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 #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.

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 #673 - #678 - One to Eight Collection

So, I've been sitting on this one for a while. As I write this, entries are open for Logic Showcase 66. I constructed this set of 6 puzzles for Logic Showcase 56, with the task of constructing 1-6 puzzles with 37 or fewer cells. I immediately thought of revisiting dividing a 6x6 grid into eight regions of sizes 1 to 8 each. Some of these clue types were obvious - Palisade and Checkered Fillomino - some took a bit more thinking - Symmarea and Kropki Pairs - and some were much more experimental - Thermo and Difference. If you only do one of these, do the Thermo, it's absolutely my favorite. The Symmarea was the biggest struggle to construct - turns out even finding a solution with rotationally symmetric 1-8 regions is hard. The most disappointing is the Difference since I needed the "cheater" even clues to avoid killing the puzzle extremely prematurely.

Rules for the puzzle are in the first link, and reproduced at the bottom of this post.

penpa interface (all in one)

Divide each grid into 8 regions, each having exactly one region of size 1 to 8 each. Each grid has its own set of rules.

Checkered Fillomino: Numbers indicate the size of the region they are contained in. Regions must be two-colorable.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Palisade: Numbers indicate the number of edges drawn around the cell containing the clue. The edge of the grid counts as a drawn edge.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Symmarea: Numbers indicate the size of the region they are contained in. All regions must be 180 degree rotationally symmetric.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Thermo: Starting from the bulb, each thermometer cell must be part of a region with a strictly larger area than the previous.

penpa interface

Kropki Pairs: Regions separated by a white dot must have areas that differ by exactly 1. Regions separated by a black dot must have areas with a ratio of exactly 2 - one is twice as large as the other.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Difference: Regions separated by a gray dot must have areas that differ by exactly the number on the dot. An E stands for an unknown, positive even number.

penpa interface

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.

puzz.link interface

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.

puzz.link interface

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.

puzz.link 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.

puzz.link interface

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.

puzz.link interface

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.

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #636 & #637 - Monkey Madness (Compass Galaxies)

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!

Monkey Madness is the final level of Ape Escape, taking place first in an amusement park, and ending up in a castle floating in space. The level has 24 monkeys - 11 in the first (bottom) half, and 13 in the second (top) half. It's also huge, taking up 20% of a speedrun, so for the contest puzzle I had to go big. 14x14 was where I started, but was actually too small, so I bumped it up to 16x16. Oh right, the genre choice: I really liked the "one X per region" rule from the Pentominous in So Many Bees, so I brought that back with monkeys instead of bees. It ended up at 40 points, which on finishing pace would be 16 minutes for this puzzle. Interestingly, Ken Endo got here with more time than that and did not solve in time, similar to his performance in Puzzle Zodiac - also arriving at the final puzzle with plenty of time and coming up short. My contests always seem to have a "boss puzzle" at the end that really kicks people around, but it's always a standout and this was no exception: in the feedback I got afterwards, this was the most mentioned puzzle by far.

Rules: Divide the grid into regions along cell boundaries so that each region contains exactly one monkey (shown as a monkey inside a hexagon) and exactly one other clue. A white circle (Spiral Galaxies clue) indicates that the region has 180 degree rotational symmetry centered on the clue. A number in an X (Compass) clue, if given, indicates the number of cells inside that region that are further than the clue in the direction of the number.

penpa interface

Oh right I also had to make an example puzzle. So I did - it's pretty uninspired, but meh. I needed an example and this was the last one I made, and I knocked out all the examples over 2 days to rush the contest out before WPC. But also, I didn't want to re-use ideas from the main puzzle!

penpa interface

Puzzle #605 - Molten Lava (Double Choco)

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 third level is Molten Lava, and I went with the chocolate association of lava cakes for a Double Choco. The contest puzzle was 10 points and I'm quite happy with it, though the version I used was a slight nerf from the original version, since I missed an option.

puzz.link interface

The original version isn't that different - just shuffling the right side numbers around - but breaking in is a bit harder. I'll just give an image for this version.

Puzzle #598 - Packing (Pentominous)

Some time ago there was some discussion on pentomino packing in an 8x8 square with 4 cells removed, and what layouts were impossible to fit 1 copy of each into. After the obvious cases of sectioning off part of the grid, someone mentioned forcing two P pentominoes. I quickly made an empty grid to mock it up, and then realized it would actually make a good Pentominous opening. So I made that, too.

