Deception Preview 9: Lines of Circles

Skyscrapers Kropki Put a number between 1-6 inclusive in the grid (the black-bordered square) so that each number appears exactly once in every row/column. Afterwards, interpreting the numbers as heights of buildings, put a number in each cell outside the grid (observer) that tells the number of visible buildings from that position looking into the grid. Taller buildings block shorter ones. For example, if a row has 25341 in that order, an observer from the left will see two buildings (2,5) and from the right will see three buildings (1,4,5).

In addition, if there is a black circle between two cells, one of the numbers in those cells must be exactly twice the other. If there is a white circle between two cells, the two numbers in those cells must differ by one. (There can be either circle between 1 and 2.) The absence of circles doesn’t imply anything.

Answer key: Enter the unit digits (last digits) of the numbers in the cells in the row/column. Only enter the buildings, not the observers.

Difficulty 4.0/10 • Target times 02:00 04:00 07:00 20:00
Solution Answer key (highlight →) 563124,362154 • PNG (not uploaded) • ZIP of PDF (not uploaded) • DOCX (not uploaded)

Deception Preview 9: Lines of Circles
Skyscrapers Kropki

Ninth preview puzzle. That ends the Deception preview series. Reminding you that the link is here, and it will start in approximately 31 hours. Good luck!

…yes. This puzzle is posted out of schedule. There’s a long story, but basically Prasanna Seshadri is also going to testsolve this. Or solve this, since it’s official. I don’t know. Whatever. But he wanted the last preview puzzle, and I’m on bed already (yes, this paragraph is hot from the stove), and I don’t have the copy on my phone. So, yeah. Sorry if you find the broken schedule annoying. But earlier never hurts, does it?

About this puzzle itself, it’s supposed to make the shape of P. Or not, I don’t know. I totally forget whether this is intentional or accidental. I toyed with the possibility of lined circles, and this is what happens.

FFF 10: Black Deja Vu

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.

Full Kropki Fillomino In addition to the regular Fillomino rules, the numbers must also satisfy the Kropki clues. A black circle is always between two numbers, one of which is exactly twice the other. A white circle is always between two consecutive numbers. All circles have been given.

Difficulty 3.0/10 Master target 0:30 Expert target 2:30

FFF 10: Black Deja Vu
Full Kropki Fillomino

Hasn’t this been done before? Well, while the former one uses quite a bunch of black circles, this one uses only a few. Probably because of the grid’s size…or maybe because of the fact that this is full, aka all circles given. Yeah, Sky found something neat to do with the circles, or the absence thereof.

Puzzle 54: Missing Buildings Information

Skyscrapers Kropki. Inside the bordered square, put the numbers 1-6 to the cells such that each row and column contains exactly one of each number. Outside the bordered square, put the number of visible “buildings” from that direction looking inside the grid (numbers act as buildings and taller buildings hide shorter buildings, so 24135 sees 3 buildings (2,4,5) from the left and 1 building (5) from the right). There are Kropki circles appearing. For each black circle, one of the numbers on its sides must be exactly twice of the other. For each white circle, the two numbers must be consecutive. There is no restriction for cells not separated by circles, unlike regular Kropki.

Consider yourself done if you get the numbers inside the grid.

As perceived by the author…
Difficulty: 4.5/10
Target time: 2:30

This city is a bit insane. Not only some buildings are simply “an adjacent building stacked twice” or “an adjacent building with one ‘ground’ floor”, but there aren’t actually any people managing the heights; only some observers seeing from the outside of the grid. And it even e-mailed Sky the backed up information about a district in the city after the city had lost the record somewhere, asking Sky to solve it. Apparently the city cannot afford sending people to inspect the heights…but then, good news to Sky, as he’s even more well-known as a puzzle solver.

Puzzle 54: Missing Building Information
Skyscrapers Kropki

A preview of my upcoming LMI test, Deception in May 2013. Or in June 2013, depending on my business. Skyscrapers Kropki is one of the nine genres that are in the test.

Puzzle 55 in 24 more hours!

Also, seems like there are stupid bugs on images. If you see any image to be heavily distorted, just click to view.

Puzzle 44, Special Puzzles 6-7: Insane Mind Comes Again

EDIT in 2017 because someone tried solving these: in Special Puzzle 6, row 7, the right clues should say ? 5 (the 5 is to the right) instead of ? ?.

Puzzle 44: Outside Fillomino. Follow regular Fillomino rules. In addition, each of the number outside describes the content of some cell inside that is of distance at most 4 from the edge (for example, a clue above C1 points to some cell in R1C1-R4C1, and a clue below C1 points to some cell in R7C1-R10C1). No two clues point to the same cell, and the clues are read in order (the clue that is two squares above C1 points to a cell earlier than the cell that the clue that is one square above C1 points to). Yeah weird rules; I’ll attach an example if necessary.

Special Puzzle 6: Outside Fillomino. Exactly the same rules as above, only that question marks represent numbers (not necessarily all identical or all different) which are all less than 10.

Special Puzzle 7: Cipher Kropki. Fill in the squares with numbers between 1-6 such that each number appears exactly once in each row/column. If and only if two orthogonally adjacent numbers differ by 1, there is a white circle between them. If and only if the ratio two orthogonally adjacent numbers is 2 in some order (the larger is twice the smaller), there is a black circle between them. Either circle can appear between consecutive 1 and 2. If no circle appears, then neither of the two conditions above apply. Count the solutions.

When your mind goes wild, these are the results… And yes, this is the only line of the “story”. Medium for Puzzle 44 and Special Puzzle 6, medium-hard for Special Puzzle 7.

Puzzle 44: Insane Mind Comes Again
Outside Fillomino
(click to enlarge)

Special Puzzle 6: Insane Mind Comes Again
Outside Fillomino [Unknown]
(click to enlarge)

Special Puzzle 7: Insane Mind Comes Again
Cipher Kropki [Count the Solutions]

Blah.

In other news, it seems that the element(s) that manage the images are broken (see previous puzzle). I’m trying to get them fixed. (EDIT: Seems like alt property of a elements hates line breaks. Manual edit on each image to remove the alt property solves the problem.)

EDIT: Whoo so I apparently forgot that Special Puzzle 6 has been posted before. This post will then have Special Puzzles 7-8. Too much care on numberings 😛