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 #738 - #746 - Santa's Choco Banana

For the Secret Solver puzzle exchange on Puzzle'rs Club this past December, I got assigned Menderbug, who had previously written for me back in 2022. My first idea was to do something with Rail Pool, but before I started working on that idea I had a thought - what if I took the same idea that was made for me - a series of Symmetry Area puzzles on increasingly less regular grids - and applied that to Menderbug's signup comment of  "I like Choco Banana"? Once I had that idea, I had to go for it.

For all of these puzzles, all shaded areas must be convex and all unshaded areas must be concave. The entire pack can be found here.

My original plan was to make a small and large puzzle for each grid shape, and so I tried to focus on interesting logic for the smaller ones and that + a good layout for the large ones. Time pressure ended up pushing back some parts of this plan but the modular nature of the plan meant that I could easily scale back and have something that felt complete.

puzz.link interface

puzz.link interface

Menderbug is also the person who has pioneered triangular Choco Banana among the most, including making a few for GAPP. I definitely felt some pressure to try to deliver something new and interesting here, and while I'm not sure I succeeded I'm quite happy with what I ended up making.

penpa interface

penpa interface

Tetrakis Choco Banana has also been done before, though only with rectangle/not rectangle. I made so many mistaken deductions while trying to make these two puzzles... it's a weird geometry to get to grips with.

penpa interface

penpa interface

The last 3 puzzles are where the rules really start to fall apart a bit, as some of these geometries are really only good for a one-off puzzle. Rhombi worked okay but were prone to paired cell ambiguities, Snub Square actually worked very well and my biggest regret is only having time to make one of those, while Penrose... well, it's much like Rhombi except weirder. Definitely a one-off but a one-off worth exploring.

penpa interface

penpa interface

penpa interface

Overall I'm quite pleased with this set, and while Menderbug immediately thanked me specifically for it (not so secret) I knew that I was revealing my identity with the plan. He also said "I was going to say which puzzle/tiling I liked best, but I don't know, there was something really cool in each of them." after solving, which is very high praise indeed.

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.

puzz.link interface     penpa interface

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.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

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.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

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!

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #700 - Archipelago (Pentominous)

Let's do this Pentominous puzzle a little differently than usual.

puzz.link interface

The past few years I've played a lot of Archipelago games, which is a platform for generating and hosting multi-game, multi-world randomizers. This is one of the coolest software projects I've ever seen, that constantly expands as more people support more games. I actually played some of the predecessor - that being Berserker's Multiworld (for Link to the Past) before losing interest in that particular randomizer, and having the server sit idle in my Discord list for years.

Then NewSoupVi and Jarno implemented Sigma's Witness Randomizer into Archipelago, and Vi has continued adding new features and quality of life for over 2 years at this point. I really do recommend giving it a try if you want to play an old game in a new way. If you know me, you know I'd done a good amount of speedruns of that randomizer before, so this was a push back into the multiworld space - and at that time, there were about 15 games supported. There's now about 60, and a ton more unsupported or work in progress games. I've even been helping get an implementation for Ape Escape together, having done all the logic (nobody knows that game better than me) and recently even helping with code now that the project has changed hands and I was given direct write access.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, I made a puzzle using the AP logo as my grid shape, and everyone should go look into it to see if the project is interesting to them. Someone is even working on a world for Simon Tatham's Puzzle Collection with a lot of support for choosing what types of puzzles show up. Now if you'll excuse me, at the time of this writing (September 15th, 3:17 AM) I need to get to sleep so I can wake up in time for a Touhou event where I'm planning on doing an AP game using an Impossible Spellcard Manual and Bumper Stickers, followed immediately by an Ape Escape community game on the most recent world for that - which includes a starting gadget option implemented entirely by me. (update a couple days later: both went very well!)

Happy solving!

Puzzles #697, #698 & #699 - The Shape of an L Dissection

These three are.. a bit strange at first glance, so I'll present the puzzles first with a brief explanation, and then a longer description afterwards.

One night I couldn't sleep, as often happens, and started thinking about puzzles, as also often happens. I ended up thinking about trying to specify a large empty area for a puzzle with only a single rule: divide the grid into L trominos. That's it. I pretty quickly found an empty 6x6.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

I then wondered if this construction could tile vertically - it could not, but I did find an empty 6x8 - surely this was as big as it could go.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Just as I was about to give up and try to go back to sleep again, I had one last idea, and by some miracle it actually worked, and I found a way to specify an entire empty 7x7 space with just L tromino tiling. I wonder if bigger is possible?

