Puzzles #735 - #737 - We Are So Back (Double Back Variants)

Continuing my backlog posting of old puzzles I haven't shared, here are the three puzzles I made for Logic Showcase 66. The prompt was to make a puzzle with a Double Back rule, and I took that prompt in three different directions.

The first puzzle I made was a Norinori where the unshaded cells had to be solved as a Double Back. In other words, draw a loop passing through all but 2 cells in every region, that enters and exits every region exactly twice. Cells unused by the loop should be shaded, and each shaded cell should have exactly 1 shaded neighbor. I had a lot of trouble finessing some parts of this to be unique near the end, which was a bit annoying given how nicely the start worked out.

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The second puzzle I made was an Aquapelago where each region has to have exactly two unshaded components. Originally I dabbled with a fully clueless grid for this but decided a few clues would be an important addition. The first version of this puzzle was also broken, unfortunately, but I was able to fix it.

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Finally, I knew I wanted to make a proper loop puzzle - not just a Yajilin-style mashup. So I combined Double Back with All or Nothing - solve as an All or Nothing where every region is visited either 0 or 2 times.

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Puzzles #702 - #734 - Mini Threes Pack

So I've still had a lot of things going on in real life that have generally prevented me from having any time to work on puzzles, including having almost my entire holiday vacation suddenly taken up. Even as I write this I'm recovering from being sick, but being too sick to work but well enough to actually do things is somehow the sweet spot of being able to assemble things I've already previously made, as long as it was just assembly.

A few months ago I made a single puzzle using only a couple threes, and that set me down the path of trying to make a varied, interesting set of 3-only puzzles. Yesterday I put them all in a PDF and, fittingly (but annoyingly) took 3 tries to get everything in I wanted (forgot links once - there are links now!) and had 3 non-unique puzzles (all fixed now - I originally intended to re-test everything, but I was rushed and still recovering and that's a lesson learned for the future). So yeah. Here's a big pack of puzzles and hopefully the final version, thanks to CJK for informing me of the problems with the first versions. I think in the future I'll just use a post like this as a hub for any packs I put out - that way I can at least fix in-place easily.

Mini Threes Pack (PDF)

Puzzle links follow, I will not be adding 33 images to this post nor will I be compositing them all into one image to include. You'll have to check the PDF.

Nurikabe      Canal View     Shugaku      Snake Egg
Cave      Akichiwake      Nurimisaki      New Tren
Kurotto      Mochinyoro      Choco Banana      Shakashaka
Slitherlink      Vertex Slitherlink      Hotaru Beam      Hashi

Geradeweg      Balance Loop      Four Winds      Round Trip

Regional Yajilin      Koburin      Maxi Loop      Turnaround (Full)

Fourcells      Nawabari      Aho      Compass

Fillomino (Borders)      Nanro      Sukoro      San-Anko

Gokigen

Puzzle #701 - Dumbbell Dichotomy (Regional Yajilin)

This Regional Yajilin puzzle was yet another yet another insomnia puzzle. I'm really surprised that I managed to find this while laying in bed, unable to fall asleep, given how involved some of the logic I found is. Anyway, puzzle!

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Puzzle #695 - The Other Backlog (Castle Wall)

Last year before the World Puzzle Championship, I printed off or started a few GMP ebooks to get some practice on a few key genres. One of those was Castle Wall, where I solved about two thirds of the book on the plane ride to Toronto. But that left me with some loose papers of unsolved puzzles that just sat there for ages, as I caught up with and finished the puzz.link database, worked through parts of Toketa 11 that I got at the event, the usual contest routines... until, at the time of this posting, about a month and a half ago. I finally just sat down and started finishing these ebooks, and in doing so I obviously did Serkan's giant Castle Wall at the end of the book. There was one particular section that I kept wanting to make a particular deduction that was very close to working, and ultimately was never used in the solve. So naturally, I made a puzzle using that deduction.

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Now I just need to find progress on the last 4 pencil Tapa LITS in Toketa....

Puzzle #693 - One, Two, Slitherlink!

