This week is a week full of puzzles on my blog. That is because the last two weekends there were two championships to which I contributed puzzles. Today I will post all puzzles from the Polish Puzzle Championship and Thursday will feature my puzzles for the UK Puzzle Championship.
The Polish Sudoku and Puzzle Championships were held in the weekend of 9 and 10 of March. Jan Mrozowski became the Polish Sudoku Champion. Przemysław Dębiak won the Polish Puzzle Championship. The puzzles for the Polish Sudoku Championship can be found here; the puzzles for thePolish Puzzle Championship can be found here. My puzzles were round 5 of the Puzzle championship. I also found a video of the Polish Puzzle Championship on Serkan Yurekli's blog. In the beginning you can see puzzlers working on my puzzle set. The end is the finals.
For the Polish Championship I employed a copycat theme. The puzzles came in pairs and each pair of puzzles had a similarity in the layout. Most of these types are very closely related in the puzzle type. The only pair that really isn't very close to the other were the Star Battle and Heyawake. I was happy to see that the puzzles were printed on bordering pages in the puzzle booklet, so solvers might notice the similarity.
The idea somewhat accidentally happened. I had made an easy Akari puzzle and wanted to make a harder regional Akari and opted to make one with the same black squares. When I finished those I wondered if I could keep doing that and went with a Liar Loop/Maxi Loop combo as that seemed most easily acchieved. And I'm pretty comfortable designing those, so made two with the same regions. The next puzzles I made were the Capsules and Ripple Effect puzzles, I posted earlier which ended up testing too hard. I really like constructing Ripple Effect puzzles, but clearly not that skilled at making them competition difficulty. I looked through my Double Trouble collection and thought Turning Fences and Slitherlink should be easily made look similar. I chose the same clue positions and about half the clues are the same. I already had 4 Loop puzzles, so that was all of those I could put in. I made a Tapa and Nurikabe with the same clue positions. I at first tried to also make the Nurikabe clues to be the sum of the Tapa clues, but that didn't prove to be very fruitful. I then started doodling a bit and made a Small Regions Star Battle and wondered what type I could use these cages for. I eventually settled on Heyawake as that would allow me to add some clues and see where it goes. The regions were still very restrictive on the Heyawake genre, but managed to push it out with just 2013 as clues. Lastly I needed some Magic Square genres. I thought first about doing Skyscraper/Haido, but figured with multiple similar types, maybe I should try a more different type. So I made a Skyscraper puzzle, to which I added a number of clues to turn it into an Easy as Japanese Sums puzzle. I felt I was somewhat missing a division type puzzle, but I couldn't find a nice way to make 2 that fit into the theme. And when I had the puzzles tested it seemed like there was enough to fill the hour slot already.
I also wrote a LITS puzzle to be used for the finals, except that one wasn't used. It willbe posted at the end of this post.
Puzzles can be found below.
Showing posts with label Liar Loop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liar Loop. Show all posts
Tuesday, 19 March 2013
Tuesday, 19 June 2012
Double Trouble #7: Liar Loop and Maxi Loop
I guess this twin isn't very surprising. I did create the Liar Loop genre from the Maxi Loop genre. It has been the hardest one to acchieve so far though. I had attempted this a few times already, but it always lead nowhere. For this one I finally found a solid opening, that lead to good progress in both genres. Finishing it succesfully took some effort though. The puzzles both turned out well and I like the way clues keep helping in both genres.
Rules for Liar Loop
Rules for Maxi Loop
This puzzle can be solve as a Liar Loop puzzle. This one is the harder of the two puzzles. But that's mostly because Liar Loop is inheritently hard. It's a bit of a challenge to create really easy ones.
This puzzle can also be solved as a Maxi Loop puzzle. It's a bit easier than the Liar Loop puzzle. Main reason for this, is that I couldn't avoid using 1 clues for the Liar Loop puzzle.
Rules for Liar Loop
Rules for Maxi Loop
This puzzle can be solve as a Liar Loop puzzle. This one is the harder of the two puzzles. But that's mostly because Liar Loop is inheritently hard. It's a bit of a challenge to create really easy ones.
This puzzle can also be solved as a Maxi Loop puzzle. It's a bit easier than the Liar Loop puzzle. Main reason for this, is that I couldn't avoid using 1 clues for the Liar Loop puzzle.
