pzprxs (and other puzzling) updates!

Alright then. It's been too long.

pzprxs has been continuing to update and add new genres for quite a while at this point, and I have some old puzzle posts that didn't have solution check that I get to replace now! But this doesn't add the puzzles to the increasingly less relevant database, which I'd like to do. So, just like the big update 4 years ago I'll be reposting links for all of these puzzles.

Bosnian Road (previously appeared #356, #357 - Hexagony)

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?bosnianroad/6/6/h4b3l1b6h

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?bosnianroad/11/11/e3m4c7m2m6c2i4c3m4m5c6m1e

Isowatari (previous appeared #577 - #589 - New Genre Pack, #590)

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?isowatari/6/6/3/0i3fc0085610

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?isowatari/6/6/2/003692000000

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?isowatari/6/6/3/0420i00209l0

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?isowatari/7/7/4/090j0i3i0b0i6i090

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?isowatari/8/8/2/210330ii110360ii210330

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?isowatari/8/8/4/0006387460963000000000

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?isowatari/7/7/5/0i04l0179i6c1f000

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?isowatari/9/9/3/9b0ii1990009j0b1000119210j1

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?isowatari/9/9/2/090031a9030a043090909099103

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?isowatari/9/9/5/0000000o0k262060k060i0ii080

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?isowatari/12/12/4/0360200962i60910i1i223691369i2i20i203193200i0330

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?isowatari/11/11/5/0600i30010009b3390j32690k23ii006002090100

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?isowatari/15/15/4/ddddd90001940519iiija039ab06719i901940o1901219f30ab230jb21219l0f190001ddddd

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?isowatari/10/10/4/0001qg9i0360110099066021009phf0000

Nibunnogo (previously appeared #603, #604 - Puzzle Getchu!)

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?nibunnogo/6/6/gakde6dq7bddkb

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?nibunnogo/7/7/o3cgcc8chbbbbh7bcdg3cm

Japanese Sums (previously appeared #624, #625 - Puzzle Getchu!)

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?japanesesums/5/5/5/8h.9gah2.g.h76g54g..g31gbh

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?japanesesums/9/9/7/-1cj.9i1jc..hd2.hc..h2j.3i-1cjd3i-1cj31i56bh9.7h4.5h9.6hc76h556h

As for where I've been, I was hard at work on a few other puzzle related projects. Most notably a few months ago The Artisan of Glimmith released, a region division puzzle game with over 1000 handmade puzzles, curated by me, with Overwhelmingly Positive feedback and an estimated 100k+ sales! I spent so long staring at the organizational spreadsheet that I haven't wanted to look at my own personal puzzle spreadsheet or write supplementary documentation like these posts. I'm also the main contributor to Inkwell Games daily puzzles, with Star Battle, Light and Shadow, and Barred Simple Loop available. You can play the current week at any time, but past archive puzzles require a subscription to access. (and 236 Star Battle / 117 Light and Shadow are currently inaccessible). Keeping up with all of this is tough, so I'm hoping to find some time during upcoming vacations to actually work (haha) through my extensive backlog here. I've been saying that since Islands of Insight, though...

Puzzle #747 - Mindsweeper

So.

I have had. A very, very busy year. I have a decent sized backlog that I most likely won't get around to posting this year (sorry!) but did want to share this puzzle I made today. A friend from the Touhou community linked "Mindsweeper", which generates full-sized no guessing Minesweeper boards, with the option to kill you any time you make a guess that could be wrong - just like 14 Minesweeper Variants. One opening I got was a 3x4 block of 1s, and I was so surprised that this led to any deducible squares at all that I had to try to make a puzzle based on it.

So I made this Minesweeper puzzle based on it. (minor edit the next day to remove an unintended opening)

puzz.link interface

I should have some other things to share soon as well, beyond just a 100+ puzzle backlog.

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

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.

puzz.link interface

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.

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #668, #669 & #670 - 24HPC Zodiac (Little Killer Latin Square, Antiknight Tomtom)

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).