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #568 & #569 - Bite-Sized Pentominous

A while back DireKrow was making 6x6 region division examples, and said they'd had trouble making a good one for Pentominous. That seemed really interesting to me as I hadn't worked with walls in the grid for Pentominous before, and I ended up finding a pretty cool layout that showcased every rule the type has, I think?

puzz.link interface

I then continued experimenting with 6x6 puzzles and decided to copy the style of Menderbug, with the slanted diagonal. This one is pretty tricky!

puzz.link interface

Puzzle #550 - IPC 2023 Round 3 Giant (Shikaku)

I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to construct puzzles for the Indian Puzzle Championship this year. Before getting into some of the puzzles I prepared, you can acquire the full set of puzzles at the link above. The IPC (and LMI, a phenomenal puzzling site) operate at a loss, so if you want to throw some support their way it would definitely be appreciated.

My final contribution was a large puzzle for round 3. By the time I got around to this one most of the other giants were already made and there were no region division puzzles. The difficulties also seemed to be tending high so I went for Shikaku as it's usually a pretty easy region division puzzle, and in particular one that's fast to input. I still didn't want this to be trivial and so started from a symmetric set of numbers that didn't resolve, and then made sure the surrounding clues made them resolve in two different ways. Minor spoiler I guess, though any rigorous solve will find out anyway!

puzz.link interface

The fact that this ended up on 550 exactly - another milestone puzzle post - is purely coincidental. I still have a few more stray puzzles to queue up, so daily puzzles will continue a little longer.

Puzzles #548 & #549 - IPC 2023 Round 3 Extras

I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to construct puzzles for the Indian Puzzle Championship this year. Before getting into some of the puzzles I prepared, you can acquire the full set of puzzles at the link above. The IPC (and LMI, a phenomenal puzzling site) operate at a loss, so if you want to throw some support their way it would definitely be appreciated.

These two Double Choco puzzles weren't used because they were 6x9 instead of the 6x6 limit. I do really love the theming and solves on these though, and it was worth a shot since I was struggling to come up with more good 6x6 puzzles with some bite.

puzz.link interface                   puzz.link interface

Puzzles #542 - #547 - IPC 2023 Round 3 (Double Choco)

I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to construct puzzles for the Indian Puzzle Championship this year. Before getting into some of the puzzles I prepared, you can acquire the full set of puzzles at the link above. The IPC (and LMI, a phenomenal puzzling site) operate at a loss, so if you want to throw some support their way it would definitely be appreciated.

This year, round 3 had a wild structure: thirty-six small puzzles, 6 each of 6 types, and 6 giant/large puzzles. It was not intended to be finishable and even my testsolve times of the entire round would come in a bit over the 1 hour time limit, without accounting for my 6th. Insanity. Anyway I made a bunch of small Double Choco puzzles and don't really have comments on them individually. Puzzle links first, images after unlike my usual order.

Double Choco 1    Double Choco 2    Double Choco 3

Double Choco 4    Double Choco 5    Double Choco 6

The first two puzzles here led off the round with the classic "IPC" "2 23". From there, using only 2s and 3s just kind of happened - one antisymmetric puzzle that took a very long time to find, a numberless, and two that mostly focused on a clean chocolate layout. I made a couple more of these, but that's what tomorrow is for. :)

Puzzles #535, #536 & #537 - IPC 2023 Round 2 (Akichiwake, Symmarea)

I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to construct puzzles for the Indian Puzzle Championship this year. Before getting into some of the puzzles I prepared, you can acquire the full set of puzzles at the link above. The IPC (and LMI, a phenomenal puzzling site) operate at a loss, so if you want to throw some support their way it would definitely be appreciated.

Round 2 is traditionally puzzles from the same categories as Puzzle Ramayan that year, but of different types. I picked Made In India (since Akichiwake was recently gaining prominence and it's a Prasanna invention) and Regions (since I like making region division). I started out by making the second puzzle here with a construction that got away from me, in the pursuit of a restrictive theme and layout. I then took that knowledge and used it to make another puzzle that also got away from me a bit, though since I started smaller the final puzzle ended up being much more reasonable, though still one of the harder puzzles in the round at 50/450 points.

puzz.link interface

puzz.link interface

For region division I went with a Symmarea because it's a fun type and I'd never made one before. It gave me a lot more trouble than I anticipated and I almost switched genres to something easier to make. I'm glad I persevered though, since I ended up with a really slick 90 point puzzle at the end of the process. Lesson learned, don't try a restrictive theme (cloned rings) for a first construction of a genre that dead-ends easily.
Over a month after the IPC, I realized there were two ways to resolve the last value. The original version of the puzzle is linked below - the image and first link are the fixed version, the second link is the original.

puzz.link interface

original, two solution version (penpa)

Puzzles #524, #525 & #526 - So Many Bees Part 6

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 over the next 3 days, ending on the 10th with the full PDF that was sent. 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.