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

But why was I even thinking about this sort of shape dissection in the first place? Well, it turns out to have the same answer as to why I jumped straight to region division for LS56, which turns out to be the same reason I gravitated to Light and Shadow-likes a couple years ago. Lunarch has been working on another puzzle game for the past months, and I've been hard at work on the puzzle side of this game as well. There's so much more than just this little teaser shows...

In other news, as of about today I can share up to 172 of my Islands of Insight puzzles, as long as I only provide static images for those puzzles, and do not myself provide a means of solution checking those puzzles. I'll have to filter through my archives for what I consider the best of the bunch, and I'll probably put together a single PDF collection of some of my highlights from the game. This is completely separate from the unused prototype puzzles I alluded to however many posts ago, which will have solving interfaces and solution checking.

I've been busy, even when this blog hasn't been. It's been hard to find the drive to keep updating it given the overlap with what I've been doing for work (spreadsheets for organizing and the like), but I'll try to keep on top of things at least a little better going forward. No more 6 month backlogs. I hope.

Puzzle #696 - Overlooked (Hotaru Beam)

When I was assessing my puzzle backlog for this archive dump, I found that I had an extremely strong milestone puzzle for #700. However, I only had enough puzzles to get to 699. So I asked the Witness randomizer community for a puzzle type to make, and the exceedingly more likely to be sharing the same brain cell as me Exempt-Medic suggested Hotaru Beam. This was an excellent choice, and even moreso considering I somehow had never made one before this!

puzz.link interface

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.

puzz.link interface

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

Puzzle #694 - Large Areas Only (Norinuri)

Nearly every Norinuri puzzle has to rely on either low numbers to fill space, or large ? numbers to fill space. At one point, I tried making one with only 10 clues, but couldn't quite finesse a solution grid. In the attempt I did find this one with only large, but not excessively large numbers, and it turned out there was a nice way to clue it, too.

puzz.link interface

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.

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #692 - Speedwriting (Cave)

I wrote this Cave puzzle in 5 minutes after a brief discussion about trying to write a good puzzle in 2 minutes. I had most of a puzzle at that time, but elected to try to finish it off more nicely rather than just throw out a half baked puzzle. I got a bit lucky with a deduction in this just kinda working, and putting this post together - including getting links, getting images, tagging and scheduling - took longer than making the puzzle featured here.

Kind of insane.

puzz.link interface

I definitely don't regret having this blog set up as an archive of my puzzles, but man is it a lot of work sometimes.

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.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzle #690 - Masyu Day!

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

puzz.link interface

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 #689 - Chocolate Season (Choco Banana)

I recall making this Choco Banana after my friend Rever solved one with the same 1-2-3-4-5-6 pattern, and said that it could only resolve one way. I saw another way, so I made this puzzle to make it resolve another way. This is still such a good type I need to make more of and keep forgetting to make more of.

puzz.link interface

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.

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #686 & #687 - Sixty Second Misfits (Pentominous, Statue Park)

Like I said yesterday, I made two unsubmitted puzzles for The Sixty Second Logic Showcase. I didn't submit the Pentominous because the theme ended up a bit imprecise and I didn't think it would do well in voting for that reason, despite being a fine puzzle. I didn't submit the Statue Park because even though my timing calibration was wrong, even I knew this one would be too long. I knew it when I started making it that it was almost definitely going to be too long, but I had an idea I wanted to try.

puzz.link interface

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #684 & #685 - A/B Testing (Fillomino, Cross the Streams)

My other two submissions for The Sixty Second Logic Showcase are a bit different. In both cases, the puzzles turned out much harder than I expected or wanted them to, so I had to add clues to nerf the puzzle. In both cases even the nerfed puzzle was something I knew was overshooting the difficulty side of things, though again my incorrect understanding of the timing component of scoring meant I wasn't too worried about the overshoot if the quality was way up there. And I felt for this Fillomino, it was. The Cross the Streams I thought had an outside chance of being quick enough for a secret reason but would almost definitely be the slowest puzzle in the set if not enough people caught on. Somehow I'd never made one of these before either!

I'll show and link the original version of the puzzles first - I'll include an image of the nerfed versions I submitted at the bottom of this post. I will not be linking the nerfed versions, however.

puzz.link interface

puzz.link interface

The Fillomino here took a half dozen aborted attempts and as many hours across a few days of trying, while the CTS took a much shorter time due to the nature of the puzzle. Honestly I think the Fillomino took me more time than every other puzzle I made for this showcase combined, even tomorrows' bonus pair!

And here are the nerfed versions - the Fillomino gets an extra pair of clues that smooth out the toughest part of the solve (but it still has a lot of steps) while the CTS gets more concrete values and less uncertainty in a few key clue rows. I don't think either of these changes moved the needle all that much.

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.

puzz.link interface

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.

puzz.link interface

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.

puzz.link interface