Puzzle 69: Foxger’s Hybrid

Sashikabe
Example puzzle and solution

Sashikabe Basically Sashigane and Nurikabe together. Shade some of the cells black so that the black cells form a Tapa wall (also known as a Nurikabe). The remaining white cells form several polyominoes each. Each polyomino must be of the shape of an L; formally, it is composed of an “elbow” of one square, with two “legs” of 1-cell width non-degenerate rectangles orthogonally adjacent to the elbow and are perpendicular to each other.

There are clues on the grid in form of arrows and circles; these squares must remain white. An arrow marks the end of some leg and shows the direction where the corresponding elbow is; for example, a left arrow means that a leg ends there and the elbow of that leg is located to the left of the square. A circle marks an elbow; a number inside a circle means that the polyomino containing that elbow has exactly that many squares.

Expected difficulty Hard • Answer • Comment/E-mail if you want a solution to be published

Puzzle 69: Foxger’s Hybrid
Sashikabe

Yay, a puzzle! It’s rated hard solely because it’s a rather unusual genre.

So… What’s with the title? This genre is invented by Grant Fikes aka glmathgrant, and is pretty obviously a hybrid. In addition, Grant’s online persona (Grant Badger Fox) is also a hybrid (fox and badger), so you can call “Foxger [is] Hybrid”, using “hybrid” as an adjective. So, yeah, lame title. I can’t think of a better one though.

Also, as you can see, I attempted a perfectly symmetrical clue arrangement. Turns out I need to use a single circle there (luckily still preserving symmetry of layout, but not the contents), but I’m quite happy with the result as the solution itself is satisfying.

Why do I construct this? A request by mathgrant, of course! He made a Sashikabe puzzle and challenged me to make one too, so here it is. Turns out constructing these is a pain. Perhaps because I put the condition of making the clues perfectly symmetric, but hey, I tend to like perfect layouts.

Anyway. TVC XIV and CTC 2013 on Logic Masters India are going on! If you like Tapa, you should give both a try. The latter needs a consistent online schedule if you want to score high, but if you’re not into competitive stuff, you can still solve them for fun. They are pretty amazing puzzles. On the other hand, the former is part of TVC 2013, a 4-part contest of Tapa variations that has run since 2010. So yeah, two big events are running now.

On a more personal note. I’m currently in KAIST, as you should have known if you read this blog regularly (the latest post about my experience in KAIST has been up for about 4 days now). My Orientation Week has just ended, and seems like it’s not too busy…yet. The first academic week will start next Monday, so let’s see whether I still have time to construct puzzles or not…

Well, that’s all for now. Stay tuned!

EDIT 27 September 2013: Grant Fikes got his Sashikabe puzzle published! I’ve testsolved it and it’s a very nice puzzle. Also, this is one part of my thanks to Grant due to a certain personal problem that I prefer not to be shared with general public, but basically Grant helped me with my problem. A lot of help. Next part will come later. :3

Puzzle 66: Ring of Blocks

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.

Puzzle 63: Rings from Hell

Tetromino Slitherlink Divide the blue cells (marked T) to tetrominoes. Put each of 0,1,2,3 exactly once to each tetromino so each cell contains one number. Afterwards, solve the resulting Slitherlink puzzle: Draw a loop following the grid’s edges. A clue tells the number of edges of the square it’s contained in that belongs to the loop.

Tetromino Slitherlink Example

Difficulty 9.0/10 • Target times 15:00 30:00 1:00:00 6:00:00
Solution PNG (not uploaded) • PDF (not uploaded)

Puzzle 63: Rings from Hell
Tetromino Slitherlink

UPDATE 30-May-2014: I forgot whether this is supposed to be Liar too, as there’s no indication of Liar other than the instructions accidentally having a single sentence. I think not, and so I remove the Liar condition for now. I’ll testsolve it again when I have time; if someone finds this puzzle to be broken due to the Liar condition being removed, tell me too.

Yes, Rings from Hell. Because it has rings and it has 9.0/10 difficulty. As in you have to do lots of nontrivial brute force to obtain the solution. But then Tetromino Slitherlink is mostly brute force. I think I should wish you luck. The difficulty escalates (which is much better than decreases, as you can brute force the remaining—wait, then again, brute force is the only way to solve the endgame so far). A far tamer puzzle will be up in 12 hours.

Deception has ended. Congratulations to Hideaki Jo (deu), Palmer Mebane (MellowMelon), and xevs (Ko Okamoto) for topping the test, and additionally EKBM (Endo Ken) alongside the top three to complete the test. Solutions for select puzzles (so far two) can be found in the thread. Solutions are made on demand, so post there or comment here or e-mail me or notify me however the method if you want a solution for some other puzzle.

EDIT: Fixed example. Thanks for mathgrant to remind me.