The other half of this round was themed on the Chinese zodiac animals. Rat went unclaimed for a long, long time, so I elected to make a puzzle using the Little Killer sudoku variant rule. Rather than make a sudoku and deal with regions and larger grids or irregular regions, I went with just a Latin Square. Here's a quick example puzzle I also made for the instructions booklet: the rules are pretty straightforward. Place a number from 1 to N (where N is the side length of the grid) into every cell, so that there are no repeats in a row or column. Arrows outside the grid give the sum of all the numbers inside the grid that they point to.

penpa interface

And the actual competition puzzle, worth 20 points. I tried to make it really tricky, but ended up missing a case so the logic is really messy and honestly the cleanest way is just a bifurcation, unfortunately. It's still unique and still a puzzle I made, so here it is.

penpa interface

I also claimed the spot for Horse with an Anti-Knight Tomtom; like with the IPC Killer Doppelblock, I didn't know which genre I wanted to use beyond a latin square type, but Tomtom quickly proved its worth and potential for some crazy theming. I ran into so many dead ends from only a few cages in this construction and it was really painful, even with using f-puzzles to help speed through "easy" anti-knight steps. The final puzzle is actually unique without the 21 cage, but since it's worth 110 points with the extra clue... yeah I think it's necessary for a good puzzle. Reminder everyone, harder/minimal cluing is not always better.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzle #664 - 24HPC Ripple Effect

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).

As construction was wrapping up there were a few missing Greek letters. None of the puzzles so far used the grid shape for the theme, and Ripple Effect is always a fun type to do on irregular grids. This puzzle ended up being only worth 25 points which is a bit lower than I would have expected, but I guess most of the solve path is pretty straightforward, and even though it's "10x10" there is a lot of empty space.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzles #652, #653 & #654 - IPC Round 3 (Killer Doppelblock, Clone Snake)

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.

Round 3 was themed on taking sudoku variants and applying them to non-sudoku puzzles. I put myself down for number placement, wanting to make a puzzle of a type that has arithmetic normally combined with killer cages. I thought about a few types before settling on Doppelblock. I also signed up for clone Snake since I knew the combination had potential from old, old Islands of Insight rule prototyping. In fact, now that that game isn't getting new content, I know a lot of these old unused puzzles will stay unused, so retain all the rights to them. I've gone through my archive and have about 80 puzzles in this category I think are good enough to share, so at some point I'll have to set up solving interfaces/write rules/share them.

Anyway, Killer Doppelblock! Standard Doppelblock rules apply. Additionally, all the numbers inside a cage add up to the number in the corner of the cage. This is a pretty cool combination, where the different ways of getting partial sums interact in some really cool ways. This was worth 65 points.

penpa interface

Clone Snake: Standard Snake rules apply, with given endpoints and an unknown length. Two cages of the same shape and orientation must have the same arrangement of snake and not snake cells. The first puzzle here is actually one of those old IOI prototype puzzles, since I added it to the organization sheet after a couple failed constructions, to at least have a puzzle in the slot. I put a note that this was from a couple years ago and I didn't think anyone at the IPC would have seen it before. A few hours later, I finally turned up a satisfactory second puzzle, and added that to the sheet to provide an option for which puzzle to use. Prasanna chose both, worth 30 and 50 points.

penpa interface

penpa interface

Puzzle #644 - Two Good (Akari)

I don't have a witty comment for this Akari puzzle. The reason I made it was I linked a friend pzprrt, messed around and made a bashy puzzle afterwards, and felt bad and wanted to make a legit puzzle. So I made this one, which I like quite a bit.

puzz.link interface

I then made something even worse than the other bashy puzzle. Look at it. Just look at it.

Horrifying.

Puzzles #634 & #635 - TV Tower (Multi-Skyscrapers)

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 penultimate level, TV Tower, is a skyscraper. But I didn't just want to go with a big Skyscrapers puzzle since I felt an 8x8 or larger would be less interesting. I also didn't think I could pull it off well! So I added the multi rule: Circled cells act as clues for all adjacent grids and will have the same value for all grids.

