Daily League Sudoku #61: Easy As ABCDEF Sudoku

This is the third puzzle in the Latin Squares Sudoku series. This week again a familiar variant. Easy As puzzles are one of the more standard Latin Square puzzles at WPCs.

I always like to write larger Easy As puzzles with numbers as it gives a bit more freedom in designing the puzzles. It's always hard to see whether or not you can get the puzzle in the centre if you can only give the outside clues. I have seen a few larger puzzles with standard clues, but there aren't that many grids that qualify for a unique solution.
I looked for a nice opening for a while. I think this one works pretty well. With the regions it opens up a lot of new openings to try out. I picked the layout of the letters at the start and was trying to keep all number 1, 2 or 3. But in the end I couldn't find a unique solution once I got to the end without using a 4. This didn't really hinder the path of the puzzle much, so I am happy how it turned out. Enjoy.

Rules for Sudoku

Place the letters A, B, C, D, E and F once in every row, column and marked 3x3 area. Clues on the outside indicate the position of that letter in that row or column when looking from that side. E.g. A3 indicates that A is the third letter seen from that side.



Click to enlarge

Polish Puzzle Championship 2015

This weekend were the Polish Sudoku and Puzzle Championships. I was one of the puzzle contributors and test-solved all puzzles for the championship (and a few more that didn't appear). Both events were won by Jan Mrozowski. You can find all puzzles at the following links: Sudoku and Puzzle. (As a small note, there is a printing error in Round 4 (my puzzles). In the larger Summon puzzle, the 3 clue at the bottom should be a 9).

This post will contain all my puzzles that were used at the championships. I used a similar structure to my round as last year, with two puzzles of each type. I tried to get a good mix of different genres, both familiar and unfamiliar. I didn't use any of the types I used last year to keep mixing it up. There's enough genres to choose from, so it seems a bit weird to repeat a genre. I think it worked out well and would love to hear some feedback from the competitors.

Puzzles can be found below.

13th 24 Hour Puzzle Championship

The 13th 24 Hour Puzzle Championship was held last weekend. Nikola Zivanovic was the winner, with a close margin over Florian Kirch in second place. Peter Hudak completed the podium finishing third. Full results can be seen here.
I think this set worked out better than last year's. The topscorer in my set was Florian Kirch with 845/1000 points and everyone solving scored at least 100 points.

Opposed to last year, I will release my entire set in a single post. Last year I was still trying to keep up one post a day, but I've let that go for a while now. The post will not contain any examples, but you can see examples of each genre in the instruction booklet. My set is the 12th set, so you'll have to scroll down a bit. The puzzles have their value listed and are valued at about 10 points per minute.

Puzzles can be found below.

World Puzzle Championship 2012: Round 4 Easy as ABC

Here we start with the round of the first day that I expect is best suited for me. I never used to consider myself particularly strong in Easy as ABC puzzles, but the longer I've been solving online, the more I see that years of Breinbrekers practise has made me much stronger than I thought. I guess that's understandable, considering the amount of exposure I've had. The same goes for Nikoli subscribers with Nikoli genres.
This round won't feature any standard Easy as ABC puzzles though. There will be three Easy as ABC Crosswords, three Easy as ABC Snakes and three Hexagonal Easy as ABC puzzles in three different styles.
I will have an example of each of the three types. The Crossword is not difficult but pretty fun. The Snake I find the trickiest of the three genres and had some trouble constructing. The Hexagonal puzzle is my favourite of the three. Hexagonal Easy as ABC's always have far fewer clues than you'd expect. This is caused because the outside rows contain most the letters and thus there are far less solutions than a normal grid. I think these three puzzles should be fun.

Puzzles can be found below.

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

 

Croatian Puzzle Set

I had been asked to write a puzzle set for a competition in Zagreb last weekend. I wrote a set of puzzles which was a mix of Dutch and Japanese, familiar and unfamiliar, classic and simple variations. There's a lot of puzzle types in here that I havent actually posted on my blog before. The timing of the set was set at 75 minutes, which was longer than the fastest testing. But I have learned from earlier experiences that testing times don't always measure up to the actual test solving. I've added the scores for each puzzle, which equal to 2 points per minute. I think it worked out well, with a mix of easier and harder puzzles. If anyone actually solved them in copetition, I'd love to hear about it.

So here's 14 puzzles in a single post, the most I have done so far. I hope this makes up a bit for the hiatus of a month before. It would of course be easiest to just upload the PDF, but blogspot doesn't seem to offer that option. So instead this post will have all puzzles below.

Double Trouble #3: Easy as ABC and Skyscrapers

So this post will have 2 grids and 4 puzzles. This is somewhat the logical extension as the 2 genres don't actually normally look alike. Skyscrapers uses numbers and Easy as ABC uses letters. Still, they are somewhat similar as they both use clues indicating sight from the outside for a particular row or column. So there will be a grid that looks like a Skyscraper but is both and a grid that look like an Easy as ABC puzzle, but is both.

Rules for Skyscrapers

Rules for Easy as ABC

Skyscrapers Lookalike

This puzzle solves as a regular Skyscraper with digits 1-6. It's quite a tough puzzle.

This puzzle also solve as an Easy as ABC puzzle, but instead of letters you fill in the digits 1-4 in each row and column.

Easy as ABC Lookalike

This puzzle solves as a regular Easy as ABC puzzle, with letters A-D.
It also solves as a Cryptic Skyscrapers puzzle with digits 1-6. Each letter stands for a different number and all occurences of a particular letter are the same number. This one is also the harder of the 2 puzzles.

Rules: Easy as ABC

Place the letters in the given range once in every row and column. Letters on the outside indicate that this letter is seen first in that row or column when looking from that side. In case a letter is accompanied by a number, the number indicates at what position you come across the letter when looking from that side (e.g. B3 means the B is the third letter encountered when looking form that side).

The example uses letters A-C.