Tuesday 11 September 2012

Puzzle #130: Pentomino Areas

Pentomino puzzles I have slowly grown into. When I first started puzzling, I always had a lot of trouble solving them. In my early Breinbrekers issues, pentomino were the ones that were most often left unsolved. I prefer the placement type pentomino puzzles over the packing type. I've never been very good at packing problems. I've gotten more proficient at pentomino puzzles over time and now usually enjoy them.
Pentomino puzzles were the first type I regularly contributed to Breinbrekers, where I would write 18x18 Battleship-like puzzles, which used all Pentominos twice. I haven't written them in a while though. They take a while to get unique and solvable.
This pentomino type will appear in the upcoming LMI-test Borders & Beyond written by Prasanna Seshadri, which I was a test solver for. The type can sometimes get me stuck badly. The last time that happened was at the Dutch Puzzle Championship in '06, when it was featured in the semifinals and I couldn't get it done and ended up guessing my way through. Luckily I could catch up on the second puzzle and still qualify for the finals then.
This puzzle has a feature I like to use in puzzle types as all areas are the same size, which isn't common in this puzzle type. I have done the same in LITS as well, although there it was only on an 7x7 and 8x8 size.

Rules:

Place all 12 pentominos once in the grid so they don't touch eachother, not even diagonally. Each blackbordered area contains one pentomino.


Click to enlarge

1 comment:

  1. This puzzle type seems to have gathered great momentum after that reintroduction.I like this construction,nice first step in the middle.

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