Puzzles #533 & #534 - IPC 2023 Round 1 (Product Cave, Curve Data)

I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to construct puzzles for the Indian Puzzle Championship this year. Before getting into some of the puzzles I prepared, you can acquire the full set of puzzles at the link above. The IPC (and LMI, a phenomenal puzzling site) operate at a loss, so if you want to throw some support their way it would definitely be appreciated.

Round 1 is traditionally composed of puzzle genres that appeared in the Puzzle Ramayan events that year. Product Cave showed up as a "classic variant" and I jumped on the opportunity to write one. I love a good Cave puzzle! I spent some time on the train ride to Boston for the MIT Logic Puzzle Open thinking about themes and deductions I could use for this (as well as some stuff I'll post later...) and ended up hitting on some nice steps I could use. This puzzle ended up being worth 45/450 points in the round. As a reminder, the rules are the same as standard Cave, except the number gives the product of the horizontally and vertically visible cells.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

There were also Curve Data puzzles. This has started to become another signature genre I write, oops. Prasanna placed 2nd overall in the 2022 WPC, so I wanted to honor that with this theming and make sure the puzzle was non-trivial. I, uh, ended up with a 60 pointer that was the highest value puzzle in the round.

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #510, #511 & #512 - Christmas in July (So Many Bees Part 1)

For secret solver last year, I was assigned to write a puzzle for dylanamite. I did not write a puzzle, I wrote a 26 puzzle set that I'll be posting over the next 8 days, ending on the 10th with the full PDF that was sent. When Jamie signed Dylan up (Dylan would have anyway) he did so with the comment "please send me so many bees". And so, I sent so, so, so many bees.

Just so many bees.

Army Ants vs. Bees

The rules of this Army Ants variant are as follows: Move some symbols such that each orthogonally connected group forms a sequence of consecutive numbers starting with 1 or consists of more than one bee. Each number in a numbered sequence must be orthogonally adjacent to the next. A symbol may move vertically and horizontally any number of times, but may not pass through bold borders. Each cell may be used at most once: as a symbol's starting point, part of a path, or a symbol's final destination.

In the puzzlink interface, every question mark is a bee. And yes, I did literally put bees in the puzzle. This is going to be a running theme here.

As for my thoughts on this puzzle, I think it's a pretty neat variant rule and could be used in more puzzles than just this, though justifying the rule without leaning into a swarm of bees is definitely on the tricky side.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

BattleBs

Standard Battleships rules apply, with a non-standard fleet. Ships can be rotated or reflected.

This is somehow the first Battleships puzzle I've ever published. I still don't totally understand how to make them well, though in this case the gimmicky fleet goes a long way.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Curve Data

Standard Curve Data rules apply.

I actually made this puzzle partially solution first, as tiling the grid entirely with lowercase b shapes is surprisingly difficult. Once I had a working solution, I could tweak it in a lot of different ways, guarantee a clean logical start, and then move clues around to get clue symmetry. A bit of a non-standard construction route to what I think is a nice little puzzle.

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #487 - Qurve Data

Also on the topic of Secret Solver, Eric Fox got a very delayed puzzle. So I whipped up a consolation Curve Data puzzle so he'd at least have something personalized to solve. I like making Curve Data now. Turns out all it really took was an understanding of how they work.

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #340 - #349 - BuckBlosters? (Variety)

On the Puzzler's Club Discord, Koala runs a parody quiz show called BuckBlosters, and wanted to run a logic puzzle round. So when a general call for constructors was put out, I volunteered and ended up making 10 of the 25 puzzles used! The target difficulty was "easy, for total beginners" and that ended up being overshot a bit, but it worked out well as both players had some solid logic puzzle experience. There was a puzzle for each letter except for X, and I ended up making A, C, H, J, M, N, P, Q, T and V.

First up: Arukone, with a theme of "oops". The show was pitched as "oops all logic" so I went with that as a starting point here. This one could probably have been a bit bigger but I like how the path turned out.

puzz.link interface

Curve Data was the obvious choice for a trolling C genre, and so I elected to make a simple example of what can best be described as a Cursed Data.

puzz.link interface

I had a Heteromino lying around that I didn't submit to the 6x6 logic showcase, so I dropped it into this project since I liked the open space it had. This is a pretty tough type to construct actually.

puzz.link interface

There weren't a lot of options for puzzle types beginning with a J, and after a couple non-unique Juosan puzzles were posted, I tried my hand at it. I uh... came up short on the first couple attempts before finally managing a unique one. It's a very strange type!

puzz.link interface

I thought that the set should be all very easy puzzles, and so I took the letter M to make a more challenging Minesweeper, operating under the assumption that everybody already knows these rules and so something more challenging can just be dropped in. It worked out well, the puzzle didn't take too long to get solved and honestly took a similar amount of time to the rest of the ones that weren't trivial. This was also the first time I'd tried constructing one of these- specifying the corners proved to be an issue, in the same way that I ran into issues getting the last bits of the Arukone and Juosan to work as this was also the first time I'd tried making those types.

puzz.link interface

NIKOJI allows for some very fun theming, while being very tough to construct. And again, this was the first time I tried...I think it turned out well enough. Especially because I did manage to get this theme to work.

puzz.link interface

Next up, I made a more involved Putteria puzzle because the type is simple enough that I though the main logical idea in this puzzle would be easy enough to spot. It had one of the longest solve times of the show (of puzzles that came up) while still not being excessive, which I count as an absolute win.

puzz.link interface

There were jokes about how there were no Q puzzle types but we needed a Q anyway, and the leading thought process was to go with "Qurve Data". I didn't like that idea so I made a Qre. I mean I made an Aqre. Yeah, that's the one. Just like Putteria and most of the rest this was the first time I'd tried making one, so I'm very happy I managed to get the OH NO theme to work.

puzz.link interface

I hadn't really tried to make a solution themed Spiral Galaxies before, so I gave it a shot. The solvers got a kick out of it afterwards so again, a successful construction. Making a good puzzle is all about making sure it fits well into where it gets shared, whether that be a blog (either everything or a standalone good puzzle), something just for fun (probably easier) or a contest (hide the uniqueness tricks, probably not trivial). Also this was labeled Tentaisho to allow for a Sudoko game. You don't know what a Sudoko game is? Well, you see, it takes 10 to 30 minutes...

puzz.link interface

And for my final contribution, I made a View puzzle to knock out the letter V as I knew that would be a challenging letter to hit. View is still a weird type to work with and so I'm surprised I managed a theme like this one at all. Though, only 0 would work best on a small grid anyway...

puzz.link interface

Enjoy the puzzles! I'm not sure if #350 will be anything special or not, but I do know that I should have another post before then with something else I've been working on that I'm excited to share. Keep an eye out for it!

Puzzle #147 - This Side Up (Curve Data)

I know I said I probably wasn't going to make another Curve Data puzzle, but it turns out the prompt for Logic Showcase 16 was inspiring. The requirement was to make a grid for any puzzle type that, when rotated, would also yield a unique puzzle with a different solution. My first thought was to make a Tawa with 60 degree rotation, but then I had this crazy idea that I just had to try to make, planning to fall back onto Tawa if I failed. It turns out, this actually won the showcase for my third win!

Puzzle #70 - Chips 2 (Curve Data)

Curve Data is an insanely weird genre that was recently added to puzz.link. Naturally, I tried making one.

This is not that puzzle. My first few tries were horribly, horribly broken and unworkable.

puzz.link interface

I shared this puzzle with the Chip's Challenge community as well, just because. Hi James!