Puzzle #411 - Arafillomino

Yesterday, an Araf (Different Neighbors) of mine was posted as a Sunday Stumper on Grandmaster Puzzles. Normally these links to GMP are pretty short, but I wanted to take a bit of time to talk about the construction process and some of the issues and obstacles I ran into in creating this. Obviously, solution details will follow behind the break.

Puzzle #303 - Oh, Nine (Araf)

Yep, it's another puzzle of mine published over at GMPuzzles, this time an Araf. I'm extremely happy with this construction- it took some work to get the theme to function at all in a non-trivial way. The solve path is also surprisingly varied for the theme of only using the digit 9.

Check out the puzzle here.

Puzzle #255 - Cross Sums (Nuraf)

Today's puzzle is a bit of a weird one- it's a Nurikabe where the unshaded groups obey Araf rules, containing exactly two numbers with an area strictly between those two numbers. For another example of a Nuraf puzzle, check that link.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

I... don't understand this type as well as I might like. It's quite interesting and there's a good chance of revisiting it in the future since there's a ton of potential here. Though there's nothing wrong with an easier elegant puzzle sometimes.

Puzzles #215, #216 & #217 - Taurus (Araf)

As I think might be clear by now, for Puzzle Zodiac I tried to pick puzzle genres that were at least somewhat thematic to the zodiac sign they represented. For Taurus, the most defining feature is the two large horns, and that reminded me of Araf for some reason.

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For the example puzzle, I wasn't sure what kind of theming I wanted to go for until I had the thought of placing a 1234 in the top corner. I didn't dare dream that this sort of theming would end up creating a unique puzzle, but it did!

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Puzzle 3 on the test, worth 30 points, and themed on the Taurus sign. I tinkered with placing givens on the border at first to try to get the layout correct but ultimately couldn't find a way to make it look nice except this 6x6. Once I had the layout in place, it was easy to embed a few deductions for a fairly smooth solve.

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Puzzle 4 on the test, worth 50 points, and themed around partial arithmetic sequences on the outside edges, and a hidden logical theme. Araf can always be a bit of a fiddly type to get to resolve the way you want it to and this puzzle was no exception. It's always a good feeling when the acceptable lower and upper bounds for a clue are equal- see if you can find the one I'm referring to!

Puzzle #143 - Stutter (Araf)

I like region division puzzles, and don't think I've made enough. So I made a few Araf puzzles, though this is the only one I'll be posting here for a while for a couple reasons. I'm also about half done with a puzzle project I've been working on for a while...

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I also streamed making this on the Puzzlers Club Discord to an audience of exactly 1 (hi jkitty)