Puzzle 78: Totally Not An Approval

Scrabble Example

Scrabble Put some letters into the grid. The words that can be read (a span of two or more letters, preceded and followed by either the edge of the grid or a blank space) must be listed on the right, and no other word can be formed. All letters must form a single connected region.

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

Puzzle 78: Totally Not An Approval
Scrabble

So Prasanna asked me to testsolve a Scrabble puzzle, with a word bank that resembles a sentence but has broken grammar. I suddenly got the idea for this word bank (which, Prasanna, has a perfect grammar, even if it uses a slang (v.intr. definition #4) 😛 ), and quickly whipped this puzzle in head. Turns out it’s unique, so why not. It’s actually Easy-Medium or something, as it’s not that trivial, but heck whatever.

Aftermath: Prasanna went hyper.

Also I went on to replace Puzzle 5; nobody noticed “the second path goes nowhere” and “the second path leads to freedom” are two contradictory statements?

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 75: TomTom is NP-complete

This post has two puzzles!

Latin Square Put an integer between 1 and the length of the grid (5) inclusive such that each row/column has each number exactly once.

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

Puzzle 75: TomTom is NP-complete
Latin Square

TomTom Put an integer between 1 and the length of the grid (10) inclusive such that each row/column has each number exactly once. The number at the top-left of each region indicates the value of a mathematical operation (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) applied successively to all digits in the cage, starting with the largest digit for subtraction and division (e.g. 1,2,4 with subtraction is a 1- clue as 4-2-1 = 1). (Description from Grandmaster Puzzles)

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

Puzzle 75: TomTom is NP-complete
TomTom

I guess the two puzzles above prove that TomTom is NP-complete. We can see a trivial polynomial transformation from a Latin Square to a TomTom, and Latin Square is NP-complete.

So, sorry for Jacob Lance.

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.

Puzzle 73: Simple?

Pure Loop This is a loop style puzzle. The loop passes all white cells and no black cells.

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

Puzzle 73: Simple?
Pure Loop

What the heck am I doing here…

UPDATE 14-Mar-2014: I just realized this puzzle type is called “Pure Loop”; Simple Loop is where you’re given some segments of the loop and must pass all squares/dots.

Puzzle 72: Drunk Man

Short Yajilin Follow regular Yajilin rules: This is loop style puzzle. The loop may not pass through any gray cell. White cells not passed by the loop may not be orthogonally adjacent; note that a white cell not passed by the loop may still be orthogonally adjacent to a gray cell. A number with an arrow indicates the number of cells not passed by the loop, looking from the cell with the number in the arrow’s direction, up to the edge of the grid.

In addition, no straight segment of the loop may be more than two units long. In other words, whenever the loop goes straight through a cell, it must turn both before and after it.

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

Puzzle 72: Drunk Man
Short Yajilin

Re title: Originally I wanted to give the variation name “Drunk Yajilin”, but that’s too weird. And well, drunk people can’t walk straight for long, or so the “usual” “sources” say.

Re difficulty: I consider hard. Prasanna says medium, close to hard. So let’s make it medium because Prasanna is more skilled and less biased (any author will be biased to their own works) than me.

Well… Not much comment, actually. My birthday is coming. All my puzzle projects (Fillomino crazy variants batch, Fillomino Variations pack, perhaps more that I don’t remember) are abandoned except for the upcoming LMI test in early 2014. Probably February, but not confirmed yet. I have homework and I make puzzles…

Puzzle 71: Checkerboard Insanity

Tapa Region Party Follow regular Tapa rules: Do Nurikabe-style. (The black cells are called the Tapa wall.) Cells with numbers may not be black. Numbers in a cell indicate the sizes of the black square groups adjacent to the clue square; two separate black square groups must be separated by at least one white square.

In addition, Region Party variation apples. The two quadrants with blue cells and “C” at the top-left of the cells indicate Clones quadrants: The contents of the two quadrants must be identical on the blue cells. (There is no restriction for cells inside the quadrants that are not blue.) The two quadrants with red cells and “E” at the top-right of the cells indicate Extra Region. After tilting the grid by 45 degrees, the blackened cells on the red squares also form a Tapa wall. (Note that all red squares form a single region, not two separate regions.)

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

Puzzle 71: Checkerboard Insanity
Tapa Region Party

Perhaps the only puzzle among the most recent 20 or so that is made purely on computer, not using my puzzle scratch book. The difficulty is hard; I wanted to go with medium but the variant is pretty confusing on itself.