Someone shared with me a giant and quite difficult Slitherlink using only 1 and 2 clues. You know the drill by now, I wanted to try making one that was a bit more reasonable in scope, and for a bonus challenge, I did so without any border clues as those can given some really easy freebie deductions. If you know one specific rarer pattern, this should be pretty straightforward.

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Puzzle #691 - Variant Masyu Day!

It's Masyu da- I already made this joke. About two and a half months ago, a couple people in Puzzlers Club were making meme Masyu puzzles with the variant rule that circles didn't have to be visited, but any circle that was visited had to be satisfied. These were memes because the solution would frequently avoid touching any circles, sometimes even just being a simple 2x2.

So I made a much harder puzzle to show that this variant did not have to just be a meme. It was a bit of a struggle, though, since I decided to start making this on my phone and quickly regretted that decision.

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Puzzle #690 - Masyu Day!

It's Masyu day! Because any day can be Masyu day if you post a Masyu that day! (hi wolog)

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Okay, so the real context for this puzzle is somebody - this was so long ago I don't recall who - posed the idea of collaboratively making a Masyu puzzle where one person places the black pearls and then another makes the puzzle unique with white pearls. I wasn't sure it would work too well, but then I had the idea of trying that relay-style approach here to end up with a different kind of theme than I usually would, and ended up with this pretty neat puzzle.

Puzzle #688 - Not So Simple Loop

I made this Simple Loop so long ago I don't remember why I made it. Let's see what my comments I have next to it in my puzzles spreadsheet say. "In PC, Rook mentioned not knowing parity for Sloop. So I made a Sloop using parity." Amazing insight, past me. The comment on the very next puzzle starts "this wasn't meant as an April Fools puzzle" so uh, oops 6 month delay.

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Puzzles #681, #682 & #683 - More Showcase Backlog (Kurodoko, Tapa-Like Loop, Rail Pool)

Continuing the backlog, these were some of my entries for The Sixty Second Logic Showcase, where the prompt was to make a good puzzle that the median solver would take... sixty seconds on. I'm really happy with everything I made for this showcase, but in hindsight I should have attempted a more scattershot approach for estimating timing, as I misjudged where the median would be. All of my estimates were spot on relative to each other, but they were also about 50 to 60 percent longer than I had guessed, from assuming a larger overlap with logic race. Due to the combined scoring on votes and timing, and the timing component being a quadratic decay instead of a linear decay like I had misread, I placed very poorly in the final rankings despite doing pretty well in the unranked votes only ranks.

Anyway, onto the puzzles I submitted that I have one version of!

I started with a Kurodoko with what I hoped was an interesting logical theme. From my own timings I expected to hit about 1:10 with this which was close enough, but ended up at 1:50, and multiple people mentioning they got stuck after a couple opening steps. Unfortunate.

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Since I thought that might be a bit long, I originally tried to aim smaller and stick to that logical theme idea with a 9x9 Tapa-Like Loop. 9x9 quickly didn't work for the theme I was going for, but loop puzzles can be speedy, so I was fine with going 11x11 if I thought the solve was straightforward. This one ended up being the closest to a minute timing-wise, but was still an overshoot.

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My last puzzle and again an attempt to go easier was a 62 themed Rail Pool. This was the puzzle I was the most off-estimate for, since it's a less common type and thus the median solver has to take longer to find more common steps. I don't think it's a coincidence some of the closest puzzles were extremely common types, but again I don't regret trying something a bit more out there. Perhaps I should have gone even further in the obscure direction and made a 7x7 or something? Somehow, this is the first time I actually made a Rail Pool, too.

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Puzzles #679 & #680 - Twin Snakes (Slitherlink)

I also made two Slitherlink puzzles as potential submissions for Logic Showcase 56, but elected not to submit either. I don't remember which of these was better than the other, but I do remember that if I had other good slitherlink ideas or other similar ideas for other genres, I was going to throw it in. Ah well, it is what it is.

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Puzzles #671 & #672 - 24HPC Extras (Slitherlink, Sukoro)

I made two puzzles for the 2024 24 Hour Puzzle Championship that went unused, one for each round. I made a Slitherlink for Epsilon in the Greek round, but we went with djmathman's massive Numberlink instead, to be funny.

