More Tiny Puzzles

Update on 20-Aug: New cryptics.

I’m so terrible at keeping my blog updated, eh. Here’s a not-so-standard logic puzzle and two standard not-logic puzzles.

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Snake Locate a snake in the grid. The snake is a sequence of shaded cells that do not touch itself; that is, if two cells share a side, then they are consecutive cells in the snake, and if two cells share a corner (but not a side), then they are separated by one other cell in the snake. Clues outside the grid tell how many cells in that row/column are part of the snake.

…except, my grid got scrambled. The grid is 5×5. I know the endpoints of the snake are on R1C1 and R1C3. I also remember putting five 4’s to the grid, although I’m not sure in which rows/columns. (A row/column only gets one clue.) Can you solve it anyway?

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Cryptic crossword clue Well, what it says. Here in the Patzers Club Discord server, for some reason there are a bunch of cryptic clues being thrown about, and I end up making a few. Most of them are easy. Some of them might be unfair, although I tried ditching everything that Patzers Club considered unfair, so hopefully all here are clean.

• Bathing resort in a country (5)
• Finished in Indonesian (4)
• Flipped picture made unique puzzle (4)
• He can’t smile without the middle figure-eight (10)
• Irregular dragon skin endlessly new (7)
• No other mother had the first half stack of hay (3)
• One’s neighbor tinkers with one’s initials (3)
• Olahraga mulai setengah enam (5) (This is an Indonesian cryptic. The surface reading roughly translates to “sport starts at half to six”.)

Many Tiny Puzzles

With me considering to clean up my blog (see previous post), plus all sorts of other distractions, I might not post new puzzles for some more time. (As if you waiting almost two years weren’t enough.)

…proper puzzles, that is. I’m in a Discord server. For some reason, it’s much easier for me to post puzzles over there. Probably part of it is the fact that I don’t need to make a proper blog post or something. Probably part of it is because the puzzles I posted were all tiny, not even over 5×5. But now that I get around to it, have all that I have so far!

Puzzle 95: Logicsmith v2.0

Fillomino Read here for instructions.

Expected difficulty Hard • Answer • Comment/E-mail if you want a solution to be published

Puzzle 95: Logicsmith v2.0
Fillomino

Four years ago (okay, 45 months ago), there’s Logicsmith Exhibition, back when Grant was still active on his blog (before he migrated to Grandmaster Puzzles). Back then, I was still starting at constructing logic puzzles; you can see my submission there. Here is a “revamped” version: exactly the same layout as before, and each of 1-9 appears exactly four times as in the competition.

…okay, I just got this theme idea and toyed with it, to liven up my blog again.

Puzzle 94: Writer Block

Cross the Streams Shade some of the cells black so that all black cells are connected and no 2×2 square is entirely shaded black. The clues outside the grid gives the contents of the corresponding row/column, reading from left to right and from top to bottom. A number means a group of consecutive black cells; two different groups in the same row/column must be separated by at least one white cell. A question mark indicates a single group of unknown size; an asterisk indicates an unknown number of groups (which may differ in size, and there might be no group at all).

Expected difficulty Hard • Answer • Comment/E-mail if you want a solution to be published

Puzzle 94: Writer Block
Cross the Streams

Yay, I’m back. Actually, this might be temporary as well; I’m not sure why I don’t feel the same interest on making puzzles as I had a few years ago, but let’s hope I can still trickle out puzzles occasionally. (The title is a reference on that. Just back from writer block, if this is considered writing. Better than a title like “Logical”, at least.)

Meanwhile, I’ve been playing several “programming” games. I’ve completed SpaceChem (finished all obligatory puzzles for the story) a few months back; I got my hands on TIS-100 which I recently completed (but with the upcoming bonus campaign I’ll have several more puzzles to do); I’m redoing Manufactoria after I realized I haven’t completed it. Those might be not exactly the kind of puzzles that you (as in people that enjoy pencil puzzles like this) like, but who knows.

Puzzle 93: IVAN

Scrabble Fill a letter in some squares such that they form a Scrabble: all cells with letters are connected, every word on the right appears in the grid as a contiguous sequence of letters (not broken with other letters or empty cells) reading right (in the same row) or down (in the same column), and every such contiguous sequence of two or more letters form a word.

