Puzzle #694 - Large Areas Only (Norinuri)

Nearly every Norinuri puzzle has to rely on either low numbers to fill space, or large ? numbers to fill space. At one point, I tried making one with only 10 clues, but couldn't quite finesse a solution grid. In the attempt I did find this one with only large, but not excessively large numbers, and it turned out there was a nice way to clue it, too.

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Puzzle #693 - One, Two, Slitherlink!

Someone shared with me a giant and quite difficult Slitherlink using only 1 and 2 clues. You know the drill by now, I wanted to try making one that was a bit more reasonable in scope, and for a bonus challenge, I did so without any border clues as those can given some really easy freebie deductions. If you know one specific rarer pattern, this should be pretty straightforward.

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Puzzle #692 - Speedwriting (Cave)

I wrote this Cave puzzle in 5 minutes after a brief discussion about trying to write a good puzzle in 2 minutes. I had most of a puzzle at that time, but elected to try to finish it off more nicely rather than just throw out a half baked puzzle. I got a bit lucky with a deduction in this just kinda working, and putting this post together - including getting links, getting images, tagging and scheduling - took longer than making the puzzle featured here.

Kind of insane.

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I definitely don't regret having this blog set up as an archive of my puzzles, but man is it a lot of work sometimes.

Puzzle #691 - Variant Masyu Day!

It's Masyu da- I already made this joke. About two and a half months ago, a couple people in Puzzlers Club were making meme Masyu puzzles with the variant rule that circles didn't have to be visited, but any circle that was visited had to be satisfied. These were memes because the solution would frequently avoid touching any circles, sometimes even just being a simple 2x2.

So I made a much harder puzzle to show that this variant did not have to just be a meme. It was a bit of a struggle, though, since I decided to start making this on my phone and quickly regretted that decision.

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Puzzle #690 - Masyu Day!

It's Masyu day! Because any day can be Masyu day if you post a Masyu that day! (hi wolog)

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Okay, so the real context for this puzzle is somebody - this was so long ago I don't recall who - posed the idea of collaboratively making a Masyu puzzle where one person places the black pearls and then another makes the puzzle unique with white pearls. I wasn't sure it would work too well, but then I had the idea of trying that relay-style approach here to end up with a different kind of theme than I usually would, and ended up with this pretty neat puzzle.

Puzzle #689 - Chocolate Season (Choco Banana)

I recall making this Choco Banana after my friend Rever solved one with the same 1-2-3-4-5-6 pattern, and said that it could only resolve one way. I saw another way, so I made this puzzle to make it resolve another way. This is still such a good type I need to make more of and keep forgetting to make more of.

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Puzzle #688 - Not So Simple Loop

I made this Simple Loop so long ago I don't remember why I made it. Let's see what my comments I have next to it in my puzzles spreadsheet say. "In PC, Rook mentioned not knowing parity for Sloop. So I made a Sloop using parity." Amazing insight, past me. The comment on the very next puzzle starts "this wasn't meant as an April Fools puzzle" so uh, oops 6 month delay.

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Puzzles #686 & #687 - Sixty Second Misfits (Pentominous, Statue Park)

Like I said yesterday, I made two unsubmitted puzzles for The Sixty Second Logic Showcase. I didn't submit the Pentominous because the theme ended up a bit imprecise and I didn't think it would do well in voting for that reason, despite being a fine puzzle. I didn't submit the Statue Park because even though my timing calibration was wrong, even I knew this one would be too long. I knew it when I started making it that it was almost definitely going to be too long, but I had an idea I wanted to try.

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Puzzles #684 & #685 - A/B Testing (Fillomino, Cross the Streams)

My other two submissions for The Sixty Second Logic Showcase are a bit different. In both cases, the puzzles turned out much harder than I expected or wanted them to, so I had to add clues to nerf the puzzle. In both cases even the nerfed puzzle was something I knew was overshooting the difficulty side of things, though again my incorrect understanding of the timing component of scoring meant I wasn't too worried about the overshoot if the quality was way up there. And I felt for this Fillomino, it was. The Cross the Streams I thought had an outside chance of being quick enough for a secret reason but would almost definitely be the slowest puzzle in the set if not enough people caught on. Somehow I'd never made one of these before either!

I'll show and link the original version of the puzzles first - I'll include an image of the nerfed versions I submitted at the bottom of this post. I will not be linking the nerfed versions, however.

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The Fillomino here took a half dozen aborted attempts and as many hours across a few days of trying, while the CTS took a much shorter time due to the nature of the puzzle. Honestly I think the Fillomino took me more time than every other puzzle I made for this showcase combined, even tomorrows' bonus pair!

And here are the nerfed versions - the Fillomino gets an extra pair of clues that smooth out the toughest part of the solve (but it still has a lot of steps) while the CTS gets more concrete values and less uncertainty in a few key clue rows. I don't think either of these changes moved the needle all that much.

Puzzles #681, #682 & #683 - More Showcase Backlog (Kurodoko, Tapa-Like Loop, Rail Pool)

Continuing the backlog, these were some of my entries for The Sixty Second Logic Showcase, where the prompt was to make a good puzzle that the median solver would take... sixty seconds on. I'm really happy with everything I made for this showcase, but in hindsight I should have attempted a more scattershot approach for estimating timing, as I misjudged where the median would be. All of my estimates were spot on relative to each other, but they were also about 50 to 60 percent longer than I had guessed, from assuming a larger overlap with logic race. Due to the combined scoring on votes and timing, and the timing component being a quadratic decay instead of a linear decay like I had misread, I placed very poorly in the final rankings despite doing pretty well in the unranked votes only ranks.

Anyway, onto the puzzles I submitted that I have one version of!

I started with a Kurodoko with what I hoped was an interesting logical theme. From my own timings I expected to hit about 1:10 with this which was close enough, but ended up at 1:50, and multiple people mentioning they got stuck after a couple opening steps. Unfortunate.

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Since I thought that might be a bit long, I originally tried to aim smaller and stick to that logical theme idea with a 9x9 Tapa-Like Loop. 9x9 quickly didn't work for the theme I was going for, but loop puzzles can be speedy, so I was fine with going 11x11 if I thought the solve was straightforward. This one ended up being the closest to a minute timing-wise, but was still an overshoot.

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My last puzzle and again an attempt to go easier was a 62 themed Rail Pool. This was the puzzle I was the most off-estimate for, since it's a less common type and thus the median solver has to take longer to find more common steps. I don't think it's a coincidence some of the closest puzzles were extremely common types, but again I don't regret trying something a bit more out there. Perhaps I should have gone even further in the obscure direction and made a 7x7 or something? Somehow, this is the first time I actually made a Rail Pool, too.

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