Puzzle #163: Turning Fences

The LMI Marathon puzzle that was solved during the competition was actually the second version. In the first version I put in some stuff that came naturally to me for this genre, but stumped the test solvers. That's why there was an easier second version, which still took a relatively long time for the test solvers. That was why I added the Tutorial on my blog, just so people would realise the basics that I had figured out when designing these puzzles.
Here is the first puzzle I wrote. There are a few similarities to the second puzzle as I kept the bits that were solved quickly in the first test solve in the puzzle. It has the same layout as the second puzzle. For those who hadn't figured out the layout, the givens are in the shape of 25 letters that spell out TURNING FENCES LMI MARATHON 3 in an inward clockwise spiral. The 3 shape is made up completely of 3's.

Enjoy, but take some time to get through it logically.

Rules for Turning Fences

Click to enlarge

Tutorial: Turning Fences

This week the LMI Puzzle Marathon will start. It will run from February 21st till March 2nd. For this event I have written a Turning Fences puzzle. To prepare people a bit for a more unknown genre, I will write a tutorial about the logic behind the genre. It won't be complete, but it should be enough to tackle the upcoming puzzle. In the next days there will also be a few practise puzzles. You can also practise some of the puzzles already on my blog, but most of these are logically harder than the puzzle in the actual test. For those who happen to own Akil Oyunlari Issue #75, there are also 4 of these puzzles by my hand in there. They are logically a bit more friendly.

Tutorial below.

Puzzle #154: Turning Fences

Here's a 2013 inpired Turning Fences puzzle. You can find 2013 8 times in the grid. It's probably the easiest Turning Fences on this blog so far, so it's probably good practise for people new to this genre. When I had put all numbers in, it sadly turned out to have 8 solutions, but I really liked the way it looked. So I fixed it with a few crosses, just to make it unique. They don't change the solve in the slightest, so it seemed like an acceptable compromise. Enjoy.

Rules for Turning Fences

The loop can't go through crosses.

Puzzle #151: Sandwich

Happy New Years Indonesia and China

I went on the hunt for some puzzle genres I had never done for this set. One of the places this regularly leads me is of course Naoki Inaba's site. There seem to have been a few changes to his site. You can now copy all Japanese characters and some of the puzzle types have English translations added to it from the Naoki-Projekt on Logic Masters Deutschland. When I saw this type, I figured it could be a good genre to use the number 2 on. It took a while to get it unique. The opening is a bit standard, but in the end it gets a bit trickier, but there was no better way to force it unique. The name of the genre comes from google translate. It translated the puzzle name as "Santoitchi" but suggested I might mean the Japanese for Sandwich. It might have an alternative meaning but I got persuaded to just name it Sandwich. I have no real clue why it would called this though and I guess I could just stick with Santoitchi, as many Japanese puzzle types keep their original Japanese name.
The puzzle is medium/hard difficulty. There's a logic path to the end, but for a new genre it might be a bit trickier. It might help to try some of Naoki's at first.

2 - Sandwich

Colour some cells black, so that the remaining area can be split up into triminoes. No two black cells can share an edge. Each trimino must contain a number. A number indicates how many black cells share an edge with that trimino.

 

Puzzle #146: Maxi Loop

This is one of my favourite puzzles in the set. I hadn't before made any Maxi Loop puzzles with larger cages, but I figured it was worth a shot. I chose 7 cells in 10 cell cages for my first try. I thought this would be the highest percentage of cells to be part of the clue to keep the puzzles interesting. If this wouldn't work out I always had the option to go 6 out of 10 or 7 out of 11. But tmy first try with this worked out really nicely. the solve is logical, but still challenging and I managed to get all cages to a 7.
I think this puzzle is a medium/hard difficulty, so it will probably take a bit more effort to solve. As always with a bit more unfamiliar genre, people might have some more trouble.

7 - Maxi Loop

Rules for Maxi Loop

Puzzle #145: Regional Yajilin

The higher numbers are always a bit trickier to find genres for. Last year's Island puzzle was a rare spark of genius as a choice, in my opinion. This year it's a Regional Yajilin. I spend a while looking for a good opening for this genre with the number 8. A few options didn't really lead to any good puzzles, but I think this one really worked very well.
I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's probably a bit challenging, because people aren't as used to how the black squares can be placed in this genre.

