Puzzle 68: Obvious Spinoff of Spinoff

Tapa Double Trouble Shade in some cells so the shaded cells form a Tapa wall. Cells containing clues (question marks) may not be shaded. A clue indicates the sizes of separate shaded cell groups among the 8 cells adjacent to it; for example, a clue of “1 2″ indicates that there are two groups of shaded cells, one of size 1 and one of size 2.

In addition, the “Tapa Double”^[1] variant is in effect: every clue both provides the sizes of separate shaded cell groups as well as sizes of separate unshaded clues.

Further addition, all clues have been replaced with a question mark each.

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

Puzzle 68: Obvious Spinoff of Spinoff
Tapa Double Trouble

[1] In TVC XIV, this variant is called Tapa Clones, but I don’t want it to be misinterpreted with the Clones variant I made (where there are two or more marked regions that must contain exactly the same content), especially as I also used it for Puzzle 60.

Final puzzle before I’m going to (South) Korea. A future post will explain more about it.

Anyway. When I first saw Tapa Clones in TVC XIV, the fact that a very small amount of valid clues and the large amount of information each clue gives leads me to this variant. It comes pretty naturally for me; dunno whether other puzzle constructors, at the first sight of Tapa Clones, immediately think of this variant. But heh, why not.

I may or may not participate in TVC XIV. I need to settle in Korea first. Also even more unlikely is Classic Tapa Contest 2013 for quite obvious reasons. However, DTGT is plausible. Well I suppose I should focus on my studies first heh.

To the puzzle. It’s quite difficult to find an opening, and most of the tricks involve utilizing clue squares as known whites instead of…well…clue squares. But I’m still quite proud of this thing, which is made while half-sleepy…heh.

Puzzle 67: Too Many To Count

Neanderthal Tapa Shade in some cells so the shaded cells form a Tapa wall. Cells containing clues (1 or +) may not be shaded. A clue indicates the lengths of separate shaded cell groups among the 8 cells adjacent to it; for example, a clue of “1 2” indicates that there are two groups of shaded cells, one of size 1 and one of size 2. However, as neanderthals don’t know numbers greater than 1, all numbers greater than 1 are replaced by a plus sign (+) each. (So the above “1 2” clue will be replaced to “1 +”. A “1 5” clue is also replaced with “1 +”, and so it’s up to the solver to determine the exact number of a plus sign.)

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

Puzzle 67: Too Many To Count
Neanderthal Tapa
(image seems broken; if it is, click to view full image)

Obligatory practice puzzle for TVC XIII. Well, you see this post, and you notice that number 2 is missing, so… Also yes, I most likely will participate.

Anyway. Neanderthal Tapa + antisymmetric seems too hard, so I just made a symmetric clue layout for this. A bit of unusual logic that may or may not exist in vanilla Tapa which pushes the difficulty to medium, but a pretty simple solve.

Puzzle 66: Ring of Blocks

Fillomino Follow regular Fillomino rules.

Expected difficulty Medium • Answer • Solution (196 kB)

Puzzle 66: Ring of Blocks
Fillomino

EDIT: Fixed ambiguity on top-right corner.

God how long has this blog been without puzzles vanilla Fillomino.

Well, yeah. I like Fillomino, but recent Fillomino puzzles I’ve published are all variants. Crazy variants, even. Here’s an attempt at making a vanilla Fillomino again. And yeah, now I’m using 16pt Century Gothic with 32px cell size. I’m not sure why I change the font so much; blame Will Shortz’s Puzzle Master Workout I think 😛

Speaking of crazy variants, remember Fancy Fillomino February? I’m going to do that again, only not on February, less puzzles, and crazier variants. Here’s a few genres of puzzles I’ve made, just as teasers: Operations, Liar Cipher, and Consecutive Rectangles. That’s not counting variants I made myself just for this series (not just reusing previous variants). Hyped up? See ya in end of October. Most likely the series will lead to my birthday.

Speaking of my birthday and puzzles. Remember Deception? Yes, I pretty likely will author another LMI test. I’m attempting for the test to be run on my birthday’s weekend; let’s see.

Puzzle 65: Abuse of the Rules

BWG Loop Draw a loop visiting all cells that moves only horizontally and vertically, and turns only at centers of cells. Between two circles of the same color (both black or both white), there may not be any turn. Between two circles of different colors (one black and one white), there must be exactly one turn. (The loop is free to turn on circles.) A gray circle stands for either black or white, and might be different for the two segments it’s adjacent to (it might act as black for one direction and white on the other direction).