Deception Preview 8: Counting The Naturals

Domino Nurikabe Shade some cells black so the black cells form a tapa wall. No cell with a number may be shaded black. The black cells divide the white cells to several polyominoes (islands), all maximal (cannot be extended). Each island must have exactly one number that tells the size of the island. In addition, it must be possible to partition the black cells to dominoes. Such partition need not be unique, as long as there exists at lest one.

Answer key: Enter the lengths of the lines of black cells in the marked row/column. If the row/column has all/no black cells, enter 0.

Difficulty 3.5/10 • Target times 01:00 02:30 04:00 10:00
Solution Answer key (highlight →) 311,41 • PNG (not uploaded) • ZIP of PDF (not uploaded) • DOCX (not uploaded)

Deception Preview 8: Counting The Naturals
Domino Nurikabe

Eighth preview puzzle. Try solving the puzzle with 18 changed to a question mark (indicating an unknown number). Otherwise, not much gimmick. Figuring out the top-right part is a little tricky though.

Deception Preview 7: Dock Chains

Battleships Yajilin Put the given fleet in the grid. Ships may be rotated, but not reflected. No two ships may be adjacent, and no ship may cover a number. Afterwards, draw a loop passing all cells that are not a ship segment or a number. The loop’s segments are parallel to the edges of the grid, turning only at cell centers. A number states the number of ship segments visible from the cell; that is, within the line of cells from the cell to the edge of the grid in the direction given in the clue.

Answer key: Enter the lengths of the horizontal/vertical line segments in the row/column respectively. Enter 0 if there is none.

Difficulty 3.5/10 • Target times 01:30 03:00 06:00 15:00
Solution Answer key (highlight →) 22,11 • PNG (not uploaded) • ZIP of PDF (not uploaded) • DOCX (not uploaded)

Deception Preview 7: Dock Chains
Battleships Yajilin

Seventh preview puzzle. Two more to go, and two days to Deception too.

You know, there are three Battleships Yajilin puzzles out there that I found by Google. Perhaps more but I’m too lazy to search further. Yet, all except the most recent (Grant’s in GMPuzzles) has a quirk (Prasanna’s has irregular fleet, Snyder’s has in-grid ships/seas) from what one can expect from a Battleships-Yajilin combo. So I decide to take a shot.

I’ll just give it away that at least one Battleships Yajilin in the test has irregular fleet. Had it turned worse than this, I’d post it as the preview instead. (Yes, my previews are mostly rejects.) Sadly it hadn’t, so it will appear in the test.

I’ll visit this genre in the future. I find it nice to toy with 😀 This, along with Liar Slitherlink and Skyscrapers Kropki, is fighting for the second most-satisfying-to-make genre (the first is obviously Cipher Fillomino because my bias towards Fillomino).

Deception Preview 6: Wiggly Rooms

Surveyors Heyawake Shade some of the cells black. No two black cells may be orthogonally adjacent, and all white cells must form a single polyomino. No continuous line of white cells may span over two room borders. In addition, the following rules govern clues:

For clues inside the grid, each clue can tell either the number of black squares in the region it’s contained in, or the number of black squares adjacent to it (including the cell itself). It might be both.

For clues outside the grid, each clue can tell either the number of black squares in the row/column, or the length of some maximum continuous line of white cells (it cannot be extended, as in it is obstructed by either the grid’s edge or a black square; note that “maximum” doesn’t refer to the maximum length, but rather the nature of the line). It might be both.

Answer key: Enter the lengths of the lines of white cells in the marked row/column. If the row/column has all white cells, enter 0.

Difficulty 6.0/10 • Target times 03:00 07:00 15:00 1:00:00
Solution Answer key (highlight →) 12111,133 • PNG (not uploaded) • ZIP of PDF (not uploaded) • DOCX (not uploaded)

Deception Preview 6: Wiggly Rooms
Surveyors Heyawake

Sixth preview puzzle. Do you note that each of 2,3,4,5 appears exactly once in the grid and exactly once outside the grid? That was a theme, but a minor one. The major one is the obvious “wiggly” rooms everywhere, which is a pain to make with MS Excel.

Deception Preview 4: A Tribute to The Foxger

Cipher Fillomino Follow Fillomino rules. In addition, each letter stands for some number. Same letters represent the same number and different letters represent different numbers.

Answer key: Enter the unit digits (last digits) of the numbers in the cells in the row/column.