The example had a lot to show and I'm kind of surprised this grid layout even has any solutions, let alone working with such a sparse antisymmetric cluing. I almost like the example more than the contest puzzle.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

The 20 point contest puzzle had to be multiple stacked grids, of course. My first attempt was a pair of 7x7 grids, but after a few hours I found I had no way to resolve the middle. So I scrapped that start and briefly considered three 5x5 grids before discarding that idea - WSPC 2021 did a 3x3 array of these and I had nothing new to add. I then set up three 6x6 grids and thought it looked way too large, so I nerfed it down to a pair of 6x6 grids and went for it. I used the same break-in as the aborted 7x7 attempt since I'd already discovered it, and there was no point not using the things I learned from that failed attempt.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzles #626, #627 & #628 - Wabi Sabi Walls

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 fourteenth level in the game is Wabi Sabi Wall, a bit of a notorious level for newcomers to the speedrun due to having lots of tough jumps over bottomless pits. Because of that, I knew I didn't want this puzzle to be too easy. I promise there's a good reason why I didn't use Castle Wall for this and instead went with Inaba's Walls. Walls is a genre is something I'm quite prone to making silly mistakes while solving, and so my first attempt - shown at the end of this post - just didn't feel right. Not enough trust in myself to set things up for later. The second attempt was much better and ended up being worth 15 points.

The example, on the other hand, was quite painful to make. It turns out a much less dense clue layout can make some areas really hard to clue effectively, who would have guessed?

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzles #624 & #625 - Sushi Temple (Japanese Sums)

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 thirteenth level is Sushi Temple, and is very much a Japanese shrine. Once I got past the idea of using Anglers (fish, ha ha), I went straight into Japanese Sums, which has quickly become one of my favorite number placement genres. It's both so flexible and restricted at the same time, and there's almost always a useful clue to add to disambiguate a problem. Because of that, the example puzzle was a complete non-issue to make, even with a self-imposed constraint of not duplicating a clue value and making sure to show that a question mark is not strictly a single digit number, like in some implementations.

pzprxs interface      puzz.link interface      penpa interface

The 25 point contest puzzle may appear themeless, but it's not. The opening steps and specifically the first few shaded cells form a torii. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have thought to go this route without being aware this is a common shrine element from the Touhou series. Hmmm, that's another idea...

pzprxs interface      puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzle #611 - Crabby Beach (Doppelblock)

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 seventh level is Crabby Beach - a relatively smaller level. Doppelblock is at first an incongruous choice, until Beach -> Sand -> Sandwich -> sum between clues from Doppelblock. It's still a stretch, but a justifiable stretch. This puzzle was worth 10 points - I really wanted to have a good break-in using no edge clues, as Doppelblock almost always relies on edge clues. I ended up only using prime numbers, and went through a lot of struggle keeping that theme alive.

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #609 & #610 - Cryptic Relics (Word Worms)

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 sixth level in the game is Cryptic Relics, and while I originally penciled in Letter Weights on the monkey names in the level, that quickly proved to be unworkable. But it led me to another idea, what genre could possibly support the list of monkey names? Word Division is a safe fallback but perhaps less interesting than other word genres. Meandering Words was out because some of the words contained double letters... what could possibly support those?

And then I remembered Word Worms / Worm Search from the first EUSPC (2nd incarnation linked - first doesn't seem to have a live link anywhere). That seemed perfect! Taking the monkey name lists from both the NTSC and PAL versions of Cryptic Relics gave a word list with 91 characters - perfect, that's a rectangle! And there's even a double Z, maybe I could put PUZZLE in my puzzle... several miracles later, I had a 30 point puzzle. The example was much easier to make since I already had some experience - I mostly just wanted to showcase every rule with a much more restricted letter bank.

Rules: Place one letter into every empty cell such that every worm can be found. Worms are words that can be read in a path that may bend and move in any orthogonal direction. Every cell in the grid must be part of exactly one worm. If identical letters are adjacent, even diagonally, they must belong to the same worm.

penpa interface

penpa interface

Puzzles #606 & #607 - Thick Jungle (Tents)

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 fourth level (and first big level) in the game is Thick Jungle, and I actually spent quite a while on different genre ideas before making a Tents. I tried Arboretum first but the genre just does not agree with me and the way I make puzzles. Then I tried helping that by applying a Tents rule as a hybrid (there is a tent in Thick Jungle!) and while I was able to make some good setups with these rules, after a couple hours of trying I found that there would be no way to resolve things uniquely. So, I went with the "boring" option of standard Tents.

puzz.link interface

The 15 point contest puzzle was even potentially undervalued - something I'm quite pleased with as the first Tents I've ever made. It took a few tree layouts (in the shape of a tree) to find something that actually worked and wasn't too forcing before any clues, but was forcing with a few clues. I don't know how I got the row and column clues to match.