Ququ

Standard Ququ rules apply. I... don't like this type and it's only notable for beginning with a Q. And the fact that in the puzzle pack, this puzzle was completely blocked by a picture of a bee and the link needed to be found elsewhere.

puzz.link interface

Star Battle Builder

Standard Star Battle rules apply. Additionally, some region borders are obscured by bees, but the star placements can still be determined.

While constructing this puzzle I ran into an issue with the end and not being able to uniquely determine regions. I decided that this was okay as the gimmick was some regions were obscured, not that the regions needed to be found. However, if that's unsatisfying to you I've included a version with a few extra borders that does result in unique regions. Also, the presentation in the pack involved covering the center and outside edges with bees. Because, as we all know, it was funny.

puzz.link (unique stars)      puzz.link (unique regions)      penpa (unique stars)

Tentaisho

Standard Spiral Galaxies rules apply. Another genre with a common rename, and another one with no bees in it? The only notable thing I did here was a custom win message in the penpa, specifically "Test Solution Bees Ignore". I don't know who's on that hunt team, but it's a great name, hope you guys don't mind referencing it here.

puzz.link interface

Puzzles #522 & #523 - So Many Bees Part 5

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 over the next 8 days, ending on the 10th with the full PDF that was sent. 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.

O'Ekaki

Standard Nonogram rules apply. This puzzle goes by a lot of different names and I went with the one used in Puzzle Ninja to get better coverage. There are no bees in this puzzle?

puzz.link interface

🅱️entominous

Standard Pentominous rules apply, with the additional rule that every pentomino must contain exactly one bee.

This is such a good rule. This is also probably the hardest puzzle in the set, almost entirely because I missed an option that was really hard to fix - I still think there's a fair path through. Only two puzzles today, at the halfway point.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzles #513, #514 & #515 - So Many Bees Part 2

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 over the next 7 days, ending on the 10th with the full PDF that was sent. 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.

Dominion of Bees

Standard Dominion rules apply.

I actually started making this puzzle as an 11x11, but in order to get the deductions I wanted to stick I had to enlarge the width to 13. Then the height had to grow to 13, and eventually all the way to 17 to have enough space. In the end, I think this ended up being one of the hardest puzzles in the entire set, and certainly the hardest non-variant. Also I made the puzzle image with emoji because why not, I was already going full meme with this set. The emoji could abbreviate to C (sea), U (you), B (bee), I (eye), T (tea) and Y (why), though there's no significance to this. I just thought it was funny.

puzz.link interface

Easy as a Unusually Large Amount of Bees

The rules of this Easy as ABC variant are as follows: Place symbols from the range given outside the grid into some cells so that each row and column contains each symbol once. A clue outside the grid represents the first symbol seen in the corresponding row or column from that direction. A clue with an X over it must be false. Some symbols and empty cells are given.

Outside clues and what they can represent:

🅰️:🅰️🆎 - 🅱️:🅱️🆎🐝 - 🩸:🅰️🅱️🆎🅾️

Most of the wacky bee themed variant rules I came up with before constructing worked out pretty well. This one didn't. Easy as ABC is already a fairly weakly clued genre, and all I did here is weaken the clues even farther. Also the theming is based on the phrase "passerby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood" alongside an unusually large amount of bees being something that wouldn't be easy. The "X" clue is such a kludge that I'm sad about, but since this is already such a wild variant rule I didn't mind adding one more to fix a logical error.

penpa interface

FilloBEEno

The rules of this Fillomino variant are as follows: Divide the grid into regions of orthogonally connected cells. Two regions with the same number of non-bee cells may not share an edge. Clued cells must belong to a region containing the indicated number of non-bee cells.

This variant rule is simultaneously very legit and also a complete one-off. I don't think there's much else to do with uncounting cells, at least with Fillomino. I think I've seen this done with Shikaku before where the region structure can work with the variant in a way that Fillomino doesn't.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface