This round was provided for this year's UKPA Open. The round was themed around arrows. I had thought of making a set themed around arrows before. There's a lot of genres that use them, so it could lead to a varied set. I gathered a lot of different genres and tried to select a set that created a significantly varied set. I think I managed to select types that used arrows in different ways. There were a few genres I had tested, that didn't end in the set as they turned out too difficult, or not very enjoyable. A few of the types turned out harder than I thought and I added an easier puzzle to that section.
The set was 75 minutes during the championship. An instruction booklet can be found here.
Puzzles can be found below.
Showing posts with label Puzzle Championship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Puzzle Championship. Show all posts
Friday, 12 May 2017
Tuesday, 19 April 2016
Polish Puzzle Championship 2016
Last weekend were the Polish Sudoku and Puzzle Championships. Jan Mrozowski won the Sudoku event and Przemysław Dębiak won the Puzzle event. You can find all the puzzles in the following links: Sudoku and Puzzle. My puzzles are round 2.
I provided one of the rounds for the puzzle championships. I've kept the same structure that I've used for the last two year with a smaller, easier and a larger harder puzzle of each type. I think it works well for these championships. I've been trying to run through different genres each year. So this year I again used nine different genres. I think it resulted in a good mix of different types.
Puzzles can be found below.
I provided one of the rounds for the puzzle championships. I've kept the same structure that I've used for the last two year with a smaller, easier and a larger harder puzzle of each type. I think it works well for these championships. I've been trying to run through different genres each year. So this year I again used nine different genres. I think it resulted in a good mix of different types.
Puzzles can be found below.
Wednesday, 9 March 2016
UKPA Open 2016 Team Round: Stacked
The UKPA Open 2016 was held in Croydon on February 27th-28th. As an intermission between the competition and the ceremonies there are team rounds to keep the competitors busy so they don't cause any trouble. I provided one of the team rounds.
The concept of this team round is a bit easier than last year's. All puzzles in this set are unique by themselves. The interaction between the puzzles doesn't come till you have solved them. I tried to rank the puzzles so people could divide the puzzles between their solvers appropriately. Once you've solved all puzzles the second step of the solve comes into play. You have to divide all puzzles in three sets of 4 puzzles, one from each genre, so that all solutions, when placed on top of each other, use every cell at least once. I thought it would be an interesting idea and I think it worked out well.
I uploaded two versions of the team round onto the drive. The files contain a detailed example of the round structure. File #1 has all puzzles of the genre on a single page, easier when solving alone. File #2 has each puzzle on a single page, easier when solving together with others.
Puzzles can be found below. Enjoy.
The concept of this team round is a bit easier than last year's. All puzzles in this set are unique by themselves. The interaction between the puzzles doesn't come till you have solved them. I tried to rank the puzzles so people could divide the puzzles between their solvers appropriately. Once you've solved all puzzles the second step of the solve comes into play. You have to divide all puzzles in three sets of 4 puzzles, one from each genre, so that all solutions, when placed on top of each other, use every cell at least once. I thought it would be an interesting idea and I think it worked out well.
I uploaded two versions of the team round onto the drive. The files contain a detailed example of the round structure. File #1 has all puzzles of the genre on a single page, easier when solving alone. File #2 has each puzzle on a single page, easier when solving together with others.
Puzzles can be found below. Enjoy.
Monday, 7 March 2016
UKPA Open 2016: Individual Round
The UKPA Open 2016 was held in Croydon on February 27th-28th. Tom Collyer was the winner of the Sudoku competition, with Mark Goodliffe finishing in second and Heather Golding in third. Neil Zussman won the Puzzle competition, with Tom Collyer finishing in second and Steve Barge in third.
I contributed an individual round for the puzzle event and a team round. This post will contain all puzzles from the individual round. The team round will be posted in a separate post.
Puzzles can be found below.
Sunday, 31 January 2016
UKPA Open: Introduction
I wrote a set of puzzles for the UKPA Open 2016 held at Selsdon Park Hotel in Croydon this year. The championship will be held the 27th and 28th of February. The Sudoku tournament will be held on the 27th of February. The Puzzle Championship will be held in two sessions over the 27th and 28th of February. The championship is open to foreign competitors.