Thursday, 16 February 2012
Puzzle #99: Liar Loop
This month the new issue of Akil Oyunlari has been published, which includes four LITS and four Liar Loop puzzles by my hand. I made more than 4 Liar Loop puzzles for the magazine, so there was more to choose from for finding the right difficulty.
The puzzle doesn't have all pentomino cages as my previous one. It actually has all hexomino cages and one tetromino cage in the centre. It was a play on one of my smaller puzzles for the magazine, where I used all 12 pentomino shapes and a single tetromino shape in the centre. I think it worked out well.
Rules for Liar Loop
The puzzle doesn't have all pentomino cages as my previous one. It actually has all hexomino cages and one tetromino cage in the centre. It was a play on one of my smaller puzzles for the magazine, where I used all 12 pentomino shapes and a single tetromino shape in the centre. I think it worked out well.
Rules for Liar Loop
Saturday, 31 December 2011
Puzzle #81: Liar Loop
Happy New Years Indonesia and China
Liar Loop was my first go to for the number 2 and it worked out well. I had been trying to make Liar Loop puzzles without the number 1 for a while, but I never got any good result out of it. As it always led to having to use a high amount of 2s to counteract the missing 1, I figured it should be possible to create one with all 2s. It took a lot of tries to get it to be unique though. It was very common to end in a situation where you'd either have a non-unique puzzle or were forced to use a section of 2 in an area.
The resulting puzzle is of medium difficulty, although it is probably harder if you haven't done the genre before. Check out some of the others on my blog if needed. Very little chance you'll encounter these anywhere else.
2. Liar Loop
Draw a closed loop through all squares by running horizontally and vertically. The loop doesn't touch or cross itself. The numbers in a boldly marked area indicate that the loop never runs through this many cells consecutively. Whenever it passes through the area it always runs through either more or less cells than the given number.
Liar Loop was my first go to for the number 2 and it worked out well. I had been trying to make Liar Loop puzzles without the number 1 for a while, but I never got any good result out of it. As it always led to having to use a high amount of 2s to counteract the missing 1, I figured it should be possible to create one with all 2s. It took a lot of tries to get it to be unique though. It was very common to end in a situation where you'd either have a non-unique puzzle or were forced to use a section of 2 in an area.
The resulting puzzle is of medium difficulty, although it is probably harder if you haven't done the genre before. Check out some of the others on my blog if needed. Very little chance you'll encounter these anywhere else.
2. Liar Loop
Draw a closed loop through all squares by running horizontally and vertically. The loop doesn't touch or cross itself. The numbers in a boldly marked area indicate that the loop never runs through this many cells consecutively. Whenever it passes through the area it always runs through either more or less cells than the given number.
Monday, 5 December 2011
Puzzle #69: Four Colour Loop
This puzzle is a unique mix of four different genres: Maxi Loop, Liar Loop, Double Back and Country Road. I haven't ever seen genres combined in this way before. I've combined them by using the Four Colour Theorem. This theorem states that when a plane is split up in different regions, you'd only need four different colours to colour all regions without having any regions of the same colour touching by a side.
I'd been thinking of using this for a while, but it was hard to find a good set of puzzle rules that would work in a single puzzle. When I finally had four rules I thought would work, it took a while to even get a solid opening that would get the puzzle going. It took me a long while to get a good puzzle. I had to edit the puzzle a bunch of times as I kept running into mistakes I had made while constructing. I've worked on this puzzle on and off for a few weeks. I hope you all enjoy it. I'm warning you that it isn't easy, but it is completely logically solvable. It will probably take a while to see how the rules interact and what restrictions there are to assign the right rules to the right regions.
Four Colour Loop
General rule:
Draw a single closed loop by connecting the centres of cells horizontally and vertically. The loop doesn't touch or cross itself. The grid is split up into different regions. Each region obeys one of four rules. No two regions with the same rule touch eachother by a side anywhere. They are allowed to touch by a corner.
Region rules:
Country Road:
The loop enters and exits the region once. The number in the region indicates the amount of cells the loop runs through. (Note: This means the loop doesn't run through all cells in the grid)
Double Back:
The loop runs through all cells in the region. The number in the region indicates the amount of the times the loop enters and exits the region.
