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.

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?

FFF 2: The Guards

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.

Sentry Fillomino In addition to the regular Fillomino rules, if two numbers in the same row/column are equal, they must belong to the same polyomino.

Difficulty 1.0/10 Target time 0:15

FFF 2: The Guards
Sentry Fillomino

The guards are really incompetent! They make a puzzle that is easier than Sky’s currently easiest puzzle here.

FFF 1: The First Step

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.

Fillomino Divide the grid into polyominoes and put a number in each cell indicating the area of the polyomino it’s contained in. Two orthogonally adjacent numbers are equal if and only if they belong to the same region; in other words, no two regions of the same size may be orthogonally adjacent.

Difficulty 1.5/10 Target time 0:40

FFF 1: The First Step
Classic Fillomino

Sky has committed himself to a rather time-consuming project of constructing Fillomino puzzles for the entire February. Can he keep up with the deadlines?

Puzzle 55: Totally Linked Grids

Fillomino Borders, with Two Pairs added. There are four grids here. For each position in the grid (for example, the four R1C1 cells), it must be possible to divide the four numbers into two pairs, within each pair the numbers are identical. For example, it’s possible to have 1,1,2,2 or 3,3,3,3 in the four R1C1 pairs, but neither 1,2,3,4 nor 1,2,2,2.

As perceived by the author…
Difficulty: 4.0/10
Target time: 1:20

When Sky is drunk… *hic*
…erm, drunk with puzzles obviously. Anyway, when Sky is drunk by puzzles not by alcoholic stuffs, he can make extreme variations like this.

Puzzle 55: Totally Linked Grids
Fillomino Borders Two Pairs

Quite a bad response of MellowMelon’s insanely wonderful 10-genre linked puzzle, but should not be that easy to break into.

On an unrelated note, I’m going to take NTU’s entrance exam this weekend. Yay. A somewhat related note is that February is full of exams:
1,4,5,6,7,8 Feb: First mock National Exam
12,13,14 Feb: Practical exams for Indonesian and English
18,19,20,21,22,25 Feb: Second mock National Exam
26,27,28 Feb: Practical exams for the science subjects
Rawr.

On another unrelated note, 24 puzzles in my Deception’s stash ready. Still aiming for a safe 27 (so I have preview puzzles + test puzzles)…

On even another unrelated note…wait, not really. I make a goal for myself of doing Fancy Fillomino February, with 28 7×7 Fillomino puzzles, most likely with a bunch of variations you may or may not have heard. Since one of my greatest strengths is Fillomino, this should be doable if I keep myself inspired to make 28 puzzles. As of time of post (28 January), I haven’t made one. Can I prepare sufficiently many puzzles for February within 3 days so Fancy Fillomino February can start? And given that I have absurdly large amount of exams in February, can I keep making puzzles until at least I’ve prepared everything while maintaining high scores for the mock tests?

(If Fancy Fillomino February doesn’t appear, most likely I’ll post May Fillomino Mutants, in exchange to the fancy triple-F series name. Blah.)

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 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.