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.

Deception

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.

Testsolving

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.

PUZ-PRE v3

Remember this puzzle?

Yes, I hope I can start using applets. But then, I often do variations, so applets are not going to cover everything. Should begin making JavaScript Fillomino applets. (Well I do Fillomino a lot, so I’ll aim for making Fillomino applets first.) Anyone knows a good puzzle applet that supports many variations?

ISO 8601

Because this somehow makes me to post my response.

If this information is to be read by humans, I use 02-Mar-2013 09:58:43. The time part has a basically really universal standard (hh:mm:ss), and the date part is made unambiguous with month’s name and 4-digit year.

If this information is to be stored and sorted (yay anagrams) by computers, I use 20130302T095843. Screw readability.

If this information is for both to be red by humans and to be stored by computers, I think I’ll use 2013-03(Mar)-02 09:58:43. But I doubt I’ll ever use it.

I need something better to do. Oh ya, fixing FFF25.

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?

FFF 28: Sequences End Here

Fancy Fillomino February: This is a series of 28 (twenty-eight) 7×7 Fillomino puzzles over the February. Every 00.00 UTC+7 a new puzzle will be up. The basic Fillomino rules apply unless otherwise indicated.

Battleships Fillomino Follow regular Fillomino rules. Afterwards, shade some of the polyominoes black so no two black polyominoes touch each other even diagonally. The numbers outside the grid tells the number of shaded squares in the row/column.

Difficulty 3.0/10 Master target 0:20 Expert target 2:00

FFF28: Sequences End Here
Battleships Fillomino

Sky is tired to make stories.

HKUST Interview

Just did it. Hoping I did the best.

…also, HKUST now knows this blog. I won’t say whether it’s a good thing or not, but visitors count++ is always good 😛

FFF 27: Epic Combo

Fancy Fillomino February: This is a series of 28 (twenty-eight) 7×7 Fillomino puzzles over the February. Every 00.00 UTC+7 a new puzzle will be up. The basic Fillomino rules apply unless otherwise indicated.

Extra Region Fillomino In addition to the regular Fillomino rules, the green cells form a 4×4 grid that is also a valid Fillomino grid.

Difficulty 3.5/10 Master target 1:30 Expert target 2:30

FFF27: Epic Combo
Extra Region Fillomino

So, how can Sky mesh two puzzles in one grid and one rule? Well, besides a pretty common Samurai variation, this is also possible.

Time Limit

Well, apparently 15 minutes is not enough to complete the practical exam of measuring the acceleration caused by gravity by measuring the period of a pendulum.

Reasons:
– I forgot (read: didn’t think) to bring my calculator. Not that I have one anyway. The reason: I think the calculations are not going to be insane. I WAS WRONG. is hard to compute. Especially since I’m also asked to compute the frequency although I very well won’t need it. (Eventually I changed so I compute .)
– The stopwatch worked only 50% of the time. Imagine working alone, fixating your view to the swinging pendulum, just to find out that the stopwatch didn’t start. 30 seconds wasted.
– Delicate handwork. I took like 3 minutes to tie the nylon string that is weighed to the pivot. Double that, as I need to do the experiment twice with different nylon lengths.
– Stupid misguiding. When you’re told “10 minutes”, you think that there is 10 minutes left. Not too long after that (about 3 minutes), while I was still doing the experiment accurately (but hence slowly), I was told “1.5 minutes left”. Imagine my immediate panic.

Must play more time management games, not rhythm games.