Liar Loop:
The loop runs through all cells in the region. The number in the region indicates that the loop never runs through this many cells consecutively when traveling through that region. It is always more or less.
Maxi Loop:
The loop runs through all cells in the region. The number in the region indicates the highest amount of cells the loop runs through consecutively when running through this region.
I'd been thinking of using this for a while, but it was hard to find a good set of puzzle rules that would work in a single puzzle. When I finally had four rules I thought would work, it took a while to even get a solid opening that would get the puzzle going. It took me a long while to get a good puzzle. I had to edit the puzzle a bunch of times as I kept running into mistakes I had made while constructing. I've worked on this puzzle on and off for a few weeks. I hope you all enjoy it. I'm warning you that it isn't easy, but it is completely logically solvable. It will probably take a while to see how the rules interact and what restrictions there are to assign the right rules to the right regions.
Four Colour Loop
General rule:
Draw a single closed loop by connecting the centres of cells horizontally and vertically. The loop doesn't touch or cross itself. The grid is split up into different regions. Each region obeys one of four rules. No two regions with the same rule touch eachother by a side anywhere. They are allowed to touch by a corner.
Region rules:
Country Road:
The loop enters and exits the region once. The number in the region indicates the amount of cells the loop runs through. (Note: This means the loop doesn't run through all cells in the grid)
Double Back:
The loop runs through all cells in the region. The number in the region indicates the amount of the times the loop enters and exits the region.
Liar Loop:
The loop runs through all cells in the region. The number in the region indicates that the loop never runs through this many cells consecutively when traveling through that region. It is always more or less.
Maxi Loop:
The loop runs through all cells in the region. The number in the region indicates the highest amount of cells the loop runs through consecutively when running through this region.
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| Click to enlarge |
Friday, 2 December 2011
Puzzle #66: Liar Loop
So, this genre was developed while making this set. I was originally planning on putting in a Maxi Loop puzzle. But that ended up turning into a new genre. I was really happy with how the genre and the puzzle turned out. The test solving got positive feedback as well, so I figured I'd have a good new type. I first thought of keeping the genre only to the 24 hour puzzle championship, but as I had fun designing them I decided to just make one for the forum too. That way someone who followed my blog got a little advantage in the championship. That might be a tad unfair, but following my blog should be worth something.
This puzzle can also be used to get some practise in with Liar Loop solving. This will be handy for the puzzle that I will be releasing for Sinterklaas on monday. It's my present to you. It was originally planned as puzzle 50, but I didn't come close to acchieving that in the amount of time I had.
Rules for Liar Loop
This puzzle can also be used to get some practise in with Liar Loop solving. This will be handy for the puzzle that I will be releasing for Sinterklaas on monday. It's my present to you. It was originally planned as puzzle 50, but I didn't come close to acchieving that in the amount of time I had.
Rules for Liar Loop
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Puzzle #44: Liar Loop
Rules for Liar Loop
This genre idea developed when playing around with Maxi Loop puzzles and discovering how areas sometimes have very little options for the loop to run through and disallowing a certain value would also force the loop a certain way. This eventually led to the attempt to make puzzles with only disallowed values. And a new genre is born.
The puzzle is a bit tricky, but it's partly caused because the way of thinking is different than normal.
This genre idea developed when playing around with Maxi Loop puzzles and discovering how areas sometimes have very little options for the loop to run through and disallowing a certain value would also force the loop a certain way. This eventually led to the attempt to make puzzles with only disallowed values. And a new genre is born.
The puzzle is a bit tricky, but it's partly caused because the way of thinking is different than normal.
Rules: Liar Loop
This genre was developed by myself.
Draw a closed loop through all squares by running horizontally and vertically. The loop doesn't touch or cross itself. The numbers in a boldly marked area indicate that the loop never runs through this many cells consecutively. Whenever it passes through the area it always runs through either more or less cells than the given number.
Draw a closed loop through all squares by running horizontally and vertically. The loop doesn't touch or cross itself. The numbers in a boldly marked area indicate that the loop never runs through this many cells consecutively. Whenever it passes through the area it always runs through either more or less cells than the given number.
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