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

Puzzle 65: Abuse of the Rules
BWG Loop

(image seems bad; click to view full image)

God how long has this blog been without puzzles. Here’s a quick puzzle to fix for that.

This puzzle is made in response to IPC 2013. When I first saw Black-White-Gray Loop, this is my first impression. Of course, it turns out that the author is not this wicked, but it’s a neat abuse nevertheless.

Meanwhile, I got rid of all sorts of time and difficulty numbers. Now the difficulty is only “easy/medium/hard/insane”. Much better, because I can’t estimate difficulty properly. Solutions are now demand-based; I will not work on any solution unless someone comments/e-mails/notify me in some way or I like the puzzle too much that I want to publish a solution by myself. Much better time management for me.

I have another puzzle published in about 8 hours; stay tuned!

Whee.

You know the Liar variant where exactly one clue in each row/column is wrong? Okay.

You know the Cipher variant where all numbers are replaced with letters (identical numbers are replaced with identical numbers and different numbers are replaced with different letters)? Okay.

What happens if you combine both?

You say it’s impossible? Well, I also did say that when someone attempted to make it. But well… Yoshiap pulled it off.

Enjoy his Liar Cipher Fillomino. Let’s see whether I can make one of it too. Whee.

Puzzle 64: Sunken Treasure

Battleships Put the given fleet to the grid so that no two ships are adjacent. Ships may be rotated, but not reflected. Ships may not be placed on blue squares (seas), and if there is a ship segment in the grid, it must be occupied by the exact same segment (same shape and orientation).

Difficulty 4.5/10 • Target times 01:00 02:30 07:30 20:00
Solution PNG (not uploaded) • PDF (not uploaded)

Puzzle 64: Sunken Treasure
Battleships

E-mail me the treasure (4-letter word) to get a free puzzle request (of reasonable size, aka 10×10 for the usual genres that I post). Don’t spam me. Only 5 requests offered.

Hint: There are two words, or to be precise two 4-character strings. One is supposed to be a check whether you are in the right track (if you find it and it makes sense, you’re in the right track; the treasure is the other one).

Meanwhile, this might probably be the last puzzle for a while, while I’m going to fix all previous puzzle posts to follow the current template.

EDITS:

Hint 1: You don’t need to solve the puzzle in order to find the treasure.

Puzzle 63: Rings from Hell

Tetromino Slitherlink Divide the blue cells (marked T) to tetrominoes. Put each of 0,1,2,3 exactly once to each tetromino so each cell contains one number. Afterwards, solve the resulting Slitherlink puzzle: Draw a loop following the grid’s edges. A clue tells the number of edges of the square it’s contained in that belongs to the loop.

Tetromino Slitherlink Example

Difficulty 9.0/10 • Target times 15:00 30:00 1:00:00 6:00:00
Solution PNG (not uploaded) • PDF (not uploaded)

Puzzle 63: Rings from Hell
Tetromino Slitherlink

UPDATE 30-May-2014: I forgot whether this is supposed to be Liar too, as there’s no indication of Liar other than the instructions accidentally having a single sentence. I think not, and so I remove the Liar condition for now. I’ll testsolve it again when I have time; if someone finds this puzzle to be broken due to the Liar condition being removed, tell me too.

Yes, Rings from Hell. Because it has rings and it has 9.0/10 difficulty. As in you have to do lots of nontrivial brute force to obtain the solution. But then Tetromino Slitherlink is mostly brute force. I think I should wish you luck. The difficulty escalates (which is much better than decreases, as you can brute force the remaining—wait, then again, brute force is the only way to solve the endgame so far). A far tamer puzzle will be up in 12 hours.

Deception has ended. Congratulations to Hideaki Jo (deu), Palmer Mebane (MellowMelon), and xevs (Ko Okamoto) for topping the test, and additionally EKBM (Endo Ken) alongside the top three to complete the test. Solutions for select puzzles (so far two) can be found in the thread. Solutions are made on demand, so post there or comment here or e-mail me or notify me however the method if you want a solution for some other puzzle.

EDIT: Fixed example. Thanks for mathgrant to remind me.

