Puzzle #319 - Castle Plumbing (Castle Wall + Pipelink)

It's time for another logic showcase puzzle- this time the requirement was to make a single puzzle that combined two different puzzles into one grid, with defined areas for each genre. My immediate thought was to combine Pipelink with another loop genre to enable some configurations that would normally be impossible in that genre, and settled on Castle Wall to allow for a bit more interaction between sections. Full rules for this puzzle are in the penpa link, and a short summary follows.

The gray cells are Pipelink and must all be used. Some cells are fully filled in for you, and the loop may freely cross on these cells. The rest of the grid is Castle Wall. Black walls must be outside of the loop and white walls must be inside of the loop. Numbered clues give the total lengths of loop segments in that direction.

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For the automatic answer check to work, the loop must be drawn with the "normal" mode, except for the half segments coming off of the given segments which must be with "middle". Hopefully in the future, all middle will work.

Puzzles #317 & #318 - Plus or Minus (Pentominous Borders)

Last night, TGE mentioned dreaming up a neat deduction in Pentominous Borders. Neither of these puzzles use that deduction, and instead were the result of me toying around with the type for a bit. Also, if you're here from puzz.link/db, remember to check back tomorrow for a penpa only puzzle.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

This first puzzle came about from trying to find a minimal border solution for a valid 5x5. It turned out surprisingly interesting for its size and unfinished appearance.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Then I wanted to make a larger puzzle to post here at the same time, and spent a while toying with different themes before finally hitting on + signs, with the break-in. However I ran into issues resolving a corner with this restrictive theme and tried to make the rest work with just - signs, and was able to! It can take surprisingly few clues to make this type work- the deductions often have far-reaching consequences.

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.

Puzzle #304 - Grazing Fields (Slitherlink (Aqre))

Recently, the get-to-know-each-other-well in the Puzzlers Club Discord has become active again. I asked a couple people what kind of puzzle I should make, and got back "an Aqre variant", "a Slitherlink for logic-race", and "a 13x14".

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I think I delivered.

Solve as a standard Slitherlink puzzle. Additionally, no 4 consecutive cells in a line may all be inside or outside the loop. Good luck with this one.

Puzzle #303 - Oh, Nine (Araf)

Yep, it's another puzzle of mine published over at GMPuzzles, this time an Araf. I'm extremely happy with this construction- it took some work to get the theme to function at all in a non-trivial way. The solve path is also surprisingly varied for the theme of only using the digit 9.

Check out the puzzle here.

Puzzle #302 - Electric Fence (Barns)

Lately, my puzzle constructions have been inspired by what other people are making. In this case, someone on the Chip's Challenge Discord made a Barns puzzle in the form of a CC2 level, and I had an idea to show a bit more of what could be done with the type.

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Puzzle #301 - Miniature (Yajilin)

There was recently some discussion on Puzzlers Club about low clue Yajilin puzzles, so I took the opportunity to make a few miniatures. This one isn't a low clue, is low difficulty, but high in elegance.

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I said I made a few miniatures, which is true. I made three more Yajilins (4x4, 5x5, 6x6) with low clue counts, and I also thought it'd be nice to share a bonus Kurotto I made, too :)

4x4      5x5      6x6      Kurotto

Puzzle #300 - Colorblind Loop

For my 300th puzzle (wow I made it to 300 yay!) on this blog, I'm sharing the second half of my secret solver gift for wen, called Colorblind Loop. It's inspired by Bram de Laat's Four Color Loop, where instead of using 4 loop genres with numbered rooms, I decided to go with 4 loop genres that use black and white symbols. The rules are a little lengthy but shouldn't be too hard to understand as it's mostly just 4 standard genres mashed together.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Colorblind Loop: Draw a single non-intersecting loop orthogonally connecting cell centers. Each region obeys one of four constraints, to be determined during solving. Adjacent regions may not require the same constraint. (note that this means a region may satisfy multiple constraints, but only one will be required)

Constraint 1: Black and white circles obey Masyu rules.

Constraint 2: Black and white circles obey Balance Loop rules.

Constraint 3: This region obeys Moon or Sun rules. The region may only be visited once. During this visit, all circles of one color will be touched and all circles of the other color must not be used. Travelling around the full final loop, the color of the circle used in all regions with this constraint must alternate. (no such restriction applies to non-Moon or Sun regions)

Constraint 4: This region obeys Kuroshiro Loop rules. All cells in the region must be used. Any loop segment that enters this region must not turn between circles of the same color, and must turn exactly once between circles of different colors. (this includes visits to the region that do not touch any circles!) The loop may turn or travel straight freely on a circle.

I really like some of the things I managed to fit into this grid, both aesthetically and logically. Total construction and testing time on this was probably about 10 hours, which is a bit less than last year- though some of that was due to making errors last year, while this construction process was surprisingly error free!

Puzzles #296 - #299 - Not-So-Secret Solver (Masyu, Balance Loop, Moon or Sun, Kuroshiro Loop)

I participated in the Puzzlers Club Secret Solver event again this year, and this time was assigned wen (who I've seen have an account name of wen1now somewhere, though I can't remember where), someone who has made some pretty insane puzzles. I decided to break out an idea I'd had lying around for a while and successfully constructed it- but more on that tomorrow.

I had about a week left until the deadline and thought it'd be funny to send some vanilla puzzles first, framed like they were the entire gift. The "real" puzzle would then be an extra surprise after solving the rest. I'm not sure entirely how it went over, so I hope it was amusing and that the initial set of 4 wasn't disappointing! The link I originally sent can be found here and the rules for each of Masyu, Balance Loop, Moon or Sun and Kuroshiro Loop can be found on their links.

Happy solving!

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The Masyu didn't end up very challenging, as early on I decided to focus more on a fairly restricted aesthetic theme.

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Like with the Masyu, the Balance Loop aesthetic ended up driving much of the solve. Most of my effort went into resolving the right side uniquely! This is probably my favorite of these 4.

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This Moon or Sun was a fun challenge to construct- limiting placements in this genre takes some creative region stretching to make it work nicely.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Kuroshiro Loop can take on a life of its own when constructing, especially when targeting an arrangement of givens that looks like something. I ran into a few situations where I needed a circle to be both colors simultaneously, but eventually found a nice way to change the N that resulted in a unique puzzle with a nice solve path.

Puzzle #295 - Stand Divided (Easy as ABC [no 2x2])

I was a bit inspired by Fuzuli for this puzzle, which is a similar latin square type to Easy as ABC in that there are empty spaces. So I decided to try to make an Easy as ABC where no 2x2 square can be filled with letters- and once I settled on a break-in, I spent over an hour trying to make the rest of the theme work the way I wanted it to.

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