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I also made a Sukoro (also known as Infection) for the Cancer slot when it was empty. I said I was going to do so the next day, went to go to sleep, couldn't sleep, checked the sheet and chat, saw it was still empty, and made this puzzle. I go to post it and someone else posted a Cancer slot Tren in the time this took to make, and since I had a bunch of puzzles in the rounds already, the Tren was used instead. I really like this puzzle though, I'd never tried to make a Sukoro before and you also don't usually see clue layouts this dense for it.

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Puzzles #665, #666 & #667 - 24HPC Zodiac (NIKOJI, Nurimisaki, Balance Loop)

I also contributed several puzzles to the Puzzlers Club rounds at the 2024 24 Hour Puzzle Championship this year. We authored two rounds, each with 24 puzzles. The first round had one puzzle themed on each Greek letter, while the second round was a double zodiac (signs and animals).

Even though I've already done a Puzzle Zodiac before and wasn't too enthused by this theme, I still made 3 puzzles for the zodiac signs side of things. NIKOJI is otherwise known as Gemini Block, which was a type I was unaware of at the time of my original Puzzle Zodiac. The bottom row not being a word was kind of annoying, but I tried using Qat to find any words that could work and none existed. This was worth 30 points in the round.

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Cats like to curl up in corners. Nurimisaki is a type all about corners. It's a bit of a stretch but I like the genre and had originally thought of the type for PZ, even though I went with Akari at the time. I checked with some solver assistance to see if there was any way of avoiding the extra circle in the top left corner and unfortunately found that it was impossible to specify that corner without another clue. Puzzle is worth 25 points.

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To round out the comparison, I grabbed Libra to make a Balance Loop worth 50 points. This was one of the biggest missed opportunities of the original PZ in the name of genre balance, and while I don't regret my old choice of Minarism... this Balance Loop is way, way better. I did have a working version without that center clue at one point, but this required neutering a lot of the logic in the second half of the solve, so I sacrificed the purity of the theming for the sake of a much better puzzle. In general I skewed a bit larger on grid size this 24HPC to try to prevent undershooting round length again, and as a whole we succeeded -  the rounds were maybe a bit oversized, but well within acceptable ranges for the 24HPC as a whole.

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Puzzles #662 & #663 - 24HPC Loops (Nagare, All or Nothing)

I also contributed several puzzles to the Puzzlers Club rounds at the 2024 24 Hour Puzzle Championship this year. We authored two rounds, each with 24 puzzles. The first round had one puzzle themed on each Greek letter, while the second round was a double zodiac (signs and animals).

I don't remember why Psi got a Nagare puzzle. My notes apparently say it's a play on wind/pressure/Pounds per Square Inch/PSI/psi, but that's a huge stretch. Despite the size, this one is only worth 25 points, because the type is honestly pretty tame and hard to make difficult. Can't really complain too much though, as this was a struggle to make work at all honestly.

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For Omega, yyao had made a pretty basic Simple Loop with a note to replace the slot in the case of a better puzzle. I thought All or Nothing would be a pretty fitting genre and had even written it down as an idea locally, so as construction was wrapping up and the round was tending a bit easier than desired, I made one to finish off the Greek round. I still have one puzzle left to share from the round, though...

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Puzzles #655, #656 & #657 - IPC Extras (Yajilin, Masyu All Cells)

Like last year, I helped contribute to the Indian Puzzle Championship this year. If you're interested in seeing the rest of the set, including bonus puzzles, check the link for details on how.

I had a couple extra puzzles I made that weren't used for competition - two alternate Yajilin options I didn't offer (since I liked the one that was used to much for the slot), and an All Cells Masyu meant for round 2 - logical optimizers. It didn't fit the round theme that well and there was already a puzzle with a similar vibe, so instead you get it as just an All Cells Masyu puzzle. Yay!

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puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzles #649, #650 & #651 - IPC Round 1 (Fivecells, Cave, Yajilin)

Like last year, I helped contribute to the Indian Puzzle Championship this year. If you're interested in seeing the rest of the set, including bonus puzzles, check the link for details on how.

