Puzzle 60 Solution!

I’m not kidding. Puzzle 60 has the solution now.

Also, in accordance to mathematics’ terminology, “answer” refers to the solved puzzle while “solution” refers to the steps to solve the puzzle (or the “walkthrough”).

The PDF’s size bloats. I don’t know why. The zipped file is much smaller though; 167 kB compressed (by ZIP) versus 2802 kB uncompressed. (The DOCX which is used to generate the PDF is 214 kB.) I will always offer the PDF (compressed) and DOCX files, but this might be the only time I offer the uncompressed PDF file.

Anyway. Some time between now and two months later, I will start fixing all templates to puzzles; this includes providing the answer and solution to each puzzle. The solutions will probably take a long time…but expect answers to all puzzles to be published together as I finish fixing templates.

Puzzle 60: Insanity

Fillomino Potpourri Follow regular Fillomino rules. In addition, the following variations apply:

– Snake: There exists a snake in the grid, occupying some of the cells. The snake is a non-touching path. The snake passes through all dark gray cells marked S.

– Tapa: Some of the polyominoes are shaded. Note that a polyomino must either be shaded completely or not shaded at all. These shaded polyominoes form a Tapa wall. The wall obey the green Tapa clues: A set of numbers in a light green square with a dim T is a Tapa clue, which tells the blocks of consecutive cells that belong to the wall in the eight squares adjacent to it. Different wall blocks must be separated by non-wall cells.

– Clones: There are two marked 3×3 matrices; one in the top-left quadrant and one in the bottom-right quadrant. These two matrices must be identical without rotations/reflections. This includes whether a cell is a snake segment and whether a cell is shaded (belong to the Tapa wall).

– No-Rectangle: No polyomino is shaped like a rectangle (or square).

Difficulty 8.0/10 • Target times 06:00 10:00 30:00 2:30:00
Solution Answer (PNG, 8 kB) • Solution (PDF, 295 kB)

Puzzle 60: Insanity
Fillomino Potpourri

Hidden Contest

Yes, yesterday was April Fools, and I tried to make it a “reverse hoax”. That “random puzzle” is not entirely random. If you haven’t found where you should put the answer key, then you’re just starting.

Also I found an ambiguity; I’ll fix it later.

On an unrelated note, I’m now on #PMD-Explorers group at deviantArt. Whee.

Puzzle 59: A Random Puzzle

Tapa Shade some cells black so the black cells form a single polyomino. A cell containing numbers may not be shaded black. Numbers in a cell indicate the length of connected black cells around the cell (cells that share a vertex with it). If there are at least two numbers, they must be separated by at least one white cell. A question mark stands for some non-zero number, and it might not be consistent across the puzzle.

Difficulty 2.0/10 Master time 2:00 Expert time 3:30

Puzzle 59: A Random Puzzle
Tapa

So I’m feeling really uninspired for today.

Oh wait, I missed something.

Answer key: Count the number of black cells.

…answer key? Wait, something is not right here.

EDIT: Puzzle edited. If you have just started though, it might not be of your concern.

Puzzle 58: That Classic Board Game

Mastermind There is a hidden 5-digit string, where its characters are among 1-9 only, but the characters may repeat. The objective is to discover this string. There are several guesses that has been made about the string. Each guess is a string of the same length and from the same character set, and its response is a number of black circles and/or white circles (might be none). A black circle indicates a character that exists in the hidden string and is on the correct position, while a white circle indicates a character that exists in the hidden string but is not on the correct position. For example, if the hidden string is 11223 and the guess is 13123, three black circles for the first 1, the 2, and the last 3, and a white circle for the other 1 will be awarded.

Difficulty 1.5/10 Master time 0:20 Expert time 0:50

Puzzle 58: That Classic Board Game
Mastermind

Whee. This thing is easy to make in head. This puzzle, not this genre. I’m sure it’s possible to make a difficult puzzle in this genre.

Also, note that Puzzle 57 has reached the fifth version, which I hope to be unique.

Finally, stay tuned. I’ll post one or two more puzzles soon.

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Puzzle 57: Ridiculous Changes

Fillomino Operations Divide the grid into polyominoes. Fill each cell inside a polyomino by the size of the polyomino, after applying all mathematical operations it contains (multiplication/division before addition/subtraction). For example, a 5-square polyomino containing -3 and ×2 will have the number 5×2-3 = 7 on each of its cells. Polyominoes that contain the same number may not be orthogonally adjacent.

Difficulty 6.5/10 Master target 4:00 Expert target 12:00

Puzzle 57: Ridiculous Changes
Operation Fillomino

EDIT: VERSION 5 fajshnkkbkxmidcvger I hope it’s the last update. I’m pretty sure it has a unique solution, but my intended solution requires a really large-scale (as in the whole thing) deduction as the first step. And hence, the expert time is doubled. Whee.

Erm. So I lied and posted a new puzzle before April. This was made while I was doing chemistry finals (after completing it).

Yes, I believe that 6.5/10 is accurate for a 7×7 grid, but I didn’t give this to my testsolvers so I don’t know what the others think. I’m giving this now, and I’ll edit the difficulty/time later after getting responses.

If you find the rules hard to understand, I suppose I should post an example…

Also, did you notice Puzzle 28 and FFF 25 are redone? (The originals were broken and I gave up finding a way to fix them.)

FFF 25: Yet Another Explosion

Norinori Fillomino Follow regular Fillomino rules. In addition, the regions form a valid Norinori grid: It must be possible to shade exactly two squares in each polyomino such that each black square is adjacent to exactly one other black square.

Difficulty 3.0/10 Master target 1:30 Expert target 2:30

FFF 25: Yet Another Explosion
Norinori Fillomino

Another out-of-sequence puzzle. The original FFF 25.

Also, it’s great that the original puzzle was broken; I managed to fit a polyomino of size over 4 times the largest given in this puzzle. Yay.

Puzzle 28: Square Battle

Fillomino Shapes Follow regular Fillomino rules. In addition, the given shapes must appear in the grid, at least as many as given.

Difficulty 4.5/10 Master target 1:00 Expert target 6:00

Puzzle 28: Square Battle
Fillomino Shapes

Renumbering is a pain. So, let’s make a puzzle that fills in the gap instead.

Here was the original Puzzle 28. Because ksun48 asked for a hard Fillomino variation, I believe that this is sufficiently hard, albeit the easy master target.

Also, yes, I don’t think Sky is going to tell his tale again. Most likely I will rephrase what he’s going to say, just like the paragraph two paragraphs above this.

Puzzle 56: Party Quadrants

Region Party Fillomino This is a hybrid of Clones Fillomino and Extra Region Fillomino. The two blue 3×3 grids are from Clones; they must be identical. The two red 3×3 grids are from Extra Regions; each of the grids must form another valid Fillomino grid.

Difficulty 3.5/10 Master target 2:30 Expert target 7:00

Puzzle 56: Party Quadrants
Region Party Fillomino

Yes, Sky is really inspired today. Why not?