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 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.

Puzzle 87: Jagged Squares

Futoshiki Latin square: Put a number between 1 and 6 into each cell inclusive such that each row and column contains exactly one instance of each number. The grid has inequalities in it, which must be satisfied by the numbers in the corresponding cells.

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

Puzzle 87: Jagged Squares
Futoshiki

Just to put some content in, ugh.

Puzzle 83: Division

Star Battle Put two stars in each row, column, and region bounded by bold borders. A star occupies a cell, and no two stars are adjacent.

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

Puzzle 83: Division
Star Battle

Third in the reject series. There was Star Battle in the original draft of the puzzle, and it’s not that trivial to solve the second part. (Of course, the answer key would be “enter the column number of the leftmost star in each row”.)

Also, apparently I start to construct puzzles on my computer too, instead of using my book again. This is what happens if you have too much access to computer. (Compare: a year ago I’m still at school, without computer access, hence why I use the book to store my puzzles.)

Puzzle 81: Fell from the Sky

Skyscrapers Latin square: Put a number between 1 and 7 into each cell inclusive such that each row and column contains exactly one instance of each number. If we consider the numbers as heights of buildings, each number outside the grid tells the number of buildings visible from that point, looking into the grid. For example, an observer to the left of the sequence 1426375 sees four buildings (1,4,6,7; other buildings are hidden by taller buildings to the left).

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

Puzzle 81: Fell from the Sky
Skyscrapers

This is the first in the series of the rejected puzzles for FAST, a joke test for April Fools Day. As described in a post in the discussion thread, my initial idea was “normal-sized” puzzles (even though I actually had 12×12’s and not 10×10’s), but with answer keys that are trivial to obtain. This, in some cases, lend to actually trivial puzzles too, but I don’t really like that, and hence here’s a handpicked collection of puzzles that I deem to be interesting enough even with the trivial answer key restriction. (Thus the title follows; the puzzles are those that “fell from the sky”, failed to be picked for the party.)

Puzzle 77: Boxes

Nanro Put a number into some cells on the grid. All cells with numbers must be connected, but no 2×2 square may consist of all numbers. In each bold region, all numbers must be equal; there must be an equal number of numbers in the bold region as the number written on it. Two equal numbers in different regions may not be orthogonally adjacent.

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

Puzzle 77: Boxes
Nanro

A terrible first attempt at constructing Nanro puzzles…

Puzzle 76: Themeless Hidato

Hidato Put a number between 1 and 100 inclusive such that two consecutive numbers are adjacent (orthogonally or diagonally).

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

Puzzle 76: Themeless Hidato
Hidato

This one has been laying in my archive for I forgot how long. Instead of having a long absence of puzzles, let’s throw this out. I was planning to use it on a test, but considering now I use exclusively new variants, I think it won’t do any good into the test.

Also, as you can see, I’m figuring out how to make a good tooltip thingy. (See the dotted 100 above? If you use a desktop computer, you can hover your cursor above it. If you can’t (on mobile phone? or something), then don’t worry, it’s not that important, only that you’re missing “why 100?”.)

Anyway, back to making puzzles. I need to make more to avoid leaving the blog dead…

Puzzle 74: Double!

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

Puzzle 74: Double!
Tridivision

Of course this has to happen with a trivial puzzle. There you go, your puzzle consumption after 40 days.