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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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Puzzles #352, #353 & #354 - Hexagony Spiral Galaxies

It's kind of impossible to have missed that I recently ran a puzzle contest named Hexagony. Over the next two weeks, I'll be posting all of the puzzles I constructed for the contest (including examples), alongside a solution video walkthrough for the puzzles from that type. There were a few types where Eric Fox, my co-constructor, contributed all 3 necessary puzzles. On those days, I'll just post the solution video and some thoughts on the puzzles.

I started off the contest with Spiral Galaxies, not because I thought it would be the smoothest start, but because of the hidden theme in the first contest puzzle. Remember that for the participants, they would have no idea that half of the puzzles had hexagonal grids before beginning. First though, here's the example puzzle I put together.

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The first contest puzzle ended up being one of the hardest puzzles in the entire contest, as well as one of the largest. The size was necessary for the theme, which is something I wonder if people caught on to while solving and inferred how things were likely to go. It's a very satisfying logical solve, however.

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And finally, the only working puzzle that was rejected for the contest- I posted this with the results, but am reposting it here to canonize it in my numbered puzzles. It's a fun solve- I did not record a solution to this puzzle, but that shouldn't be an issue as it's much easier than the main contest puzzle.

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Puzzles #340 - #349 - BuckBlosters? (Variety)

On the Puzzler's Club Discord, Koala runs a parody quiz show called BuckBlosters, and wanted to run a logic puzzle round. So when a general call for constructors was put out, I volunteered and ended up making 10 of the 25 puzzles used! The target difficulty was "easy, for total beginners" and that ended up being overshot a bit, but it worked out well as both players had some solid logic puzzle experience. There was a puzzle for each letter except for X, and I ended up making A, C, H, J, M, N, P, Q, T and V.

First up: Arukone, with a theme of "oops". The show was pitched as "oops all logic" so I went with that as a starting point here. This one could probably have been a bit bigger but I like how the path turned out.

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Curve Data was the obvious choice for a trolling C genre, and so I elected to make a simple example of what can best be described as a Cursed Data.

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I had a Heteromino lying around that I didn't submit to the 6x6 logic showcase, so I dropped it into this project since I liked the open space it had. This is a pretty tough type to construct actually.

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There weren't a lot of options for puzzle types beginning with a J, and after a couple non-unique Juosan puzzles were posted, I tried my hand at it. I uh... came up short on the first couple attempts before finally managing a unique one. It's a very strange type!

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I thought that the set should be all very easy puzzles, and so I took the letter M to make a more challenging Minesweeper, operating under the assumption that everybody already knows these rules and so something more challenging can just be dropped in. It worked out well, the puzzle didn't take too long to get solved and honestly took a similar amount of time to the rest of the ones that weren't trivial. This was also the first time I'd tried constructing one of these- specifying the corners proved to be an issue, in the same way that I ran into issues getting the last bits of the Arukone and Juosan to work as this was also the first time I'd tried making those types.

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NIKOJI allows for some very fun theming, while being very tough to construct. And again, this was the first time I tried...I think it turned out well enough. Especially because I did manage to get this theme to work.

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Next up, I made a more involved Putteria puzzle because the type is simple enough that I though the main logical idea in this puzzle would be easy enough to spot. It had one of the longest solve times of the show (of puzzles that came up) while still not being excessive, which I count as an absolute win.

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There were jokes about how there were no Q puzzle types but we needed a Q anyway, and the leading thought process was to go with "Qurve Data". I didn't like that idea so I made a Qre. I mean I made an Aqre. Yeah, that's the one. Just like Putteria and most of the rest this was the first time I'd tried making one, so I'm very happy I managed to get the OH NO theme to work.

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I hadn't really tried to make a solution themed Spiral Galaxies before, so I gave it a shot. The solvers got a kick out of it afterwards so again, a successful construction. Making a good puzzle is all about making sure it fits well into where it gets shared, whether that be a blog (either everything or a standalone good puzzle), something just for fun (probably easier) or a contest (hide the uniqueness tricks, probably not trivial). Also this was labeled Tentaisho to allow for a Sudoko game. You don't know what a Sudoko game is? Well, you see, it takes 10 to 30 minutes...

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And for my final contribution, I made a View puzzle to knock out the letter V as I knew that would be a challenging letter to hit. View is still a weird type to work with and so I'm surprised I managed a theme like this one at all. Though, only 0 would work best on a small grid anyway...

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Enjoy the puzzles! I'm not sure if #350 will be anything special or not, but I do know that I should have another post before then with something else I've been working on that I'm excited to share. Keep an eye out for it!

Puzzles #278 - #282 - Pie in the Sky (Spiral Galaxies)

In a reversal of how I usually handle these posts, comments for these Spiral Galaxies puzzles will be after the puzzles themselves.

Themeless

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Barrier

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Gravity

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Cornered

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Opposition

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Alright, have you solved them all yet?

You have? Good- spoilers ahead.

These were all failed attempts at a Tatami Tentaisho- the "no +" constraint just wasn't strong enough to drive a solve while also resulting in a puzzle that needed the constraint. I tested all of these in the excellent myamya solver to see if the variant rule was necessary, and every time it came up unique without it. Though the second one broke easily from the variant rule, I really liked the potential theme and construction and decided to commit to making it a standard for later- I just didn't expect to end up with 5 standards.