Puzzles #527, #528 & #529 - So Many Bees Part 7

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 2 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.

Uso-One but the clues are obscured by a faint buzzing sound

Standard Uso-One rules apply. Additionally, the clued are all ciphered: each distinct symbol stands for a different value, and all instances of the same symbol have the same value. Liar puzzles are still something I'm not comfortable with and always struggle. The region layout here definitely proved challenging to work with.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface (nice)      penpa interface (bees)

Vertex Slitherlink (Bees and Crabs)

Standard Vertex Slitherlink rules apply. Additionally, all bees must be inside the loop and all crabs must be outside the loop. Why crabs? Because the year prior, Dylan received a room escape game set in Jamie's basement, with so many crabs in it. Vertex Slitherlink as a type is really prone to getting uniqueness issues if you're not careful with setting up areas with all vertices used, it's pretty weird.

penpa interface

Word Search for Bees

Standard Word Search rules apply. Additionally, some cells are empty and their contents must be determined during solving. All instances of a bee emoji stand for either "BE" or "BEE".

I probably spent longer picking the word list than building the puzzle, honestly.

penpa interface

Puzzles #249 & #250 - Ophiuchus (Word Nurikabe)

My favorite comment on the Puzzle Zodiac thread before it started was "No Ophiucus? (13th Zodiac sign)... :( That puzzle will be Snake puzzle..?" just because I knew that I had included a snakelike Word Nurikabe themed on Ophiuchus. It seemed like the splash image I used for the instructions booklet having a hidden symbol in the middle went unnoticed by most people. I poured a lot of time into making this final puzzle on the test interesting, difficult and fair with a stunning theme and it absolutely paid off. I think it's my favorite puzzle that I've made to date and I hope you give it a try.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Yep, I went with a vanity puzzle for the example. My only other requirement was that the grid wouldn't be rectangular, as I knew that the main puzzle grid wouldn't be.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Puzzle 25 on the test, undervalued at 100 points, and themed on A SIGN- Ophiuchus, specifically. As mentioned above this is probably my favorite puzzle that I've ever made because there's so much going on here despite only having 13 letters a grid with nearly 200 cells. Only 7 people solved this puzzle during the contest- and Ken Endo himself even missed it despite having over a half hour to work on it.

Some closing thoughts on the contest as a whole- I think it went mostly well. The puzzle grid typo in the puzzle booklet for the second puzzle weighs heavily on me as an error that shouldn't have happened, and I've learned my lesson that my personal testsolve needs to be on the final booklet, not the final puzzle images. It turned out a little harder than I expected (I was anticipating 5 finishers, not 1) but not by much- and I didn't sacrifice quality at any step of the process. Will I be writing any more contests on my own? Probably, I have a couple of ideas. It takes a lot of time and additional effort to get a contest together, though looking back I'm extremely proud of the set as a whole. Lots of mixed feelings here.

Keep an eye out for more from me- I've got a bunch of variant puzzles coming fairly soon!