While writing this set, I wrote two puzzles per type and selected one to be included in the final set. I will be releasing all puzzles that were not included in the set as preparation. Most of these puzzles will be a bit harder than the actual puzzles in the set, but I figure any example is better than nothing. The puzzles will be posted from Monday through Thursday for the next four weeks.
The set I wrote was based around the numbers 2, 3, 4 and 5. It started when I was playing around with different types to include in the set. I was thinking of including Norinori, which uses dominos, as I'd never written one. Then I thought Trio Cut, which uses triominos, might be fun too. Then I thought there are also similar types that use tetrominos and pentominos too.
So I tried to find more types that are somewhat similar that use the same polyominos. Three groups I had quickly put together. The number place category was a bit harder. I couldn't really remember any types that use triominos or tetrominos to place symbols in. So I changed that group a little to types that use 1~2, 1~3, 1~4 and 1~5 instead as that was easier to establish.
I hope these puzzles are useful and the set enjoyable.
The eventual groups and types that were used are as follows.
Room Placement:
- Norinori
- Trio Cut
- Tetromino Areas
- Pentomino In A Box
These are all types that place polyominos by using rooms.
Split Wall:
- Domino Nurikabe
- Triomino Tapa
- LITS
- Filled Loop
These are all types where you create a wall (or loop) that needs to be split into polyominos.
Division:
- Dominos
- Sandwich
- L-Division
- Pentominous
These are all types where the grid has to be divided into polyominos of the same size.
Number Placement:
- Sum Sweeper
- Neighbours
- Magic Snail
- Capsules
These types use an increasing set of numbers.
While writing this set, I wrote two puzzles per type and selected one to be included in the final set. I will be releasing all puzzles that were not included in the set as preparation. Most of these puzzles will be a bit harder than the actual puzzles in the set, but I figure any example is better than nothing. The puzzles will be posted from Monday through Thursday for the next four weeks.
The set I wrote was based around the numbers 2, 3, 4 and 5. It started when I was playing around with different types to include in the set. I was thinking of including Norinori, which uses dominos, as I'd never written one. Then I thought Trio Cut, which uses triominos, might be fun too. Then I thought there are also similar types that use tetrominos and pentominos too.
So I tried to find more types that are somewhat similar that use the same polyominos. Three groups I had quickly put together. The number place category was a bit harder. I couldn't really remember any types that use triominos or tetrominos to place symbols in. So I changed that group a little to types that use 1~2, 1~3, 1~4 and 1~5 instead as that was easier to establish.
I hope these puzzles are useful and the set enjoyable.
The eventual groups and types that were used are as follows.
Room Placement:
- Norinori
- Trio Cut
- Tetromino Areas
- Pentomino In A Box
These are all types that place polyominos by using rooms.
Split Wall:
- Domino Nurikabe
- Triomino Tapa
- LITS
- Filled Loop
These are all types where you create a wall (or loop) that needs to be split into polyominos.
Division:
- Dominos
- Sandwich
- L-Division
- Pentominous
These are all types where the grid has to be divided into polyominos of the same size.
Number Placement:
- Sum Sweeper
- Neighbours
- Magic Snail
- Capsules
These types use an increasing set of numbers.
Wednesday, 15 April 2015
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.
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.
Wednesday, 1 April 2015
2014 Slovak Puzzle Championships
While going through my puzzle files, I came across the Slovak Championships folder. I realised I had never shared these puzzles on my blog. So I figured I might as well share them now.
I was contacted by Zuzanna Hromcova to write puzzles for their championship. We were given a number of categories to write puzzles in. One of the categories was non-grid puzzles, for which I provided three different genres; namely ABC Decoder, Dice and Mastermind. Dice and ABC Decoder are types I enjoy writing; Mastermind I didn't have that much experience with. But it was something I'd like to give a go.
The other categories I picked were Latin Squares and Division puzzles. For each type we had to write a standard genre and a variant on the genre. I picked Skyscrapers, with Haido as the variant. I like Skyscrapers and I thought Haido still had part of the Skyscraper logic, but used differently enough to make it not like solving four skyscraper puzzles.
