers. If I had to pin it down, 2 and 1?

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Puzzle #598 - Packing (Pentominous)

Some time ago there was some discussion on pentomino packing in an 8x8 square with 4 cells removed, and what layouts were impossible to fit 1 copy of each into. After the obvious cases of sectioning off part of the grid, someone mentioned forcing two P pentominoes. I quickly made an empty grid to mock it up, and then realized it would actually make a good Pentominous opening. So I made that, too.

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Puzzles #596 & #597 - Lookalikes (Mukkonn Enn & Detour)

It's always fun when one genre can be used to implement another genre. Here's a Mukkonn Enn and Detour that both reflect a different genre - and in one case, two!

puzz.link interface

puzz.link interface

ROT13'd, the other genres are TRENQRJRT/ENVYCBBY & QHGPUYBBC.

Puzzles #594 & #595 - WPC Practice+ (Aqre Symmetry)

My practice puzzle contribution to the US team for the 2023 WPC was - aside from the Islands of Insight notes that led the team to an absolutely crushing performance in the round - was an Aqre (Symmetry). Standard Aqre rules apply, with the additional rule that any region with a circle at its center must have rotational symmetry. No constraints exist on regions without a circle.

...yes, that is a slight deviation from the rules as written because I couldn't get the last input to the final corner to work without either breaking theme even more, or breaking the entire puzzle.

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I didn't want to just post this blemished puzzle, though, so here's what was originally meant to be an 8x8 tetromino themed appetizer that grew out of control to avoid breaking theme. All symmetry on the right, no symmetry on the left.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzles #592 & #593 - Thinking Rooms (Heyawake)

Some number of months ago, someone pitched the idea of a future where AI and other tools are used to replace the creative process of making puzzles. I - and others - thought that, uh, sounded like a horrifying dystopia. I made three Heyawake puzzles to attempt to show the different sides of tool-assisted construction, and make the point that a human touch is always going to be better.

I started with this layout, which was an attempt to have a manual seed that I would just bash numbers into until I had a working puzzle. However, this process ended up requiring a lot more manual effort than I expected as there would frequently be multiple or no solutions from a given start. I'd say the tool use definitely helped with the construction, but then again without attempting to use the tool I probably would have settled into one of the more forcing starts more immediately.

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I then made another puzzle entirely by hand, only using the tool to verify uniqueness. Given the shorter timeframe and that I'd already made a puzzle with an unchecked difficulty, I aimed intentionally a bit easier.

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I, uh, also went out of my way to make a completely unchecked abomination of a puzzle with no intended solve path, just for the potential extreme of a generated puzzle. I... am not going to link it to not subject any puzz.link/db users to the puzzle, but also... just look at it.

I don't know about you, but that's not a world I want to live in.

Puzzles #590 & #591 - Clearing House (Isowatari & Leg Day)

Alright. It's been too long. I had a decent backlog of puzzles before going to WPC... three months ago. I was going to post them when I got back, but then I got distracted with catching up on things I missed, and finishing other things I had been in the middle of (like clearing every Touhou game on lunatic). And then when I finished that, suddenly work (on Islands of Insight) picked up like crazy, and then I was going to catch up over the holidays, last month. Except I took that time to relax and recharge for an even crazier two weeks. And now it's halfway through my vacation time from last year and I'm only just getting around to posting my backlog. Oof.

But, I am at least getting around to it! So let's start with the puzzles I've made since my last post, that have already been published elsewhere. First, an Isowatari I made to celebrate the genre being added to Kudamono and puzsq. I don't really use puzsq very often and had never actually published a puzzle there before - and now I have.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface      puzsq link

The other puzzle today is a variant Leg Day, made after Dave Millar introduced a weird ruleset and theme, and I had the very silly idea to do it with an octopus, to have more legs. The puzzle is pretty nice, though nothing like the rest of the linked pack. Rules are in the link and the linked pack - the short version is to draw 8 equal length paths using all cells, starting from the center, passing through no walls.

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