From The Archives 001: Symmetric–

This puzzle originally appeared in Deception, as the Bottom puzzle of Elimination Tapa.

Elimination Tapa Nurikabe-style: Shade some of the cells black. Black cells must be connected, but no 2×2 square may be all black. Cells containing numbers may not be shaded black. A cell with numbers represents the lengths of contiguous black cells in the cells adjacent to itself, separated by at least one white cell between different groups.

In addition, each square with numbers has one extra number. Removing extra numbers is part of the puzzle. Question marks indicate unknown numbers.

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

From The Archives 001: Symmetric–
Elimination Tapa

Clearly intended to be a standalone post for this.

Yeah, reposting puzzles I’ve published somewhere else. This includes my old blog.

Also, yay, managed to disable anti-aliasing with a program!

Puzzle 71: Checkerboard Insanity

Tapa Region Party Follow regular Tapa rules: Do Nurikabe-style. (The black cells are called the Tapa wall.) Cells with numbers may not be black. Numbers in a cell indicate the sizes of the black square groups adjacent to the clue square; two separate black square groups must be separated by at least one white square.

In addition, Region Party variation apples. The two quadrants with blue cells and “C” at the top-left of the cells indicate Clones quadrants: The contents of the two quadrants must be identical on the blue cells. (There is no restriction for cells inside the quadrants that are not blue.) The two quadrants with red cells and “E” at the top-right of the cells indicate Extra Region. After tilting the grid by 45 degrees, the blackened cells on the red squares also form a Tapa wall. (Note that all red squares form a single region, not two separate regions.)

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

Puzzle 71: Checkerboard Insanity
Tapa Region Party

Perhaps the only puzzle among the most recent 20 or so that is made purely on computer, not using my puzzle scratch book. The difficulty is hard; I wanted to go with medium but the variant is pretty confusing on itself.

Anyway. What inspired me? The recent TVCs and CTC on LMI, of course. Plus me recalling that I’ve done this crazy variant before. :3

And…uh…this variant is hard >_< The best finish I’ve found is unsatisfactory. But fair enough for a puzzle I make in half hour or so.

I need to make some easy puzzles for my “mate”… Ideas?

Puzzle 68: Obvious Spinoff of Spinoff

Tapa Double Trouble Shade in some cells so the shaded cells form a Tapa wall. Cells containing clues (question marks) may not be shaded. A clue indicates the sizes of separate shaded cell groups among the 8 cells adjacent to it; for example, a clue of “1 2″ indicates that there are two groups of shaded cells, one of size 1 and one of size 2.

In addition, the “Tapa Double”^[1] variant is in effect: every clue both provides the sizes of separate shaded cell groups as well as sizes of separate unshaded clues.

Further addition, all clues have been replaced with a question mark each.

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

Puzzle 68: Obvious Spinoff of Spinoff
Tapa Double Trouble

[1] In TVC XIV, this variant is called Tapa Clones, but I don’t want it to be misinterpreted with the Clones variant I made (where there are two or more marked regions that must contain exactly the same content), especially as I also used it for Puzzle 60.

Final puzzle before I’m going to (South) Korea. A future post will explain more about it.

Anyway. When I first saw Tapa Clones in TVC XIV, the fact that a very small amount of valid clues and the large amount of information each clue gives leads me to this variant. It comes pretty naturally for me; dunno whether other puzzle constructors, at the first sight of Tapa Clones, immediately think of this variant. But heh, why not.

I may or may not participate in TVC XIV. I need to settle in Korea first. Also even more unlikely is Classic Tapa Contest 2013 for quite obvious reasons. However, DTGT is plausible. Well I suppose I should focus on my studies first heh.

To the puzzle. It’s quite difficult to find an opening, and most of the tricks involve utilizing clue squares as known whites instead of…well…clue squares. But I’m still quite proud of this thing, which is made while half-sleepy…heh.

Puzzle 67: Too Many To Count

Neanderthal Tapa Shade in some cells so the shaded cells form a Tapa wall. Cells containing clues (1 or +) may not be shaded. A clue indicates the lengths of separate shaded cell groups among the 8 cells adjacent to it; for example, a clue of “1 2” indicates that there are two groups of shaded cells, one of size 1 and one of size 2. However, as neanderthals don’t know numbers greater than 1, all numbers greater than 1 are replaced by a plus sign (+) each. (So the above “1 2” clue will be replaced to “1 +”. A “1 5” clue is also replaced with “1 +”, and so it’s up to the solver to determine the exact number of a plus sign.)

Expected difficulty Medium • Answer • Comment/E-mail if you want an answer/solution to be published

Puzzle 67: Too Many To Count
Neanderthal Tapa
(image seems broken; if it is, click to view full image)

Obligatory practice puzzle for TVC XIII. Well, you see this post, and you notice that number 2 is missing, so… Also yes, I most likely will participate.

Anyway. Neanderthal Tapa + antisymmetric seems too hard, so I just made a symmetric clue layout for this. A bit of unusual logic that may or may not exist in vanilla Tapa which pushes the difficulty to medium, but a pretty simple solve.

Deception Preview 5: Jumping Borders

Elimination Tapa Shade some cells black so the black cells form a tapa wall. No cell with a number or question mark may be shaded black. A cell containing a number tells the lengths of consecutive black cells adjacent to it; if there are multiple numbers, they must be separated (there must be at least one white square separating them). Question mark represents an unknown number. In addition, every cell with a number/question mark needs exactly one number/question mark removed before the actual set of numbers is obtained.

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 01:30 03:00 08:00 20:00
Solution Answer key (highlight →) 71,32 • PNG (not uploaded) • ZIP of PDF (not uploaded) • DOCX (not uploaded)

Deception Preview 5: Jumping Borders
Elimination Tapa

Fifth preview puzzle.

If you don’t get the title, note that the clues on the first row are at column , , , and . Similarly for first column. Last row and last column are just rotational symmetry.

Puzzle 59: A Random Puzzle

Tapa Shade some cells black so the black cells form a single polyomino. A cell containing numbers may not be shaded black. Numbers in a cell indicate the length of connected black cells around the cell (cells that share a vertex with it). If there are at least two numbers, they must be separated by at least one white cell. A question mark stands for some non-zero number, and it might not be consistent across the puzzle.

Difficulty 2.0/10 Master time 2:00 Expert time 3:30

Puzzle 59: A Random Puzzle
Tapa

So I’m feeling really uninspired for today.

Oh wait, I missed something.

Answer key: Count the number of black cells.

…answer key? Wait, something is not right here.

EDIT: Puzzle edited. If you have just started though, it might not be of your concern.

FFF 7: The Hybrid

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 Tapa Follow regular Fillomino rules; ignore the green numbers and suppose that they are simply obstacles in the grid (like an empty hole that doesn’t have any number in it). Afterwards, shade some polyominoes black such that the shaded polyominoes form a tapa: They must form a single polyomino, but there may not be any 2×2 square that is all black. The green numbers are Tapa clues: Each number gives the number of consecutive black cells around the 5 squares orthogonally/diagonally adjacent to it.

Difficulty 3.5/10 Target time 1:20

FFF 7: The Hybrid
Fillomino Tapa

Sky loves experimenting. By whatever insane thoughts, Sky managed to cross from Fillomino to Tapa, and got the amazing idea of making a hybrid of them. Is it well-executed? Well, this is an example…

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 😛