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #600 - Interconnected Secret

This year for Secret Solver I was assigned feadoor, someone I know is quite a good solver and constructor across a variety of puzzle types. I wanted to try to lean into as much of those types as I could, remembering the Skyscrapers and Sudoku from a GP round, Yajilin from Yajilin and Variations, and Heyawake from Heyawake Hike. The rest of the genres were picked to cooperate with the connections between grids, and lead to a final secret. I did a lot of planning before any actual construction here!

Anyway, here's all the rules. The short version is that standard rules apply for each individual puzzle, and that cages marked with the same letter must have the same pattern of shaded cells. Country Road requires all regions, and unused cells are considered shaded. Nanro (Signpost), the numbered cells are considered shaded. Skyscraper Sudoku is 1-6 in each row, column and region. Domino Yajilin counts the number of shaded cells.

penpa interface

I really should have taken my own advice and not made an interconnected puzzle - it's very stressful when something starts not working, or seems like it might not resolve. I also ended up doing most of the writing over 2 days, with a few scattered bits of progress before that point. I even brought a notebook with transcriptions of the starting points (determined links) for 3 puzzles to a relatives' for Christmas Eve, and finished those puzzles there!

To think my original idea involved having to figure out the cage matching as part of solving... that would have been impossible within the time I ended up having, and especially with the other constraints.

Puzzles #574 & #575 - Tilted Squares (Akari, Choco Banana)

The djmathman was streaming one or two weekends ago, and people were jokingly making meme tilted square puzzles. I contributed one of those but then decided no, I'm going to make something legitimate. So I made an Akari (always a flexible choice) and a Choco Banana (one of dj's favorite genres) that I'd somehow never made one of before? It's a fun genre but man is it hard to get started with this theme.

puzz.link interface

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #573 - People Do Read These? (Akari)

I recently caught up on logic race in Puzzlers Club, after falling very far behind. In one of my comments I wondered if anyone was actually checking 2 months of backlog and said that the first person to send me a screenshot of a comment would get a puzzle. ft029 was very prompt on this and I didn't have a puzzle planned, and they thought that it was pre-made, so... asked for an Akari. So I made an FT Akari.

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #553 - Smile (Sudoku)

A while back pzprrt added support for a lot more genres, including Sudoku. I spent a bit of time toying with it to see how it felt and turned up what is apparently a reasonably nice vanilla sudoku puzzle. I wouldn't know myself, I'm terrible at assessing these, though tracing why something was forced was certainly useful for making the puzzle work more nicely, without having to overclue like in the past.

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #530, #531 & #532 - So Many Bees Part 8

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 the full PDF for tomorrow. 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.

X Sums with Bees

Standard X Sums apply, except the number range is 0-5 instead of 1-6. Adding a 0 to the range always changes how a latin square puzzle feels a lot in interesting ways, I'm surprised I hadn't seen this done before. Though naturally, in the pack it was described as 1-5 and a bee, because bees. And bees outside the puzzle that do nothing, because bees.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Yajisan Kazusan

Standard Yajisan-Kazusan rules apply. This was actually the first puzzle I made for So Many Bees, and I really tried to make one that Jamie would be happy with. Not only do I think I succeeded, I know I did. Now the only question here is, is this a variant puzzle?

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Zigzag

Standard Password Path rules apply. Puzzle types beginning with Z are rare, so I went with one final alternate name to get it right. The background color here was deliberately chosen to be the exact shade of the "Kappa" emote in Puzzlers Club. Why? Because Jamie suggested puce and no one else had a better idea, so that's what it is. This was also the only puzzle from my first drafts that needed to be revised for non-uniqueness - trying to make this one hard was quite hard.

penpa interface