Puzzle 53: Broken Tiles

Parquet. Shade exactly one subregion in each bold-bordered region such that all shaded regions are connected and there is no cycle anywhere (from each shaded cell, there is exactly one path to each other shaded cell passing shaded cells).

As perceived by the author…
Difficulty: 3.0/10
Target time: 1:20

This client is hard to satisfy. After breaking each of his 25 square tiles, he still wants to make his floor neatly decorated and he doesn’t want to buy new tiles or otherwise rearrange everything to make it easier. But it becomes a logic puzzle, which Sky excels at. Let’s try satisfying this tough customer, and just hope he gives Sky his well-deserved earning.

Puzzle 53: Broken Tiles
Parquet

Stay tuned for Puzzles 54 and 55, which will be up exactly 24 hours after the previous puzzle (so Puzzle 54 in 24 hours and Puzzle 55 in 48 hours)!

Puzzle 52: Poker Hands

Word Puzzle, which is not actually word puzzle like crosswords or word searches but more like presenting the puzzle in English form. Just read the puzzle.

As perceived by the author…
Difficulty: 3.5/10
Target time (after reading): 2:30

Sky has recently gotten a deck of playing cards; why only now, I don’t know. But he is definitely fascinated with it, although there might be not many people that can play. (Flygrass Town is a bit weird.) He is particularly attracted by Poker hands.
Anyway, he even managed to construct a puzzle involving Poker hands. Let’s see if you’re as addicted as him…

0. Familiarize yourself with playing cards and Poker hands as linked above.
1. There are 30 cards used to form 6 Poker hands. These 30 cards are all cards from Eights to Aces (89TJQKA), and the Seven of Spade and Seven of Heart.
2. The resulting Poker hands are a Straight, a Flush, a Full House, a Four of a Kind, a Non-Royal Straight Flush, and a Royal Flush.
3. Both the Flush and the Straight Flush are composed of only red cards.
4. The Straight is composed of only black cards.
5. The Full House doesn’t contain Spades.

What are the hands?

So it occurred to me that it’s Puzzle 52. There are 52 cards in a regular French deck, so…

Also this is made without writing anything down (everything is composed inside my head). Darn I need to be careful with cases; this is version 3.

Puzzle 51: Counting Weirdly…Is It?

(Ok so I accidentally posted this instead of scheduled this. It was up for about 20 minutes at 17.50-18.10 UTC+7 yesterday.)

Tapa. Shade some cells black so all black cells form a single polyomino, there is no 2×2 area that is all black, no squares with numbers/question marks may be black, and each given tells the lengths of contiguous black cells around that square (8 squares in total). Different contiguous black cells must be separated by at least one white cell. A question mark indicates an unknown number.

As perceived by the author…
Difficulty: 2.5/10
Target time: 2:00

Do you know a mathematical problem?
There are five students standing on a circle, numbered 1,2,3,4,5 in clockwise order. Starting from 1 and moving clockwise, the students say “Bang!” and “Miss!” alternately, starting with “Bang!”. Every student that says “Bang!” is removed from the circle. Who is the last person standing?
The sequence of the students removed can be found in this puzzle, so better solve the problem first.
“…really?” Sky queries, and begins to solve the math problem.

Puzzle 51: Counting Weirdly…Is It?
Tapa

Yep. I need to have one of those easier puzzles. Now attempting a 10-based difficulty (max 10, min 0) because apparently I use too many “medium”.

Also, there’s the target time. Note that I don’t have any testsolver, and hence it might be seriously off. “Target time” is mostly the time spent to construct the puzzle, minus the time taken to spend paths with different givens etc, divided by some appropriate number to make it at least slightly realistic. Don’t expect too much from this blog; go to Grandmasters Puzzles for more realistic target times and better puzzles that are obviously not proofs of concepts like Puzzle 50 😛

Puzzle 50: Sea of Ships

Retrograde Battlemats.

Follow similar Fillmats rules. Divide the grid into several rectangles, each of which must have 1-unit width and a height of between 1 and 4 units inclusive (or vice versa). No two rectangles with equal area may be orthogonally adjacent. A number gives the size of the rectangle it’s contained in. Differences from usual Fillmats rules: You can have multiple numbers in the same rectangle (like Fillomino), and four rectangles may meet at a point.

Afterwards, interpret the rectangles as usual Battleships ships, and solve the resulting Retrograde Battleships puzzle. Mark some of the ships black so the exact quantity of ships as shown in the fleet below are marked (aka for this puzzle, 1 battleship of 4-unit length, 2 cruisers of 3-unit length, 3 destroyers of 2-unit length, and 4 battleships of 1-unit length). No two ships may touch each other even orthogonally. Numbers outside the grid gives the number of ship segments in the corresponding row/column.

“Have you identified the ships Sky?”
“What? Are you expecting me to do this task really quickly? I even have no prior experience.”
“Just try.”
“Yeah, I’m trying if you can’t tell. Or actually…I think we can deduce all the ships from only this information.”
“Are you serious?”
“Hopefully so. Just try; if you miss something, I’ll try to identify something that will help. But see, this is more efficient with not that much cost to identify everything…”
“Yeah yeah I know, Sky the Puzzle Master. Okay, let me solve this.”
“Also, seeing from the information, if it’s unique then it should be medium, but let’s see…”

Puzzle 50: Sea of Ships
Retrograde Battlemats

Yay 50 puzzles! New hybrid.

This is mostly a proof of concept. I’m posting a lot of those. However, I do see quite neat interactions possible; I actually put in one of those here.