Expected difficulty Medium • Answer • Comment/E-mail if you want a solution to be published

Puzzle 93: IVAN
Scrabble

Surprise, a 5×4 puzzle having a medium difficulty. Actually I’m not sure you can solve this without brute force, but given the very small grid I think it should be easy enough to carefully enumerate all possibilities.

Puzzle 92: Word Puzzle?!

Bonza Word Puzzle Arrange the pieces given into a crossword pattern, like in the game (or puzzle genre) Scrabble, such that every contiguous sequence of two or more letters read left-to-right or top-to-bottom spells out a word, which are thematically linked. Also see Grant’s take on this.

Expected difficulty Easy • Answer • Comment/E-mail if you want a solution to be published

Puzzle 92: Word Puzzle?!
Bonza Word Puzzle

Let’s say I’m not too inspired.

On the other hand, I actually have the game. Of course, I’m always biased, preferring free games way more than games that include necessary in-app purchases (this includes Bonza for locking some of its puzzles, even if there are packs available with coins), but I suppose I should stop here before trashing more on the business model which I myself can’t understand why I loathe so much. The idea itself about “jigsaw crossword” is amazing. (By the way, I should have put the genre name as “Jigsaw Crossword” if I want to be neutral, but eh.) I might tinker with the idea again some time in the future.

Puzzle 91: Margin of Error

Heteromino Divide the white squares into polyominoes of size 3 such that no two identical polyominoes that are also identically oriented are orthogonally adjacent.

Expected difficulty Hard • Answer • Comment/E-mail if you want a solution to be published

Puzzle 91: Margin of Error
Heteromino

Oh yay I’m alive.

There we go. Recently I got the inspiration of Heteromino with a two-cell wide empty border. A 10×10 doesn’t seem to work, since I only have 6×6 space to work with the black cells, but a 14×14 looks good. Besides, I can say “here’s the 10×10 puzzle, and in case you need it, here’s two-cell margin of error around the grid if you’re stuck or something”.

…yes, I appear to be terribly uninspired for titling puzzles.

Also, I appear to start playing Pokémon Trading Card Game Online. It’s free to play, although getting the in-game currency to get more cards might be a little hard.

Puzzle 90: Antimatter

Dual Masyu Follow regular Masyu rules. This is a loop puzzle: Draw a loop that passes some of the cells such that the loop never touches or crosses itself, the loop only turns on cell centers, and the loop only makes 90-degree turns. The loop must pass all circles. When it passes a white circle, it must go straight, but must turn either before or after (or both). When it passes a black circle, it must turn, but must go straight both before and after it.

Additionally, this puzzle is two in one; it has two solutions that are coupled in the following way. Gray circles are two circles that have different colors in the two puzzles; if a gray circle acts as a white circle in one puzzle, then it must be black in the other, and vice versa. (In either puzzle, two gray circles may act as one white and one black; they don’t need to act as the same color.)

Expected difficulty Medium • Answer • Comment/E-mail if you want a solution to be published

Puzzle 90: Antimatter
Dual Masyu

No particular comment; just toying with interesting things.

Puzzle 89: Three-Four-Five

Fillomino Read here for instructions.

Expected difficulty Medium • Answer • Comment/E-mail if you want a solution to be published

Puzzle 89: Three-Four-Five
Fillomino

Just a classic Fillomino to fill my blog. No particular reason of why I have that theme; I was constructing the opening and saw that I only used the digits 3,4,5, so I went ahead and set it as the theme. Also, it took me more time to get the particular ending I wanted… Spoiler: [If the place rotationally symmetric to where you did the opening is also where you feel like doing the same trick again, then you get my intention. And yes, I wanted to force both the bottom-left and top-right corners to end in that way.]

Now back to doing homework.

Puzzle 88: I Give Up

Masyu Loop: Draw a loop that passes all the circles. Whenever the loop passes a white circle, it must go straight, but turns either before or after the circle (or both). Whenever the loop passes a black circle, it must turn, but go straight on both before and after the circle.

Expected difficulty Medium • Answer • Comment/E-mail if you want a solution to be published

Puzzle 88: I Give Up
Masyu

This puzzle was intended to be completely antisymmetric and has the same (okay, mirrored) pattern of givens as this puzzle. Turns out both objectives aren’t met. I give up tweaking it, hence the name.