Puzzle #300 - Colorblind Loop

For my 300th puzzle (wow I made it to 300 yay!) on this blog, I'm sharing the second half of my secret solver gift for wen, called Colorblind Loop. It's inspired by Bram de Laat's Four Color Loop, where instead of using 4 loop genres with numbered rooms, I decided to go with 4 loop genres that use black and white symbols. The rules are a little lengthy but shouldn't be too hard to understand as it's mostly just 4 standard genres mashed together.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Colorblind Loop: Draw a single non-intersecting loop orthogonally connecting cell centers. Each region obeys one of four constraints, to be determined during solving. Adjacent regions may not require the same constraint. (note that this means a region may satisfy multiple constraints, but only one will be required)

Constraint 1: Black and white circles obey Masyu rules.

Constraint 2: Black and white circles obey Balance Loop rules.

Constraint 3: This region obeys Moon or Sun rules. The region may only be visited once. During this visit, all circles of one color will be touched and all circles of the other color must not be used. Travelling around the full final loop, the color of the circle used in all regions with this constraint must alternate. (no such restriction applies to non-Moon or Sun regions)

Constraint 4: This region obeys Kuroshiro Loop rules. All cells in the region must be used. Any loop segment that enters this region must not turn between circles of the same color, and must turn exactly once between circles of different colors. (this includes visits to the region that do not touch any circles!) The loop may turn or travel straight freely on a circle.

I really like some of the things I managed to fit into this grid, both aesthetically and logically. Total construction and testing time on this was probably about 10 hours, which is a bit less than last year- though some of that was due to making errors last year, while this construction process was surprisingly error free!

Puzzles #296 - #299 - Not-So-Secret Solver (Masyu, Balance Loop, Moon or Sun, Kuroshiro Loop)

I participated in the Puzzlers Club Secret Solver event again this year, and this time was assigned wen (who I've seen have an account name of wen1now somewhere, though I can't remember where), someone who has made some pretty insane puzzles. I decided to break out an idea I'd had lying around for a while and successfully constructed it- but more on that tomorrow.

I had about a week left until the deadline and thought it'd be funny to send some vanilla puzzles first, framed like they were the entire gift. The "real" puzzle would then be an extra surprise after solving the rest. I'm not sure entirely how it went over, so I hope it was amusing and that the initial set of 4 wasn't disappointing! The link I originally sent can be found here and the rules for each of Masyu, Balance Loop, Moon or Sun and Kuroshiro Loop can be found on their links.

Happy solving!

puzz.link interface

The Masyu didn't end up very challenging, as early on I decided to focus more on a fairly restricted aesthetic theme.

puzz.link interface

Like with the Masyu, the Balance Loop aesthetic ended up driving much of the solve. Most of my effort went into resolving the right side uniquely! This is probably my favorite of these 4.

puzz.link interface

This Moon or Sun was a fun challenge to construct- limiting placements in this genre takes some creative region stretching to make it work nicely.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Kuroshiro Loop can take on a life of its own when constructing, especially when targeting an arrangement of givens that looks like something. I ran into a few situations where I needed a circle to be both colors simultaneously, but eventually found a nice way to change the N that resulted in a unique puzzle with a nice solve path.

Puzzle #269 - Constellation (Balanced Moon or Sun)

I've seen Moon or Sun puzzles where the clues must obey Masyu rules before, and thought I'd try for something a bit more original by having the clues obey Balance Loop rules. White circles (suns) will have the loop segments travel the same distance in both directions, and the black crescents (moons) will have the loop segments travel a different distance in both directions. There's some potential for very sparse and tricky puzzles with this combo, though I doubt it'll be seen anytime soon since neither genre is particularly common.

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #25 - The Sky's the Limit (Celestial Road)

For the 25th puzzle milestone on my blog, here's my entry for Puzzler's Club Logic Showcase #3, which required combining 2 loop genres to make a new one. Naturally, I mashed up Moon or Sun and Country Road to devise Celestial Road. This puzzle placed 6th of 10 in a very strong field and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I actually constructed this puzzle before any of puzzles #20-#24, and decided to build easier puzzles of the types to ease into this one.

puzz.link interface   penpa interface

This is easily the hardest puzzle on the blog thus far. Most regions are sparsely clued, but there's just enough information to force one singular path between the symbol alternation and unused cell adjacency rules. If I had to give it a difficulty rating, probably 7 or 8 out of 10.

Next post will probably be a compilation of all puzzles posted so far, with solutions and possibly walkthroughs. Depends on if I can figure out how to make a good pdf.

Puzzle #24 - An Intentional Variant (Celestial Road)

This is a Celestial Road puzzle. Celestial Road is an original mashup of Moon or Sun and Country Road. Draw a loop through cell centers that enters all regions. In each region, either visit all suns and no moons or all moons and no suns in that region. The loop must alternate passing through all moons in a region, and all suns in a region. Additionally, unused cells may not be adjacent across a region boundary.

This is the only solution to the above Celestial Road puzzle. Each of the 2 regions with only suns must be "sun" regions, as entering them requires entering a sun, and all of an entered symbol must be visited by the loop. After a "sun" region, the next region must be a "moon" region, and so the bottom left must use those cells. That renders row 2, column 2 and row 3, column 3 as unused cells. By the Country Road logic, that makes row 2, column 3 a cell that must be used by the loop, which gives the rest of the solution.

puzz.link interface   penpa interface

original, broken version

Puzzle #23 - An Accidental Variant (Moon or Sun)

Here is a Moon or Sun puzzle. However, the solving interface will not mark this as correct, as it requires at least one symbol be passed when traveling through a region. I didn't realize this when constructing a later puzzle, so the "variant" rule of "all symbols of a type can be 0" applies here.

This, then, would be a valid solution to the Nikoli example puzzle, as it travels through all moons in the top left, then all suns, then all 0 moons in the top right, all 0 suns in the middle, all moons, and then all suns on the bottom.

puzz.link interface   penpa interface

If the only error you get is "A line passes neither the marks of the moon nor the sun." and you travel through every sun in every other region, you found the solution. Constructing this one was quite the task!
And now, a year later, there's a penpa interface that has a correct answer check!

Puzzle #22 - Into the Sky (Moon or Sun)

Yet again, another new type for the blog. Moon or Sun is a relatively rare type that usually isn't very difficult, but I find them quite fun to both make and solve. The binary nature of each region is interesting to try to think around.

 puzz.link interface