Yes, I forgot a few of Fillmats rules because I rarely see them. Heck, the correct name is actually Fillmat, but let’s use the “s” for “my” “variation”. Blargh.

Anyway, Puzzle 51 has also been planned, and if I schedule correctly, it should show up in about 21.5 hours aka midnight PST.

Bridge Puzzles

Revisiting an old Bridge puzzle posted in this blog about 9-11 months ago, now generalized to 8 variants.

Optimize: Get the total HCP held by a partnership as low as possible, such that there exists a pair of hands with a total of that much HCP and a) for any, b) for some configuration of hands that the other partnership is holding, and given a) best play, b) worst play from the opponents, you can always get a contract of a) 7S, b) 7NT.

My solution for aab (for any, best play, 7NT) was 19 HCP. I’ll try to get all solved.

Pokemon X and Y

Yeah, couldn’t resist posting this.

As reported 3 hours ago, Pokemon X and Y, the sixth generation of Pokemon series, will come to Nintendo 3DS in October 2013.

Since there are a bunch of better sites with the news, I won’t tell the news. Instead, I’ll give some first opinions. That’s what blogs are for 😛

• The three starters are Chespin, Fennekin, and Froakie. If you ask me, I’ll pick Fennekin from the currently revealed stuffs (which is basically the names and the pictures).
• NEW! The two mascot legendaries are Xerneas and Yveltal. Weirdest names I’ve heard, but pretty neat anyway. Looking from the names and the available pictures, I think I prefer Xerneas.
• The game will be on 3DS. And in October 2013. Since I don’t expect to bring any 3DS to wherever my future university will be and it’s rather insane to use a 3DS emulator in computer (you don’t get the 3D, as an example), I think I’ll only watch the news.
• Skymin has resisted the boatload of Pokemon from Gen 5 to still be my favorite Pokemon (although Keldeo swiftly took the second place). Let’s see Gen 6. Fennekin raced through the list, and probably in my top five now; must make a list in order to get its exact position.

Yay, that’s all.

Also, no, there’s no puzzle ready yet. I’m busy preparing for SAT Reasoning Test (26 Jan), NTU entrance exams (2-3 Feb), National Exams (Apr), and all puzzles I’ve made recently go to Deception. Maybe I’ll make one featuring Fennekin 😛 But I don’t promise it.

Temptation

Must…resist…the…temptation of posting a truly marvelous puzzle, since it might be used in the upcoming puzzle test.

As a slight hint, if the scale is 1-10 (10 being the hardest), this puzzle’s difficulty is approximately 8.5. And I don’t think I’ve ever made something this hard prior to this puzzle.

Puzzle 49: What’s to the West?

Fillomino Borders.
Divide the grid into polyominoes such that no two polyominoes with the same area touch each other, and put a number in each square indicating the area of the polyomino it is contained in. In addition, these clues exist at the border and must be satisfied by the two numbers that each clue touch:
– Inequality signs: The inequality must be satisfied (the number pointed by the pointy part must be smaller than the other)
– Black circles: One of the numbers must be exactly twice of the other number
– White circles: The numbers must be consecutive
– Thin borders: The two numbers must be equal
– Thick borders: The two numbers must be different

What’s to the west? Sky doesn’t know. Is it a treasure? An island yet to be discovered? A source of puzzles? No one knows. But one thing for sure, Sky has made this medium puzzle as a teaser.

Puzzle 49: What’s to the West?
Fillomino Borders

Mostly an introduction to Fillomino Borders, a mesh-up of three Fillomino variants and an addition of “no-border” clue to counter Fillomino Walls’ “border” clue. Also a very obvious theme, although I began the construction from the outer ring before going for the cross walls and the remaining theme. I might revisit this trick again.

Also, if you have read my Flygrass Town article, you should know what’s to the west.

Puzzle 48: And Happy New Year!

Fillomino Greater-Than-Kropki. Follow regular Fillomino rules. In addition, inequality signs and Kropki circles appear; these must be followed.

…and Happy New Year! It’s 2013 in Indonesia now, and also in Flygrass Town. Actually I’m not sure what year it is in Flygrass Town—some sources say 2413—but surely new year. It’s still cold, reading 9°C now. Okay, it isn’t exactly cold for people used to it, but still. Sky celebrates the occasion with another puzzle, a medium puzzle combining two of his favorite genres.

Puzzle 48: And Happy New Year!
Fillomino Greater-Than-Kropki

When you’re reading this, I will be most likely celebrating New Year in Pangandaran with my family. Beginning 2013 with a new variant puzzle, with my classic style. Hence my resolution is to be creative with whatever knowledge I have (and obviously to learn more). Enjoy the puzzle and Happy New Year!

Puzzle 47: Merry Christmas!

Battleships. Put the given fleet on the grid so no two ships touch each other. Blue cells indicate sea squares, where no ship segment cannot be placed.

Merry Christmas! It’s Christmas in Indonesia (in chaotic_iak’s place and in UTC+7 timezones in general, it’s 25 Dec exactly at the time of post), and it’s also Christmas in Flygrass Town. Since it’s pretty cold outside (Sky’s thermometer reads 12°C), Sky spends his time decorating his house together with Land and making more puzzles….in particular, this Christmas-themed medium-hard Battleships. Enjoy the puzzle while Sky is having a small Christmas feast in his house.

Puzzle 47: Merry Christmas!
Battleships

Yeah, merry Christmas to everyone! It might not be 25 Dec yet in your place, but it is 25 Dec here at the time of this post. To mark it, here’s a puzzle type debuting on this blog, with a theme, and also being particularly tough. 😀