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.

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

Puzzle #493 - Wacky Variant Sudoku

Zimodo is more active than I am in the CTC Discord. This isn't really saying much as I just lurk there, but still. His Yajilin Yacht request was a "wacky variant sudoku" which stumped me for a while. I don't make a lot of Sudoku puzzles and I definitely don't experiment with variants much. Even the Christmas Tree Conundrum I made a year prior was just a bunch of single variants combined with other puzzle types.

Combined with other puzzle types... well, that was all the prompt I needed once I realized it. Why not make a Killer Sudoku where you have to find the cages, and all cages have to obey Fillomino rules? I needed to add some kropki pairs to get the puzzle started but the combination worked really nicely.

Full rules:

• Standard Sudoku rules apply - place the numbers 1-9 exactly once each into every row, column and 3x3 box. Additionally: 
• Divide the grid into killer cages containing 0 or 1 small numbers. Cages of the same size may not share an edge. Numbers may not repeat within a cage. If a cage has a number, then it gives the sum of all numbers placed in that cage.
• White dots separate numbers where one number is exactly one more than the other. Black dots separate numbers where one number is exactly double the other.

penpa interface

I'm honestly kind of proud of this one. It's well outside my comfort zone, has a cool theme (check the numbers) and a nice solve path.

Puzzles #391 - 400 - MadMahogany's Christmas Tree Conundrum (Shading and Sudoku Medley)

Like the last two years, I took part in the Secret Solver event on Puzzlers Club. This time around, I got MadMahogany, someone I mostly know is semi-active (I think?) on the CTC Discord, and some of their most memorable puzzles they've posted to their blog have been shading or sudoku puzzles. Sudoku is obviously outside my general comfort zone, but whatever, this was the perfect opportunity to go big and make something incredible. So I made a Samurai Sudoku shaped like a Christmas tree with different variants in each subgrid. Rules after the puzzle images.

penpa interface

Nurikabe | Tasquare | Canal View | Nuribou | Nurimisaki | Kurotto | Mochikoro | Cave | Kurodoko

I also decided to make a collection of 5x5 shading puzzles themed on 12/25 (as close as I could get it) for each shading puzzle variant in the big puzzle. Rules for Nurikabe, Tasquare, Canal View, Nuribou, Kurotto, Kurodoko, Nurimisaki, Mochikoro and Cave can be found linked here, as well as Sudoku. These 9 puzzles were a last minute addition when I finished with time to spare, and I thought it would be nice to have a brief reminder / demonstration of the shading rules before having to dig into the tree itself.

"penpa" link (the URL is too long for some browsers, so go to Penpa, select "Load" from the top bar, and paste the URL from the pastebin into that box to load the puzzle)

So, here's the tree. Standard rules apply for each puzzle type within each labelled subgrid. Some grids overlap: the contents must satisfy all rules from both grids when taken only for that grid. As an example, Kurodoko requires shaded cells to not be adjacent to other shaded cells. This rule only applies within the Kurodoko grid, and so a shaded cell on the edge could be adjacent to a shaded cell in another grid. Any cell with an outlined gray circle will have its value act as a clue for the shading puzzle in that grid. Note that most thermos and arrows have the circles coincide with shading clues, but not all. A rundown of each variant rule follows. Star Battle - 1s and 2s may not share an edge or corner with each other. Thermo - numbers must strictly increase from the circle to the end. Arrow - the sum of all numbers on the arrow must equal the number in the circle. Classic - no additional restrictions apply. XV - Cells separated by a V must sum to 5. Cells separated by an X must sum to 10. Cells separated by an XV must sum to 15. Not all Xs or Vs are given. Kropki - Cells separated by a white dot must differ by exactly 1. Cells separated by a black dot must have one number be exactly double the other number. Not all dots are given. Difference - Cells separated by a red dot must have a difference of the number inside the dot. Killer - Cells inside a cage must sum to the value in the cage, and must not repeat within a cage. Product - Cells separated by a pentagon must have a product of the number inside the pentagon.

This puzzle took me probably 30 hours across several weeks to construct, and I got to work with a couple rulesets I'd never worked with before. Like overlapping grids (somehow this was new to me- many headaches from contradictions across grids though...), most of these number placement variants (Arrows are a huge pain, and Killer is way harder than I thought it would be), and Mochikoro and Canal View (fun and easy, painful and difficult. Though some of the Canal View pain was from the other restrictions, it's hard to make unique!). Special mention goes to the Nurikabe for being an absolutely massive gigantic pain to make unique, and the Cave, and the Kurotto section, and generally huge parts of this puzzle barely work. But it all comes together beautifully and I'm very proud of what I came up with here. And my solver liked it, too. :)

I'd also like to take this space to thank Rever for testsolving most of this puzzle before I sent it out, Swaroop for updating Penpa to even support grids this big, and djmathman for making the gift I received, which is really quite excellent.

