Puzzle 22: Slalom

If you know Slalom (or Suraromu) before, this one is a bit different. The gates, as opposed to be connected to black squares, are now connected to borders (you won’t be entering a gate from its side will you). Otherwise, the rules are same: draw a closed loop passing through some of the squares’ centers, passing each gate straightly exactly once each (so it passes exactly one cell of each gate). The path must start and end on the circle. Numbered gates tell the order of when the gate is passed; 1 means that it must be visited first. The circle’s number simply tell you the number of gates to save you some trouble. This one would be rated easy.

Puzzle 22: Slalom

Fun theme combined with a particular style in the closed area in R3-4C6.

I have Puzzle 23-25 prepared, but I must sort out a few things first.

[IMO 2012 Post 5] Games and More Games

And now we’re back from a 12-post series of puzzles to the silently postponed IMO 2012 series.

In a nutshell: It’s too dark. Uh well I can’t summarize this neatly, but let’s say we have a bunch of games and stuffs.

Fun diversion: The linked picture (hopefully you can see it; it’s in IMO 2012’s Facebook page) has the Indonesian team at the lower-right corner. Guess who is which. Participants names can be seen in this page.

Puzzle 21: Nonconsecutive Fillomino

Nonconsecutive Fillomino. Follow regular Fillomino rules. In addition, no two orthogonally adjacent cells may have consecutive numbers. Meaty and difficult, at least for me.

Puzzle 21: Nonconsecutive Fillomino

Booya. Pretty killer stuffs here. But that also gives less guarantee that it’s unique. Hm…

And so all puzzles I’ve scheduled on Tuesday have been posted. Now for more puzzles…or maybe not. That IMO post series haven’t been completed. Why this blog starts to become an exclusively puzzle blog again while apparently I can’t maintain my previous puzzle blog…

Puzzle 20: Fillomino

Fillomino. Divide the grid into regions. Each region is composed of cells, each cell containing a number equal to the size of the region. No two orthogonally adjacent regions may have equal sizes. Medium to difficult.

Puzzle 20: Fillomino
(click to enlarge)

UPDATE: Fixed ambiguity around middle right.

Fun and not so obvious. Probably. At least my intended opening wasn’t so obvious. EDIT: Apparently not really. Although there are a few unusual deductions, nothing too hard. But still fun for me at least, as progress are made in circles. If you know what I mean.

This is why I don’t really enjoy making large puzzles, much like Para. Too many tricks that clutter the fun tricks, although I can put in a bunch of small tricks. The latter can also be lost if I accidentally made an easier way to do stuffs. Well, let’s see how people respond…

Puzzle 21, which is in 12 hours, is a Fillomino. With a variation.

Puzzle 19: Skyscrapers

Skyscrapers. Put a number between 1 and the length of a side of the grid such that each number appears exactly once in each row and column. If the numbers represent heights of buildings, the numbers outside the grid tell the number of visible buildings from that point looking into the grid, with higher buildings block lower ones in visibility. This one is somewhat easy.

Puzzle 19: Skyscrapers

Easy enough isn’t it? Puzzle 20, the 17×17 puzzle, will be a Fillomino and will be posted in 12 hours from this post.

Puzzle 18: TomTom

TomTom. Put the required numbers in the grid so each number appears exactly once in every row and column. Additionally, for every bold region, the arithmetic operation and target number must be fulfilled; that is, starting from the largest number and applying the designated operation to each of the other number must produce the required target number. (E.g. If you have 9+, you can have 2,3,4 in it since 4+2+3=9, and if you have 2-, you can have 2,2,6 in it since 6-2-2=2.) This one would be easy-medium.

Puzzle 18: TomTom

Yep. If you know what Thomas Synder aka motris did three years ago, I’m using the same phrasing of the rules. But that comes up redundant because I only used addition and multiplication 😛

EDIT (8 March 2013): Yes, I even changed its name from KenKen to TomTom because KenKen has 1-n number range and no modified subtraction/division operations.

A first try in TomTom. Since I hate 5 without the existence of 10 (hence buffing the power of multiplication), I changed it to 6 instead. Maybe if I have a 6×6 TomTom, I’ll use 1,2,3,4,6,9 as the numbers for more confusion over multiplication. But that buffs addition a bit. Oh well, whatever.

12 hours to Puzzle 19. So I’ll tell you…it’s a Skyscrapers.

Special Puzzles 2-4: Not Your Usual Logic Puzzles

Not your usual logic puzzles. For proof, see Special Puzzle 1 (no pun intended).

To be taken as very short (read: 10 seconds or so) (hopefully-)fun diversions when solving ridiculously tough puzzles. They are all ridiculously easy for that reason…maybe.

Also, I have prepared all the way to Puzzle 21. They will appear at 12 hours from another, so Puzzle 18 will be 12 hours from now and Puzzle 21 will be 48 hours from now. Puzzle 18 is a KenKen.

Puzzle 17: Yajilin… Cell or Segment?

Because I don’t have a better name. Yajilin CoS, easy because it’s my first Yajilin CoS.

Inspired from Castle Wall’s givens’ meaning. Follow usual Yajilin rules, but now each given gives either the number of black cells or the number of loop segments in the pointed direction (may be both).

Puzzle 17: Yajilin… Cell or Segment?

Yay for all-1 clues. I think this genre can have many extraordinary tricks… Let’s see.

In case you haven’t noticed, there is a new Puzzle 16.

Puzzle 16: Domino Nurikabe

The actual Puzzle 16 that is not broken. Still Domino Nurikabe. This one is pretty hard IMO.

Follow regular Nurikabe rules. In addition, the stream can be partitioned into 1×2 dominoes.

Puzzle 16: Domino Nurikabe

My solution here is valid, but I’m not sure about whether there are multiple solutions or not because I used some large-scale logic (as in testing many choices while there is still a pretty large space left). Yay.

Puzzle 15: Masyu

Masyu, a rather easy one. Draw a loop on the grid cells (connecting cell centers) so it passes each circle. When passing a black circle, it must turn there but may not turn at the squares exactly before and after it. When passing a white circle, it may not turn there but must turn at at least one of the squares exactly before and after it.

Puzzle 15: Masyu

First anti-symmetrical Masyu I managed to complete (all other anti-symmetrical Masyu I’ve made are ambiguous at one part of the loop T_T ). But then I need to figure out how to make the circles -_- Finally I went through the manual approach; making the black circle and white circle template, then copying them to target cells. The puzzle itself is pretty good IMO.