Unlike last year, I don’t have any puzzle planned. I’m constructing an LMI test for April or May, and considering that I just finished my first semester of university a week or so ago, I’ve been taking the holiday for my usual computer stuff: programming, browsing the net, playing some games…
So what have I done in 2013?
So I planned an LMI test for early November. Turns out there’s a little hurdle that makes my test cannot be hosted on the weekend of my birthday, so I’m pushing it backward to February. x3
I haven’t planned the exact theme, but most probably simply an assortment of puzzles. Whether one puzzle/genre or two puzzles/genre is also unknown 😛
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.
Apparently the built-in MS Word 2007’s DOCX to PDF conversion is way better than a dedicated software PrimoPDF’s.
Puzzle 60‘s solution saved under a much smaller file size. 295 kB vs 2802 kB.
Also, Deception has a 24-hour extension, so there is 30.5 hours left. Furthermore, I’m making solutions to select puzzles, depending on popularity, which will be released after the test is finalized (when the score page becomes static and not Flash).
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.
Finally finished testsolving that thing.
27 puzzles, in which 9 will be previews. There might be more to replace bad puzzles; in particular I still have one or two genres where all of its puzzles are clocked under 5 minutes. (I want to make each genre to have a “difficult” puzzle.)
Highly variable testsolving times (02:04 to 31:17; FYI, all puzzles are 10×10 (except one which is 6×6))…
…but I haven’t given all the puzzles to other testsolvers (they are currently holding the latest batch of 15 untested puzzles given in January).
Deception on 18-19 May 2013 (third weekend in May). Still tentative schedule though.
So it’s finals, yet I still find some time to testsolve Deception puzzles.
There’s only one comment now: Surveyors Heyawake is insanely difficult to solve, even by me aka the author. I got 31:17 in a standard size 10×10 Surveyors Heyawake, and that’s only testing the first puzzle. A bunch of bifurcations.
Soon I’ll make the dimensions much smaller to allow easier bifurcation. -_-
On a probably related note, Deception is currently scheduled for 18-19 May 2013 aka the third weekend of May. This is tentative though, and might change.
Chaos at the Sky 