For the Division set I picked ABCD Division, with Sum Division as the variant. It's a type I have seen a lot when I first started puzzling, but I haven't really seen it much since. I thought sums was an obvious variant, but I haven't really seen it this way much. I have seen a similar variant where the grid has to be divided into a complete set of pentominoes, but not really without this restriction.
I tried to put a bit of theming in the non-grid puzzles. I wrote a few nine digit ABC Decoders for the 2014 24 hour championships, and I thought that was a good size to use in a championship. The letters spell out THE SLOVAK, which was the nicest way I could use nine different letters to write something Slovakia related. I found some words with opposite meanings in the letter set, so I used those. I think it turned out well.
I used a similar opposites theme for the Dice puzzle, with an addition of 5 words to make it unique. I think not all words are necessary for uniqueness, but it solves pretty well this way.
The first Mastermind puzzle looks really nice, with a sequence of numbers and only white circles it solves really nicely. The second one was merely an attempt to construct a nice logical 5 digit puzzle.
I thought both Skyscrapers puzzles turned out nicely. The first puzzle uses three 4s and three 5s. The second puzzle has a trio of the same digit on each side. Of course I couldn't use four different digits as these are the only three digits you can have three of the same clue on the same side in this size.
I find it hard to theme Haido puzzles as the clues are a bit limited, but they both have nice logical paths.
The first time I saw an ABCD puzzle this way was at a Dutch championship. It was a bit of a surprise then. I wrote a similar puzzle for puzzlepicnic once and I thought it would be fun to include one for the championship. The ABCDE puzzle is a standard layout and I think it solves well.
The sum puzzles were a bit hard to work out openings at first as there are so many ways to reach the sums. So I went with obvious opening digits for both puzzles to then work back to more ambiguous digits towards the end. I think they both turned out well.
Puzzles can be found below.
I was contacted by Zuzanna Hromcova to write puzzles for their championship. We were given a number of categories to write puzzles in. One of the categories was non-grid puzzles, for which I provided three different genres; namely ABC Decoder, Dice and Mastermind. Dice and ABC Decoder are types I enjoy writing; Mastermind I didn't have that much experience with. But it was something I'd like to give a go.
The other categories I picked were Latin Squares and Division puzzles. For each type we had to write a standard genre and a variant on the genre. I picked Skyscrapers, with Haido as the variant. I like Skyscrapers and I thought Haido still had part of the Skyscraper logic, but used differently enough to make it not like solving four skyscraper puzzles.
For the Division set I picked ABCD Division, with Sum Division as the variant. It's a type I have seen a lot when I first started puzzling, but I haven't really seen it much since. I thought sums was an obvious variant, but I haven't really seen it this way much. I have seen a similar variant where the grid has to be divided into a complete set of pentominoes, but not really without this restriction.
I tried to put a bit of theming in the non-grid puzzles. I wrote a few nine digit ABC Decoders for the 2014 24 hour championships, and I thought that was a good size to use in a championship. The letters spell out THE SLOVAK, which was the nicest way I could use nine different letters to write something Slovakia related. I found some words with opposite meanings in the letter set, so I used those. I think it turned out well.
I used a similar opposites theme for the Dice puzzle, with an addition of 5 words to make it unique. I think not all words are necessary for uniqueness, but it solves pretty well this way.
The first Mastermind puzzle looks really nice, with a sequence of numbers and only white circles it solves really nicely. The second one was merely an attempt to construct a nice logical 5 digit puzzle.
I thought both Skyscrapers puzzles turned out nicely. The first puzzle uses three 4s and three 5s. The second puzzle has a trio of the same digit on each side. Of course I couldn't use four different digits as these are the only three digits you can have three of the same clue on the same side in this size.
I find it hard to theme Haido puzzles as the clues are a bit limited, but they both have nice logical paths.
The first time I saw an ABCD puzzle this way was at a Dutch championship. It was a bit of a surprise then. I wrote a similar puzzle for puzzlepicnic once and I thought it would be fun to include one for the championship. The ABCDE puzzle is a standard layout and I think it solves well.