Difficulty 5.5/10 • Target times 02:30 05:00 10:00 35:00
Solution Answer key (highlight →) 7655373322,2241444242 • PNG (not uploaded) • ZIP of PDF (not uploaded) • DOCX (not uploaded)

Deception Preview 4: A Tribute to The Foxger
Cipher Fillomino

Fourth preview puzzle. A tribute to mathgrant (or perhaps here), which is the most influential person for me about logic puzzles. There are just so many things he did to get me hooked on logic puzzles, and he has helped me on numerous occasions, the most recent one is being a testsolver for this Deception test. 😀

Deception Preview 2: A Chaotic Order of Circles

Semi-liar Masyu Draw a loop where all segments are parallel to the edges of the grid, turning only at cell centers. The loop must pass all circles. At a black circle, the loop must turn but may not turn at the squares exactly before it and after it. At a white circle, the loop may not turn but must turn either at the square exactly before it or after it (or both). In addition, every second circle that the loop passes has an incorrect color and should be the other color (white if it’s black and vice versa).

Answer key: Enter the lengths of the horizontal/vertical line segments in the row/column respectively. Enter 0 if there is none.

Difficulty 3.0/10 • Target times 01:30 03:00 07:30 20:00
Solution Answer key (highlight →) 211,6 • PNG (not uploaded) • ZIP of PDF (not uploaded) • DOCX (not uploaded)

Deception Preview 2: A Chaotic Order of Circles
Semi-liar Masyu

Second preview puzzle. Perhaps one of three or something puzzles that don’t have any certain theme.

*checks archive*

Well, seems like there are indeed only three that doesn’t have any theme, and only one will appear in the test. Whee. I have too high standards of aesthetics.

Deception Preview 1: Isolated Crowded Corners

Liar Slitherlink Draw a loop following the grid’s edges. A clue tells the number of edges of the square it’s contained in that belongs to the loop. In addition, every row and every column contains exactly one number that is false.

Answer key: Enter the lengths of the horizontal/vertical line segments in the row/column respectively. If there is a single 10-unit line segment or no line segment in the row/column, enter 0.

Difficulty 4.0/10 • Target times 02:00 04:00 10:00 30:00
Solution Answer key (highlight →) 211,2111 • PNG (not uploaded) • ZIP of PDF (not uploaded) • DOCX (not uploaded)

Deception Preview 1: Isolated Yet Crowded Corners
Liar Slitherlink

First preview puzzle. Not much to say besides that this is the first one made for Deception. If I recall correctly this one lies in the middle of the Liar Slitherlink puzzles in terms of solution times, but of course personal experiences differ.

Deception Preview 0: As Hard As ABC

Surveyors Heyawake Shade some of the cells black. No two black cells may be orthogonally adjacent, and all white cells must form a single polyomino. No continuous line of white cells may span over two room borders. In addition, the following rules govern clues:

For clues inside the grid, each clue can tell either the number of black squares in the region it’s contained in, or the number of black squares adjacent to it (including the cell itself). It might be both.

For clues outside the grid, each clue can tell either the number of black squares in the row/column, or the length of some maximum continuous line of white cells (it cannot be extended, as in it is obstructed by either the grid’s edge or a black square; note that “maximum” doesn’t refer to the maximum length, but rather the nature of the line). It might be both.

Answer key: Enter the lengths of the lines of white cells in the marked row/column. If the row/column has all white cells, enter 0.

Difficulty 8.5/10 • Target times 06:00 20:00 1:30:00 4:00:00
Solution Answer key (highlight →) 53,12111 • PNG (not uploaded) • ZIP of PDF (not uploaded) • DOCX (not uploaded)

Deception Preview 0: As Hard As ABC
Surveyors Heyawake

Welcome to Deception, where your usual logic puzzle genres are twisted to the point of deceiving you.

Okay, this is the preview puzzle series. It begins with this very obviously rejected Surveyors Heyawake puzzle because it’s pretty much too insane to get into the test.

Okay, preview puzzles. The actual first preview puzzle (Deception Preview 1) will be posted on Monday (13-May-2013), at 00.00 UTC (07.00 UTC+7), and the preview puzzles are separated by 12 hours each, so the series will end on Friday (17-May-2013) 00.00 UTC, 24 hours before the test begins.

Also, yes, a modification in target times. I decide to have four target times: Black, Red, Green, and Blue.

– I set Black to be very tight; if you think you’re in the Top 1% of the world, you may attempt this. Usually people that pass this are Top 10 (10 people, not 10%) of the world.
– I set Blue to be very loose. Even if you’re new to puzzle solving, you may attempt this target. As long as you’re not discouraged by hours appearing.
– But most importantly, don’t worry about time if you don’t want speedsolving.

You can decide which target you’re aiming for. Target times might change by reader’s feedback. Categorizing is based on Black target time for whatever reason.

Finally, “Estimated” is assumed to be implicitly stated in “Difficulty”. And yes, I compacted many lines.

EDIT: Added connectivity of white cells to rules. When you’re too used to puzzles, you begin to mentally assume many “obvious” things… Thanks betaveros for reminding.