Deception Preview 9: Lines of Circles

Skyscrapers Kropki Put a number between 1-6 inclusive in the grid (the black-bordered square) so that each number appears exactly once in every row/column. Afterwards, interpreting the numbers as heights of buildings, put a number in each cell outside the grid (observer) that tells the number of visible buildings from that position looking into the grid. Taller buildings block shorter ones. For example, if a row has 25341 in that order, an observer from the left will see two buildings (2,5) and from the right will see three buildings (1,4,5).

In addition, if there is a black circle between two cells, one of the numbers in those cells must be exactly twice the other. If there is a white circle between two cells, the two numbers in those cells must differ by one. (There can be either circle between 1 and 2.) The absence of circles doesn’t imply anything.

Answer key: Enter the unit digits (last digits) of the numbers in the cells in the row/column. Only enter the buildings, not the observers.

Difficulty 4.0/10 • Target times 02:00 04:00 07:00 20:00
Solution Answer key (highlight →) 563124,362154 • PNG (not uploaded) • ZIP of PDF (not uploaded) • DOCX (not uploaded)

Deception Preview 9: Lines of Circles
Skyscrapers Kropki

Ninth preview puzzle. That ends the Deception preview series. Reminding you that the link is here, and it will start in approximately 31 hours. Good luck!

…yes. This puzzle is posted out of schedule. There’s a long story, but basically Prasanna Seshadri is also going to testsolve this. Or solve this, since it’s official. I don’t know. Whatever. But he wanted the last preview puzzle, and I’m on bed already (yes, this paragraph is hot from the stove), and I don’t have the copy on my phone. So, yeah. Sorry if you find the broken schedule annoying. But earlier never hurts, does it?

About this puzzle itself, it’s supposed to make the shape of P. Or not, I don’t know. I totally forget whether this is intentional or accidental. I toyed with the possibility of lined circles, and this is what happens.

Deception Preview 8: Counting The Naturals

Domino Nurikabe Shade some cells black so the black cells form a tapa wall. No cell with a number may be shaded black. The black cells divide the white cells to several polyominoes (islands), all maximal (cannot be extended). Each island must have exactly one number that tells the size of the island. In addition, it must be possible to partition the black cells to dominoes. Such partition need not be unique, as long as there exists at lest one.

Answer key: Enter the lengths of the lines of black cells in the marked row/column. If the row/column has all/no black cells, enter 0.

Difficulty 3.5/10 • Target times 01:00 02:30 04:00 10:00
Solution Answer key (highlight →) 311,41 • PNG (not uploaded) • ZIP of PDF (not uploaded) • DOCX (not uploaded)

Deception Preview 8: Counting The Naturals
Domino Nurikabe

Eighth preview puzzle. Try solving the puzzle with 18 changed to a question mark (indicating an unknown number). Otherwise, not much gimmick. Figuring out the top-right part is a little tricky though.

Deception Preview 7: Dock Chains

Battleships Yajilin Put the given fleet in the grid. Ships may be rotated, but not reflected. No two ships may be adjacent, and no ship may cover a number. Afterwards, draw a loop passing all cells that are not a ship segment or a number. The loop’s segments are parallel to the edges of the grid, turning only at cell centers. A number states the number of ship segments visible from the cell; that is, within the line of cells from the cell to the edge of the grid in the direction given in the clue.

Answer key: Enter the lengths of the horizontal/vertical line segments in the row/column respectively. Enter 0 if there is none.

Difficulty 3.5/10 • Target times 01:30 03:00 06:00 15:00
Solution Answer key (highlight →) 22,11 • PNG (not uploaded) • ZIP of PDF (not uploaded) • DOCX (not uploaded)

Deception Preview 7: Dock Chains
Battleships Yajilin

Seventh preview puzzle. Two more to go, and two days to Deception too.

You know, there are three Battleships Yajilin puzzles out there that I found by Google. Perhaps more but I’m too lazy to search further. Yet, all except the most recent (Grant’s in GMPuzzles) has a quirk (Prasanna’s has irregular fleet, Snyder’s has in-grid ships/seas) from what one can expect from a Battleships-Yajilin combo. So I decide to take a shot.

I’ll just give it away that at least one Battleships Yajilin in the test has irregular fleet. Had it turned worse than this, I’d post it as the preview instead. (Yes, my previews are mostly rejects.) Sadly it hadn’t, so it will appear in the test.

I’ll visit this genre in the future. I find it nice to toy with 😀 This, along with Liar Slitherlink and Skyscrapers Kropki, is fighting for the second most-satisfying-to-make genre (the first is obviously Cipher Fillomino because my bias towards Fillomino).