Puzzle #127: Easy as ABC; Regional

With this puzzle it is back to old school puzzling for me. Easy as ABC puzzles are one of the first puzzle types I solved. They used to appear as an extra puzzle in Logiquiz magazine. These were my real introduction to logic puzzling. This was before I started buying Breinbrekers. They appeared under the name Letterraam, which is a name for an old tool to help kids learn to read in Dutch. Without these puzzles I would have probably never bought Breinbrekers.
These puzzles uses two common variations on the genre. Firstly they don't use the standard "first seen" clues, but indicate the position of the letter when looking from that side. So A3 means that A is the third letter when looking from that side. This variation makes constructing larger grids much easier as large grids tend to get uniqueness problems in the centre, where your clues don't have any effect. Secondly they have regions that function just like a Sudoku. This helps reduce the number of clues necessary to make it unique.

Rules for Easy as ABC

Fill the letters A~E (A~G in the larger puzzle) once in every row, column and black bordered region. Otherwise follow Easy as ABC rules.

Medium Puzzle

  

Hard Puzzle

Click to enlarge

 

Puzzle #126: Tapa; Mastermind: Tapa/Knapp Daneben Tapa

At first I was trying to make a Knapp Daneben Tapa that looks exactly like a normal Tapa. That wasn't as easy as I hoped it would be. So I changed my approach and added the Mastermind component to it. This made it far easier to construct. The puzzle itself is pretty tough though.

Rules for Tapa

Tapa Mastermind:

The gray numbers between corresponding rows represent Mastermind clues. The numbers indicate how many squares in the same position are coloured in both grids.

Knapp Daneben Tapa:

Follow regular Tapa rules. Additionally all given digits are wrong. They are all either 1 higher or 1 lower than the given value. This means a 1 can possibly turn into a 0.

Click to enlarge

Puzzle #125: Ripple Effect

Here's another Ripple Effect puzzle. It's been a while since I posted one. this is mostly caused by the fact that I've been writing Ripple Effect puzzles for Breinbrekers as well. It's not always easy to find good openings for clueless grids. It also helps to not make any errors. The construction took a while as I had made a mistake very early on and didn't notice after finishing the puzzle on my fifth try. Took me another four attempts to fix that mistake correctly. But in the end I think the puzzle worked out well. I have used a similar opening before. It's moderately hard, as most my Ripple Effect puzzles are.

Rules for Ripple Effect

Puzzle #124: Doppelblock

I'm back again to posting. Hopefully for a while. The Olympics were the main contributing factor to me not posting. I spend most my free time watching the Olympics. I didn't really find the time to create puzzles then.

Today we have three Doppelblock puzzles. It's originally from Naoki Inaba, I'm going with the German name from crocopuzzle. Simple name, but it sounds nice. Serkan Yurekli gave it an English name in Smashed Sums, but I didn't particularly like that name.
When I first saw this genre on crocopuzzle, I liked it. Although crocopuzzle regularly has this small minimal puzzle that is a bit annoying to solve as it's too had to discover the logical path. The larger ones are always nicer, but tend to have givens in the middle. This makes them a bit less elegant to me. It feels a bit similar as givens in skyscraper grids.
I think the puzzles worked out well. Nothing too difficult, but something to keep you busy for a little while. This puzzle type will also appear in the UK Puzzle Championship over the upcoming weekend, so it will be nice practise in this genre for those competing. It was merely a coincidence though. I had made these puzzles before the instruction booklet came out.

Rules for Doppelblock

Easy Puzzle

Medium Puzzle

Hard Puzzle

Rules: Doppelblock

This genre was developed by Naoki Inaba,

Colour 2 squares black in every row and column. Fill the remaining white squares with the digits 1~N, so that each digit appears once in every row and column. N equals the size of the grid minus 2 (e.g. for the example N = 3). The numbers on the outside indicate the sum of the digits in between the 2 black squares in that row or column.