Hexagony (formerly known as [Name Redacted] Puzzle Contest) by IHNN and Eric Fox started at June 3rd, 4:00 UTC and ended 1 week later. This is a 2 hour contest with a mystery theme. Information on how it was run, along with the puzzle rules can be found in the instructions booklet.
Friday, May 28, 2021
Puzzle #351 - Tapa-Like Pentominous
Logic Showcase 25 recently concluded, with tasked people with taking Tapa style clues and mixing them with another puzzle type that doesn't normally have them. I immediately knew I wanted to make a region division puzzle, and settled on Pentominous since I thought it would give the right amount of push and pull. The rules for this puzzle are simple: divide the grid up into pentominoes, so that pentominoes that are the same shape do not share an edge. Numbered clues give the continuous sizes of regions around that clue.
The vertex clues were a really sad addition that I needed to disambiguate the corners at the end- I tried a lot of different options, from giving a few borders, to a pair of cipher clues, to adding an outer frame and placing clues there, to reworking existing clue values to force things, and nothing else really worked as well for the logic. It's a bit of a kludge but I still think the solve is nice.
Friday, May 14, 2021
Upcoming Puzzle Contest Announcement!
I'm a bit excited.
Over the past couple months, Eric Fox and I have put together a puzzle contest. It will run from June 3rd through June 9th, and you can find out all the details in the instructions booklet here. I gave the full set a testsolve while getting solution code rows and it was some of the most fun I've had solving puzzles in a while- and even if you don't want to compete, there's always the option to get the puzzles to solve on your own time.
I hope to see you all enjoying this in the future- as usual, the puzzle constructing was super fun, and setting up the necessary back-end has been a ton of extra effort. I think it's worth it though- the response to the initial announcement and this updated instructions booklet has been emphatically positive.
The logic puzzle community is just...
...it's a great community. People are always so willing to help out with anything, and there's always a positive response to new things being shared. Thanks again everyone- this is the kind of project I'd undertake on my own to see it exist in the world, but being able to do it collaboratively, and share it with this amazing community makes it so much better.
Thursday, May 6, 2021
Puzzle #350 - Making a Puzzle is as (Easy as ABC)
So, 350 puzzles. That's a big milestone. Maybe I'd have today's puzzle be for hyping up my upcoming puzzle contest, but no, I'm planning on posting about that once the final instructions booklet is ready. Maybe today would have another giant puzzle, or some crazy hybrid rules.
Or maybe, today I'll take a moment to talk about the construction process of a puzzle like this, and peel back the curtain. Not every puzzle comes out exactly the way I want it to and I often have to backtrack, and this puzzle was no exception.
Friday, April 30, 2021
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
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!
Thursday, April 29, 2021
Puzzle #339 - A Song Reference (Greener Grasses)
chaotic_iak hosted a logic showcase for Greener Grasses, a type I don't really understand how to construct. Naturally, I tried to enter anyway. It didn't go very well- even with the attempted theming on the (infamous?) song that appeared in a Rock Band game.
Saturday, April 24, 2021
Puzzle #338 - Dual (Doppelblock)
About a week ago I started wondering if it would be possible to create a Doppelblock with only one number for the columns, and another for the rows. It uh... turned out it was possible but extremely unfriendly. I shared this on the Puzzler's Club Discord and it was, in fact, a horrifying monstrosity.
So why am I posting a puzzle here that I've outright stated is unfair? Because with one small change it turns out that not only is it fair, but a nice solve too. I just figured it was worth posting the "pure" version as well because it is unique on its own, which I find quite ridiculous.
Yep, that's all it takes- giving a single cell in an unclued row and column is enough. Enjoy!
Thursday, April 15, 2021
Puzzle #337 - Dreamcatcher (Cave)
It seems like when I want to just sit down and write a puzzle, I tend to fall back onto Cave these days. I'm really happy with managing to pull this one off- it's very sparse for the type and should have some neat tricks.
Wednesday, March 31, 2021
Puzzle #336 - Failed Practice (Cipher Skyscrapers)
The third round of the Puzzle Grand Prix was held last weekend, and in some slight preparation for the puzzle I was most scared of, a Cipher Skyscrapers, I made one. But then the ending didn't quite work well without a hacky patch and then I didn't notice that the patch broke everything so there were 0 solutions... which I suppose matches my GP experience as I finished the round. But I broke the Skyscrapers and had to redo it and also had answer key errors on both Shakashakas resulting in a (for me) poor showing. Hopefully I can make that up in future rounds and get a clean finish on a tough one.
Anyway, solve as a regular Skyscrapers puzzle where each letter (A-D) stands for a different number.
Tuesday, March 30, 2021
Puzzles #332 - #335 - Small Packages (Variety)
With the results for Logic Showcase 22 out (I did not do well and I have literally no idea why), I can finally share my entries for it. First up is a chimera I've wanted to make for a long time, Tapa and Tapa-Like Loop! For a while I wasn't sure if it was going to be possible to make one of these on a 6x6 grid that wasn't trivial, but I managed to find this arrangement using a couple question marks to bridge the gaps. I'm honestly shocked that this didn't do better, I think it was one of the best puzzles entered in the showcase since an interesting chimera on both sides is tough enough without the size restriction.
I also made a standard Minarism with a nice flow and visual theme. It's nothing too special, but there's nothing wrong with simple, elegant designs.
Lastly, I made a last minute Pentominous with some tricky bits to pin down, themed on the word UNITY. The Tapa chimera was definitely my favorite of the entries yet all three of these received the same amount of votes.
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