The sum puzzles were a bit hard to work out openings at first as there are so many ways to reach the sums. So I went with obvious opening digits for both puzzles to then work back to more ambiguous digits towards the end. I think they both turned out well.
Puzzles can be found below.
Wednesday, 25 March 2015
UKPA Open Team Round: Hole in the Wall
It's been a long time since I actually posted something. I haven't really gotten around to writing puzzles for my blog in ages. I took a break for a while. I have been getting back to writing puzzles a bit, but those have mostly been going out to other places. Some of them might appear again on this blog and others might be seen in other places online.
This post will contain puzzles I wrote as a team round for the UKPA Open. It wasn't an official round. It was more t give the puzzlers some practise in team solving while the organisers finished the final checking. I haven't much idea on the results. I wrote the round in two days and sent it in to Liane two days before the Championship was held; just in time for them to get it ready to be solved. I didn't have time to get it tested, but I hope people still enjoyed it.
The structure of the round is pretty simple. There are six 6 by 6 puzzles and six 10 by 10 puzzles. You are not given the rules of each specific puzzle, but are instead provided with six sets of rules under which each puzzle could be solved. You have to match the puzzles to the rules, so that each rule is used once for each size. Additionally, all 10 by 10 puzzles have a marked 6x6 hole, in which the clues of one of the 6 by 6 puzzles have to be placed, without reflection or rotation. Each 6 by 6 grid can only be placed in one of the 10 by 10 grids. The rules for 6 by 6 puzzle won't necessarily match the rules for the 10 by 10 puzzle it is placed in.
Puzzles found below or through the following link.
This post will contain puzzles I wrote as a team round for the UKPA Open. It wasn't an official round. It was more t give the puzzlers some practise in team solving while the organisers finished the final checking. I haven't much idea on the results. I wrote the round in two days and sent it in to Liane two days before the Championship was held; just in time for them to get it ready to be solved. I didn't have time to get it tested, but I hope people still enjoyed it.
The structure of the round is pretty simple. There are six 6 by 6 puzzles and six 10 by 10 puzzles. You are not given the rules of each specific puzzle, but are instead provided with six sets of rules under which each puzzle could be solved. You have to match the puzzles to the rules, so that each rule is used once for each size. Additionally, all 10 by 10 puzzles have a marked 6x6 hole, in which the clues of one of the 6 by 6 puzzles have to be placed, without reflection or rotation. Each 6 by 6 grid can only be placed in one of the 10 by 10 grids. The rules for 6 by 6 puzzle won't necessarily match the rules for the 10 by 10 puzzle it is placed in.
Puzzles found below or through the following link.
Wednesday, 16 April 2014
Polish Puzzle Championships 2014: Team Round
This post will contain the puzzles I provided for the Team Round of the Polish Puzzle Championships. It wasn't an official round but a fun thing to do during the evening. Zoltan Horvath had contacted me if I had time to help working on a team round. as I had just finished my individual round, I figured I could. Zoltan came up with the idea of a Puzzle Labyrinth, where you needed to find your way through the labyrinth by solving puzzles and getting a clue to which would be a next puzzle. Eventually this evolved into a labyrinth where the puzzles were missing from the labyrinth and you had to place them back in the labyrinth. We decided to split the puzzles up into four categories, which would be marked in the empty labyrinth.
On Zoltan's suggestion we gave eachother 8 puzzle types, 2 per category, to write and we could choose one puzzle type ourselves. I gave Zoltan Tapa, Yajilin, Thermometers, Haido, LITS, Regional Akari, Yin Yang and Crossing Loop to write. He chose Lighthouses, First Seen Corral, Loop Extra and L-Dissection to write. He gave me Cave/Corral, Number Sea, Grades, Catloop, Retrograde Battleships, Star Battle, Masyu and Penta Blokus to write. I chose to write Kurotto, Laser, Tetromino Areas and Finnish Snake. Most puzzles had no restrictions, except that they shouldn't be too hard. Only the Circles puzzles had the restriction of being monocoloured. This was only a problem for Yin Yang and Masyu as those normally have multiple coloured circles. The Masyu worked pretty well, but Zoltan's Yin Yang topped that way more in difficulty to create. I was impressed with his puzzle. It was fun to solve. He wrote another harder one too.
