Puzzle #461 - Sparsity (Yin Yang)

A few months ago I decided to experiment with low density puzzles in a few genres where "low density" is not trivialized by minimum or maximum values. Yin Yang doesn't have values and proved to be an interesting case study - this wasn't the lowest solution I found but it was one of the nicest solves I came across.

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Puzzles #449 - 452 - IPC 2022 Round 2 (Yin Yang, Minarism, Haisu)

I was fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to contribute to and testsolve for the 2022 Indian Puzzle Championship. The second round was for puzzle types that did not appear in the years Puzzle Ramayan series, and I made a Yin Yang, Minarism and Haisu worth 20, 20 and 50 points, respectively.

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First, the "everGReen" Yin Yang. I didn't want this puzzle to be too trivialized by advanced knowledge and so went with an 11x11. After plunking down the G and R, I found that a lot of the puzzle already worked very nicely and from there it was reasonable enough to find aesthetically pleasing circles for the final corners.

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Eh, it's a puzzle. There's a neat insight for how to resolve everything and I like the 1-2-3 interactions, but given the chance to do this again I'd have gone for a 7x7 or something instead.

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Here's the 50 point... no, this was actually a possible puzzle that I offered (after struggling with a 9x9 or larger with a similar theme that just kept breaking over and over) if the round was trending hard, but I honestly wanted to make something better. So I did.

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Haisu is great. Haisu deserves more attention. Though Haisu in puzzle contests is apparently cursed, as the original draft of this puzzle had 3 solutions that I patched with an extra pair of clues, despite several testsolves not catching the ambiguity. Then the wrong puzzle image was accidentally used in the contest booklet! On the one hand, fortunately it was still mostly rigorous and the extraneous solutions were in a pair, but also... it's a bit annoying having the only ambiguous puzzle in the set, even if it took multiple points of failure to get to that point. Oh well, it happens sometimes. At least the intended puzzle is good.

Puzzle #264 - Cyclone (Creek/Yin Yang)

I really like Creek puzzles, even though the type has a common complaint that implying shaded cells is too rare. So I applied Yin Yang rules to it to create a Creek puzzle where the solution will have all shaded cells connected, in addition to the standard unshaded connection. The final solution should both satisfy all of the Creek clues, and be a valid Yin Yang solution. Adding this simple restriction ended up being very powerful and fun to work with, and I hope you enjoy the same process of discovery I had while constructing this puzzle.

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Puzzle #171 - Chaos (Yin Yang)

I feel like with a Yin Yang puzzle it can either look pretty or have a satisfying solve path. Yesterday I went with the former (and an extra property) while today I went with the logic. I don't think my intended deduction can be circumvented here, though my testsolve arrived at the same conclusion a different way.

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Yes, this does look similar to the last one. I was feeling inspired.

Puzzles #169 & #170 - Black and White (Yin Yang/Shirokuro Link)

Yep, it's another chimera today. Shirokuro Link is still not the most interesting genre and Yin Yang is finally something I'm getting a handle on constructing... even if ensuring uniqueness without breaking the logic is very tough. The intended logical path ended up breaking a bit here but the resolution was pretty enough that I elected to keep it.

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Puzzle #153 - Yang and.. Yang? (Yin Yang)

It amuses me that I've posted 4 Yin Yang links on this blog, but no Yin Yang puzzles. Until now.

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For some reason, most single color Yin Yang puzzles seem to go with black circles. I felt like going with white due to that all black Statue Park I made, and I thought the aesthetic looked nicer here.