8 - Regional Yajilin

Rules for Regional Yajilin

Click to enlarge

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.

Hungarian Puzzle Championship: Doppelblock

The last set of puzzles I provided to the Hungarian Puzzle Championship were four Doppelblock puzzles. They featured in the non-classics round.
I've recently started to construct these puzzles and having fun with them. It's one of the few suggestions I had for the non-classics round and this one fitted in best. As this is an uncommon genre I didn't have to put much difficult in but could keep the puzzles fairly standard.
The first puzzle is a 6x6 puzzle based around larger numbers. The placement of the black squares can be derived without placing any numbers. Nothing challenging about this puzzle.
The second puzzle is a 6x6 puzzle built around the number 0. The black square placement is a bit trickier than the first puzzle. Overall it shouldn't cause much problems though.
The third puzzle is a 7x7 puzzle. The increased size of the puzzle is mainly what makes the puzzle trickier. I like how the puzzle worked out. Especially the 2 column finish was really nice.
The last puzzle is an 8x8 puzzle. The clues are split between odd and even clues for rows and columns. The puzzle has a very narrow opening, which makes the solve tricky. I really think though that the logic and layout worked out very well.
Overall I think these four puzzles showed very well what's possible with this genre. So far I have limited to 8x8 puzzles, but I'm going to try to extend it to 9x9 and bigger as well. But I'm not sure if its possible to create them without giving clues in the grid as well.

Rules for Doppelblock

Puzzles can be found below.

Puzzle #129: Contact

I've given this genre another go. I think the 1 through 7 theme worked out pretty nicely. The opening of the puzzle is easy, but it gets a bit harder towards the end.
For everyone who's been trying to get to this post yesterday from other blogs, I'm sorry. I accidentally forgot to add the scheduled time.

Rules for Contact

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.

Puzzle #123: Parquet

Here's again one of Naoki Inaba's genres. It has some similarities to the Windows genre, which featured in the WPC, which can also be found on Naoki Inaba's website. It's known as conect on his website, but I don´t find that a very nice name. I changed it to Parquet as the grids reminded me of the Parquet Sudokus.
The puzzle worked out really nicely in my opinion, utilising all rules as well as possible on a 10x10 grid.

Rules for Parquet

Rules: Parquet

This genre was developed by Naoki Inaba.

Colour one of two regions in every blackbordered 2x2 area to form a single contiguous shape. This shape doesn't have any 2x2 coloured sections anywhere. Also this shape doesn't form any loops anywhere.

Puzzle #120: Line of Sight

I still enjoy making these puzzles. It's not the easiest to create openings, so they end up somewhat similar. But once you get going, it's really fun to play around with. This puzzle is of medium difficulty. I've made a few harder ones, but still some trickier points.

Rules for Line of Sight

Puzzle #115: Regional Akari

I've never really been a fan of Akari puzzles. The easy ones I find just go too quickly to really enjoy. The harder ones I feel like I'm just using trial and error. That's mostly why I haven't really made many of them. When I saw the regional variant on Naoki Inaba's site, I figured I'd give this a try in construction. I think it turned out okay. Nothing too difficult.

Rules for Regional Akari

Rules: Regional Akari

This genre was developed by Naoki Inaba.

Place one lightbulb in each blackbordered region, so that every cell in the grid is illuminated by at least one lightbulb. Lightbulbs illuminate all cells they can see in a horizontal and vertical direction. Black cells block their sight. No two lightbulbs can illuminate eachother.

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.

Puzzle #113: Easy as Japanese Sums

I encountered this puzzle type the first time when test solving Serkan Yurekli's puzzle set for last year's 24 hour puzzle championship. I really liked them, although they caused more trouble than you'd expect for their size. Even though the puzzle idea is very similar to Japanese Sums puzzles, the Latin Square component in this genre makes solving a lot different though. Only later I found that the genre also existed on Naoki Inaba's website.
This is the first time I tried to create one myself. I like how it turned out. It's moderately difficult.

Rules for Easy as Japanese Sums

This puzzle uses the digits 1-5.

Rules: Easy as Japanese Sums

This genre was invented by Naoki Inaba

Place the digits in the given range once in every row and column. The numbers on the outside indicate the sum of the first digits seen from that side till encountering an empty square.
The example uses the digits 1-3.

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.