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.

Puzzle #257 - Downright Weird (Global Haisu)

Remember Haisu? Well, I had the weird idea to apply the room visit number rule to the entire puzzle as well- so all instances of a 1 must be visited before a 2, before a 3, etc. The implications are tough to grasp and I'm guessing heavily puzzle dependent, and there's room for at least another few in this variation before it starts getting stale. I definitely don't regret the construction attempt here.

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Puzzle #150 - Discord Request (Hybrid Loop)

This is the last time I ask the Puzzlers Club Discord for ideas of what to make... I got some very silly prompts (penalty Heyawake with a 150 clue, for one) and a couple ideas that I really liked for this milestone, such as a 15x10 grid and placing a 150 within it with 1 5 0 clues. TheGreatEscaper also suggested a hybrid puzzle, and so I made this. It's... probably the hardest puzzle I've made yet, again. And it was also probably the hardest puzzle for me to make that I've made thus far, too.

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Rules: Draw a loop that travels through all cells. In each numbered room, at least one of the following three conditions must be met:

Detour: The number indicates exactly how many times the loop must turn in its room.

Haisu Loop: The number indicates exactly how many times the loop enters its room.

Maxi Loop: The number indicates the exact length of the longest visit in its room.

Any coloring in the penpa interface is for theme highlighting only. Thanks to TGE for testsolving this, especially identifying 3 different points in the intended path which were broken. Fortunately, all of them ended up being fixable without compromising the path.

Puzzle #136 - Stripes and... Stripes (Haisu)

This Haisu puzzle is fairly tough going, from what I've gathered. Haisu is a creation of TheGreatEscaper with the following rules:

• Draw a path on the cells of the grid, starting on "S" and ending on "G". The path must visit all cells. A number N in a region means that the path passes that cell on the N-th entry into the region. For example, a 2 means the path must pass that cell on its second entry into its region.

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I really, really hope this puzzle is unique- I kept finding alternate solutions while constructing and every re-test found something new I had missed. Even the one after not finding any ambiguities found something new that, fortunately, contradicted in short order.

Puzzle #135 - Cellular (Haisu)

Have an easy and moderately large Haisu puzzle before tomorrow. I'm sorry about the puzzle tomorrow. Haisu is a creation of TheGreatEscaper with the following rules:

• Draw a path on the cells of the grid, starting on "S" and ending on "G". The path must visit all cells. A number N in a region means that the path passes that cell on the N-th entry into the region. For example, a 2 means the path must pass that cell on its second entry into its region.

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Puzzle #134 - Now & Later (Haisu)

Recently, there was a Haisu logic showcase. Haisu is a creation of TheGreatEscaper with the following rules:

• Draw a path on the cells of the grid, starting on "S" and ending on "G". The path must visit all cells. A number N in a region means that the path passes that cell on the N-th entry into the region. For example, a 2 means the path must pass that cell on its second entry into its region.

Naturally, I entered it and placed somewhere in the middle. I still quite like this theme and this solve and will definitely be making a couple more of these soon.

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Puzzle #67 - Has An Interesting Solve, Usually? (5)

This is another Haisu puzzle. Haisu is a creation of TheGreatEscaper with the following rules:

• Draw a path on the cells of the grid, starting on "S" and ending on "G". The path must visit all cells. A number N in a region means that the path passes that cell on the N-th entry into the region. For example, a 2 means the path must pass that cell on its second entry into its region.

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I really, really like how this puzzle ended up turning out given the dual themes.

edit: Small ambiguity in the lower left corrected.

Puzzle #66 - The Path Less Traveled (Haisu)

Today I have another puzzle type that's much less known outside of Puzzlers Club- a Haisu. Haisu is a creation of TheGreatEscaper with the following rules:

• Draw a path on the cells of the grid, starting on S and ending on G. The path must visit all cells. A number N in a region means that the path passes that cell on the N-th entry into the region. For example, a 2 means the path must pass that cell on its second entry into its region.

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This one ended up with a lot more numbers than I would have liked to make sure it was unique, but I don't think it gives too much information. Like Foursight, it can be tough to force anything concrete.