Puzzles #501, #502 & #503 - Old Finds (Yajilin, LITS, & Nurikabe)

Despite my prior post looking to the future, I think this is a good time to look into the past. These 3 puzzles are some of the oldest I've ever made. Do they still hold up to my current standards? I think so - my standards haven't really changed but my ability to reach or exceed those standards has.

First up, a Yajilin. The more things change, the more they stay the same - I think I'd have been okay with this in Yajilin Yacht honestly.

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Second, a LITS puzzle with internal borders. At the time I didn't think twice about including these and I recall it sparked a discussion of whether this was a variant or not. I don't think it is, but it's also definitely separate from puzzles without using internal borders. Kind of a stylistic choice.

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Finally for today, I made a Rectangles Only Nurikabe (all unshaded areas must be rectangles). This was in response to someone - I don't remember who - making a No Rectangles Nurikabe, so I thought I'd try flipping it around. This is the less interesting variant of the two, though I think this is probably my favorite of these three puzzles. There's just something fun about it.

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Puzzle #488 - Dragon! (LITS)

I made this LITS puzzle for ADGOD, who had the most viewed replay during the contest for Yajilin 13. The story here is after a poor solve on puzzle 11, he thought he was out of contention for any good placement (which turned out to not be true) but ended up drawing some dragons. Since the solution check only cares about the loop... well, you get some fun pictures. Most didn't save into the replays but this one did.

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The first request was a Double Choco with a dragon-shaped layout, but that proved pretty unworkable. This might not be dragon shaped, but I told ADGOD to trust me and he was very pleased with this one in the end.

Puzzle #378 - Twin Snakes (LITS)

One of my LITS puzzles was posted on GMP "today"! I like the break-in and theme on this one quite a lot, even if it falls very quickly once getting that break-in like many LITS puzzles do.

But yeah, like usual, no direct link or image since this puzzle is hosted offsite.

Puzzles #305 - #316 - Pentomino Puzzle Pack

Yes, you did in fact read that right- this post contains 12 puzzles. I had an idea for a pentomino themed set and yesterday, decided to see if I could get the entire pack together that day. I managed to construct all 12 puzzles and left the testing for today, fixed a few errors I had made, and here it is. I'm extremely proud of this set even without the fact that I put it together in a day.

Get the puzzle pack here!

This post won't have preview images or rules for each puzzle, but I will link them all here. The pack has a penpa link with answer check and rules written in alongside an image, so the pack can be solved physically or digitally without issue. The U puzzle has the variant of unequal lengths.

F  I  L  N  P  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

puzz.links for P, W and X can also be used. There was no way to make one for Z, unfortunately. Comments after the break.

Puzzle #175 - Giant PUZL (LITS)

 I've been trying to keep a pace of daily puzzles lately, and so far I've been succeeding. I've also kept up a tradition of every 25th puzzle being... a bit more involved or larger, and though 175 is a bit of an odd number, I still wanted to go for it, and decided to make my largest puzzle yet. For this, I chose LITS due to the potential for a wide variety of interactions with similar theming, and because the last milestone puzzle was a loop. I guess next time should be some sort of placement puzzle?

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Thanks to Freddie Hand for testsolving this- fortunately the fixes I had to make from the original version worked as expected.

Puzzle #85 - Loop and Shading? (Slitherlink)

This is not a Slitherlink puzzle. At least, not a normal one. This is a SLITSerlink puzzle. What's the difference? It's very simple- follow all normal Slitherlink rules. Additionally, the inside of the loop must be a valid LITS wall.

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This puzzle is very difficult and requires some lookahead at points, but taking into account both the Slitherlink and LITS style deductions in combination does give a solution path that does not require bifurcation at any point. Ended up being too hard and people did bifurcate to solve in the showcase, and I placed second to last :/ I really don't know what people like.

Puzzles #57 & #58 - Different Thinking (LITS)

These two puzzles are a little weird to think about- a LITS variant titled "Different LITS". What does that mean? It means follow all standard LITS rules, with the added restriction that no two shaded tetrominos can share a shape and orientation. So you can have up to 4 T pieces, for instance, but they must all be in different directions.

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Altogether, the 4 large puzzles in the last 4 posts were worth a total of 150/1000 points on the 2 hour test. If your solve times for the set were under 18 minutes, congrats! You were on pace to finish... if you didn't fail at Times Zone.

Puzzles #55 & #56 - Competition LITS

The next two puzzles were the example and leadoff puzzle from WAPC Part 2, a standard LITS puzzle.

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Yes, the smallest region in that puzzle is in fact size 8. That was the entire goal when constructing and in test solves, this tripped up some people for a little while.

Puzzles #8, #9 and #10 - Adaptations (LITS, Akari, Cave)

All three of the puzzles in this post are on the smaller side, and were constructed for inclusion in the same Chip's Challenge 2 level as the 125436 Nurikabe a few posts ago.

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First up is a LITS puzzle. The start is fairly obvious, but there's a step following that takes a bit of thinking.

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Next up is the first object placement puzzle on the blog, an Akari. The type usually isn't too difficult without leaning on one of a few deductions, which will hopefully be showcased later.

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Corral (or Cave, or Bag) is a genre that no one can seem to agree on the name or style of. I prefer to think of it as a shading puzzle, though some would treat it as a loop drawing puzzle. In any case, this is probably the trickiest of the batch here though entirely because the rules are trickier to grasp.

Update: the Akari lost a 0 somehow, as pointed out by bmcfluff. This has been corrected.