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.

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. 😀

Puzzle 46: Black, Black Everywhere

Kropki Fillomino. Follow regular Fillomino rules. In addition, Kropki circles appear, although not necessarily all. Click above for better rules.

UPDATE 02-Jan-2013: Blargh. First, a non-unique puzzle with unknown amount of solutions. Second, a non-unique puzzle with 11 solutions. I hope I managed to reduce the number of solutions in the second puzzle by 90.91% with the addition of a circle.

Medium-hard, after erring twice. Blargh.

Puzzle 46: Black, Black Everywhere
Kropki Fillomino

Special Puzzle 8: It’s Erased

Domino Nurikabe. Follow regular Nurikabe rules (color some cells black so black cells form a single polyomino and white cells form separate polyominoes (islands) so each island contains exactly one number which represents its size). In addition, the black cells must be able to be partitioned into non-overlapping dominoes. Question mark represents an unknown number.

Sky woke up. “Darn, I shouldn’t make puzzles that late. What, I think it was 1 AM or something when I fell asleep…”
He reviewed his puzzle, and noticed something was smudged. “Err, what’s the number in this cell supposed to be?”
“Hey Sky! Has the puzzle been made?” someone shouted from outside, shocking him.
“Oh ya right! Just a little fix!” Sky rushed to find the number in the erased cell, but he couldn’t get the actual number. Hesitantly, he erased the smudge, put a question mark in it, and gave it to his senior that leads The Daily Puzzle, otherwise known as Chaos at the Sky.
“Domino Nurikabe, with an unknown number. Seems legit. Let’s see,” and the boss, chaotic_iak, left. Sky returned to his home sadly.

Special Puzzle 8: It’s Erased
Domino Nurikabe

Puzzle 45: Which Way

Yajilin+. Follow regular Yajilin rules (draw a loop on cells’ centers and shade the unvisited non-given squares black so no two black squares share an edge; clues show the number of black cells in the given direction). But the directions of the arrows are unknown; it’s one of the given two directions. (The other direction may or may not have the given number of black squares.)

Sometimes there seems like not enough clues to solve a mystery, but it solves cleanly anyway. Sky has tried to construct such mystery, and apparently he’s satisfied with this easy-medium brainteaser… Need to put even less clues.

Puzzle 45: Which Way
Yajilin+

It might be very early to tell this, but stay tuned for May 2013.

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 😛

Puzzle 43: Sum vs Product

Corral Antisymmetric Multiplicative. Follow regular Corral clues (draw a loop following grid lines so all numbers are inside the loop). For each clue, let be the number of cells that belong in the loop, all in the same row, all connected, and contains this clue’s square. Define similarly for cells in the same column. For each pair of symmetric clues (with respect to center), exactly one of them gives ; the other gives .

…so I can’t think up a story. I shouldn’t be typing this while Russia vs Macau is going in osu! World Cup 3… Easy-medium puzzle.

Puzzle 43: Sum vs Product
Corral Antisymmetric Multiplicative

UPDATE (9-Dec-2012, 20:06): Fixed ambiguity in bottom middle.

Enjoy. No particular comment.