Anyway. What inspired me? The recent TVCs and CTC on LMI, of course. Plus me recalling that I’ve done this crazy variant before. :3

And…uh…this variant is hard >_< The best finish I’ve found is unsatisfactory. But fair enough for a puzzle I make in half hour or so.

I need to make some easy puzzles for my “mate”… Ideas?

Puzzle 70: Mii~ >w<

Greater Than Fillomino Follow regular Fillomino rules. In addition, inequality signs appear on the grid; these signs must be satisfied by the numbers in the squares involved.

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

Puzzle 70: Mii~ >w<
Greater Than Fillomino
(Here for plain version)

So, as a “natural” follow-up of my current interest on roleplaying, this is obligatory. All givens form either the emoticon ^^ or <3. I wanted to include =3 (equals sign and 3, effectively two horizontally adjacent 3’s) but if I can use only two emoticons why not. I didn’t want to figure out what happens with only one emoticon though, this by itself is already difficult to construct…

Hard, yeah. Because a few parts are hard. But if I’d use the average, this would be somewhere around medium, because the easy parts are easy. And the puzzle breaks down nicely into parts. *insert obligatory reference to vore*

So! This puzzle is a gift for an RP friend that is curious about puzzles. He solved Puzzle 1, a puzzle I believe to be “final test to see whether you advance from beginner to intermediate Fillomino solver”. Even though he clocked 2 hours, this is a fabulous achievement for someone with no prior experience of logic puzzles. And so I felt really guilty when testsolving the puzzle; I found the puzzle to have the mentioned hard steps. There are even parts where my best method is still trial and error to some extent (read: “what-if”s), but hey. Who cares about time. Let’s see whether the aforementioned RP friend can solve this :3

And finally, yeah. Mii~ >w<

Puzzle 69: Foxger’s Hybrid

Sashikabe
Example puzzle and solution

Sashikabe Basically Sashigane and Nurikabe together. Shade some of the cells black so that the black cells form a Tapa wall (also known as a Nurikabe). The remaining white cells form several polyominoes each. Each polyomino must be of the shape of an L; formally, it is composed of an “elbow” of one square, with two “legs” of 1-cell width non-degenerate rectangles orthogonally adjacent to the elbow and are perpendicular to each other.

There are clues on the grid in form of arrows and circles; these squares must remain white. An arrow marks the end of some leg and shows the direction where the corresponding elbow is; for example, a left arrow means that a leg ends there and the elbow of that leg is located to the left of the square. A circle marks an elbow; a number inside a circle means that the polyomino containing that elbow has exactly that many squares.

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

Puzzle 69: Foxger’s Hybrid
Sashikabe

Yay, a puzzle! It’s rated hard solely because it’s a rather unusual genre.

So… What’s with the title? This genre is invented by Grant Fikes aka glmathgrant, and is pretty obviously a hybrid. In addition, Grant’s online persona (Grant Badger Fox) is also a hybrid (fox and badger), so you can call “Foxger [is] Hybrid”, using “hybrid” as an adjective. So, yeah, lame title. I can’t think of a better one though.

Also, as you can see, I attempted a perfectly symmetrical clue arrangement. Turns out I need to use a single circle there (luckily still preserving symmetry of layout, but not the contents), but I’m quite happy with the result as the solution itself is satisfying.

Why do I construct this? A request by mathgrant, of course! He made a Sashikabe puzzle and challenged me to make one too, so here it is. Turns out constructing these is a pain. Perhaps because I put the condition of making the clues perfectly symmetric, but hey, I tend to like perfect layouts.

Anyway. TVC XIV and CTC 2013 on Logic Masters India are going on! If you like Tapa, you should give both a try. The latter needs a consistent online schedule if you want to score high, but if you’re not into competitive stuff, you can still solve them for fun. They are pretty amazing puzzles. On the other hand, the former is part of TVC 2013, a 4-part contest of Tapa variations that has run since 2010. So yeah, two big events are running now.

On a more personal note. I’m currently in KAIST, as you should have known if you read this blog regularly (the latest post about my experience in KAIST has been up for about 4 days now). My Orientation Week has just ended, and seems like it’s not too busy…yet. The first academic week will start next Monday, so let’s see whether I still have time to construct puzzles or not…

Well, that’s all for now. Stay tuned!

EDIT 27 September 2013: Grant Fikes got his Sashikabe puzzle published! I’ve testsolved it and it’s a very nice puzzle. Also, this is one part of my thanks to Grant due to a certain personal problem that I prefer not to be shared with general public, but basically Grant helped me with my problem. A lot of help. Next part will come later. :3