As usual, round 1 revisits puzzle types that appeared in Puzzle Ramayan throughout the year. I contributed 3 puzzles to this round, a 55 point Fivecells, a 30 point Cave, and a 25 point Yajilin.

I had a really tough time settling on a theme for my region division pick, but once I thought of putting pentominoes of clues into the grid, I had to run with it. It was a small step from there to try pentominoes of only 3s, and some initial steps proved quite workable and interesting, so I kept pushing at that idea until I had a finished puzzle. I'm a bit sad about the diagonal touching, but there was no way around it and the theme is still quite clear.

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Cave was an option. I like Cave. I'm good at making Caves. So for some reason I tried to find a valid, interesting puzzle with this layout, and suffered for hours with multiple very close attempts that were a single ambiguous cell away. I also didn't start from this full layout, just one half with a cool opening, and eventually tried for the full symmetry after finding no good continuation.

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Originally I had just claimed two spots in round 1, but the evergreens category remained empty as the deadline approached. So I made a Yajilin for the slot, didn't like it, made another Yajilin for the spot, thought it was a bit rough in the middle, and made yet another for the spot, which is this puzzle. This is a pretty slick layout I think, the bigger tilted square works really well for Yajilin.

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Puzzle #645 - S is for... (Slitherlink)

I completely forgot I had this old Slitherlink lying around until recently. It was originally intended for PuzzleDuel until I made a puzzle I liked better for that role, and then this one just say in my spreadsheet for months and months, forgotten. There's not even anything really wrong with this puzzle either, it's just a bit plain.

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Puzzles #641, #642 & #643 - Almost Symmetric (Masyu)

About 3 months ago at this point, I got a bit obsessed with trying to make a non-trivial Masyu that was almost symmetric in its clue layout, but didn't solve symmetrically. The second puzzle I made was a small one based on a simple yet somewhat advanced idea.

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Another interpretation of the theme would be to have a symmetric clue layout with only a minor "blemish" from being fully symmetric. My third attempt - still posting out of order - ended up with two such pearls and a fill that got a little bit insane in the end.

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Ultimately though, I think my first attempt at this theme was the best. Definitely the hardest break-in of the three, and though the later stages are easier than the prior puzzle that's not really saying much.

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Thus concludes my backlog of unposted puzzles. With any luck, I'll have more queued and ready to go by the time you're reading this, but no promises!

Puzzle #639 - Chained Again (Yajilin)

A few years after the first Yajilin chains on Puzzlers Club (apparently about 4.5 years), the old spreadsheet was rediscovered. Somebody noted that the amount of givens would always be an even number, so... I made a starting point with an odd number, which also served as a way of unsticking the chain, as it must be constructed linearly.

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Puzzles #629 & #630 - Crumbling Castle (Castle Wall)

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!

This. This is why I saved Castle Wall for the fifteenth slot, Crumbling Castle. This level is notable for being the first boss level, and also being the second largest level in the entire game. I had actually already made a decently large Castle Wall that I hadn't published, and when I decided I was making this contest, I realized that this puzzle would be a perfect fit. The example took a bit of effort to build something showcasing everything that might show up in the 15 point contest puzzle, even though I knew it was a no gray, fully clued puzzle.

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The thing I really like about this one is that it's a great showcase of contest points being calibrated to expected time, not strictly difficulty.

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Puzzles #622 & #623 - Hot Springs (Onsen)

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 twelfth level, Hot Springs, was also extremely obvious: it had to be an Onsen-meguri puzzle. Hot Springs is also one of the more infamous levels in Ape Escape, so I had wanted to make this puzzle extremely hard... but by the time I got to it, I was tending way too hard overall, so made this one easier to compensate, ending up at only 5 points. I still kept the "tall" nature of the level in the puzzle, though, and used loops with 2, 3 and 4 not because they're consecutive numbers, but because that's how many monkeys are in each room! Having room symmetry under these constraints was pretty tough to get to work too, for both the example and main puzzles. The example especially since I needed an empty circle - the example is probably harder, actually.

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