That's all for now, sorry about the inactivity here, more puzzles soon once I write up the posts for them because I have another 8 waiting already. Errata: added a white kropki dot I thought was unnecessary, but was made necessary due to a bad deduction in completely different section.

Puzzle #376 - Out of Character (Killer Skyscraper Sudoku)

Uhhhh... yeah that's a variant. Killer Skyscraper Sudoku. The rules are as follows: inside the 4x4 grid, place a number from 1 to 4 into each cell such that each row, column and region contain each digit once each. Additionally, each cage must not contain a duplicated number. Any digits placed outside of the grid act as skyscraper clues on the grid.

puzz.link interface (cages are shown by same number links) penpa interface

Yes, I'm aware this is very atypical for my constructions. I was curious if this sort of construction would even be possible, and it was- maybe I'll try a 6x6 with this ruleset? It's pretty interesting.

Puzzles #305 - #316 - Pentomino Puzzle Pack

Yes, you did in fact read that right- this post contains 12 puzzles. I had an idea for a pentomino themed set and yesterday, decided to see if I could get the entire pack together that day. I managed to construct all 12 puzzles and left the testing for today, fixed a few errors I had made, and here it is. I'm extremely proud of this set even without the fact that I put it together in a day.

Get the puzzle pack here!

This post won't have preview images or rules for each puzzle, but I will link them all here. The pack has a penpa link with answer check and rules written in alongside an image, so the pack can be solved physically or digitally without issue. The U puzzle has the variant of unequal lengths.

F  I  L  N  P  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

puzz.links for P, W and X can also be used. There was no way to make one for Z, unfortunately. Comments after the break.

Puzzles #228, #229 & #230 - Virgo (Star Battle Sudoku)

As much as it's not my favorite thing to solve, I knew for the Puzzle Zodiac I should include some sort of Sudoku puzzle. So when browsing variants I spotted Star Battle Sudoku and thought that it would be a perfect fit, merging number placement and object placement into one puzzle. For the puzz.link interfaces, the highest placeable number(s) represent stars, and the solution should contain (1-5 and 1 star) or (1-7 and 2 stars) in every row, column and region with no stars sharing an edge or corner.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

For the example puzzle, my goal was to make sure that it was fairly easy. To that end, I placed an S into the givens because why not?

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzle 11 on the test, worth 20 points, and nicknamed "5 star confusion". This is a puzzle that just kind of ended up working out, as I placed in some numbers arbitrarily and deduced as much as I could, which was most of the grid. My only goal was to have 5 and star disambiguated by the Star Battle touching constraint, and this was free points for most people.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzle 12 on the test, worth 50 points, and themed on the Virgo sign. It took me a very long time to hit on an arrangement of givens that looked like Virgo, and even once I did I had way too many givens to make an interesting puzzle and I kept running into dead ends. Eventually I removed some givens and tried moving the symbol around the grid before finally hitting on this arrangement. The rest of the fill took a bit of work to resolve, too. Ultimately any sudoku contest regulars blasted through this puzzle in no time and often earned over 20 points per minute. Does that mean it was overvalued? I don't think so- I balanced the points around more general puzzle people, which means that anyone who specializes in a type would earn more points per minute, compared to making a couple puzzles bad points per minute for most people.

Puzzle #199 - Sum Thing New (X Sums Sudoku)

I'm still not really a fan of classic Sudoku- there just aren't interesting deductions to me and it feels like the ruleset is missing a constraint to make it work well. That said, the fact that it's missing "a constraint" means that the missing constraint can be a wide range of things which makes it a flexible base for interesting puzzles. Inspired by a puzzle duel puzzle from a while back, I decided to try making an X Sums Sudoku with, of course, clue symmetry and theming. Solve as a standard Sudoku, additionally each outside clue gives the sum of the first X numbers from the clue, where X is the first number. So 425631 would give a sum of 17 from the left, and 1 from the right.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

puzzle duel link

Puzzle #151 - Another Hybrid (Skyscrapers Sudoku)

At least for now, this is the last of my puzzleduel puzzles. I wanted to include a number placement in my set, to go with the object placement, loop, and shading puzzles I'd already cooked up and so I elected to try Skyscrapers Sudoku as I'm reasonably comfortable with Skyscrapers construction at this point.

puzz.link interface (no regions)     penpa interface

Congratulations to Freddie Hand for winning this puzzle, with an astounding time of 53 seconds... which is incredible given PD number input!

Puzzle #19 - Vanilla Level (Sudoku)

Here is a Sudoku puzzle in the form of a Chip's Challenge 2 level.

...

Wait, that's not usable?

Regardless, it's an actual level I made and there are other items that need to be placed so that ghosts have specifically laid out inventories so that they press all the buttons to open the door to the exit. Why? Because I was pretty sure I could and without the excuse, I probably would have taken much longer to get to making a Sudoku, as I'm not really a fan of the type.

puzz.link interface

Very easy puzzle, though it almost had to be given the reason for creation and the given layout.