When the puzzles were done we had to create a labyrinth. I first wrote one where each puzzle gives you one clue. But that labyrinth turned out too hard, so Zoltan rewrote the labyrinth with two clues per puzzle. This way it was easier to solve.
During competition most teams managed to solve the whole labyrinth, with the quickest doing it within 30 minutes.
You can find the Team Round in the following link.
Besides the Team Round, I will be also adding my harder labyrinth for those who like the challenge. You will have 3 options.
You can choose to solve this first file. [Edit: File updated 19-04-12014 5:25am blog time] It contains all puzzles with correct and incorrect clues. You'll need to solve the puzzles to figure out the correct clues and then use those correct clues to place all the puzzles in the grid.
You can choose to solve this second file. It contains all the correct clues only and no puzzles. It also contains a logical opening on page 3 and the solution on page 4. You can also use this after you get stuck on the first file or to check I didn't make a mistake when setting up the first file.
Lastly you can choose to ignore this challenge and just solve the puzzles or maybe solve the original Team Round with the easier clues.
It's up to you.
Puzzles can be found below. Sorry about the arrows, but didn't feel like redrawing the images for the blog.
On Zoltan's suggestion we gave eachother 8 puzzle types, 2 per category, to write and we could choose one puzzle type ourselves. I gave Zoltan Tapa, Yajilin, Thermometers, Haido, LITS, Regional Akari, Yin Yang and Crossing Loop to write. He chose Lighthouses, First Seen Corral, Loop Extra and L-Dissection to write. He gave me Cave/Corral, Number Sea, Grades, Catloop, Retrograde Battleships, Star Battle, Masyu and Penta Blokus to write. I chose to write Kurotto, Laser, Tetromino Areas and Finnish Snake. Most puzzles had no restrictions, except that they shouldn't be too hard. Only the Circles puzzles had the restriction of being monocoloured. This was only a problem for Yin Yang and Masyu as those normally have multiple coloured circles. The Masyu worked pretty well, but Zoltan's Yin Yang topped that way more in difficulty to create. I was impressed with his puzzle. It was fun to solve. He wrote another harder one too.
When the puzzles were done we had to create a labyrinth. I first wrote one where each puzzle gives you one clue. But that labyrinth turned out too hard, so Zoltan rewrote the labyrinth with two clues per puzzle. This way it was easier to solve.
During competition most teams managed to solve the whole labyrinth, with the quickest doing it within 30 minutes.
You can find the Team Round in the following link.
Besides the Team Round, I will be also adding my harder labyrinth for those who like the challenge. You will have 3 options.
You can choose to solve this first file. [Edit: File updated 19-04-12014 5:25am blog time] It contains all puzzles with correct and incorrect clues. You'll need to solve the puzzles to figure out the correct clues and then use those correct clues to place all the puzzles in the grid.
You can choose to solve this second file. It contains all the correct clues only and no puzzles. It also contains a logical opening on page 3 and the solution on page 4. You can also use this after you get stuck on the first file or to check I didn't make a mistake when setting up the first file.
Lastly you can choose to ignore this challenge and just solve the puzzles or maybe solve the original Team Round with the easier clues.
It's up to you.
Puzzles can be found below. Sorry about the arrows, but didn't feel like redrawing the images for the blog.
Tuesday, 15 April 2014
Polish Puzzle Championships 2014: Individual Round
Last weekend were the Polish Sudoku and Puzzle Championships. The Championship was also open to International solvers this year. The playoffs would feature the best 4 solvers, while having at least two Polish solvers.
The Sudoku playoffs featured Tiit Vunk, Jakub Ondrousek, Jan Mrozowski and Krystian Swiderski. Jakub Ondrousek finish first in the playoffs, followed by Krystian Swiderski, Tiit Vunk and Jan Mrozowski, making Krystian Swiderski the new Polish Sudoku champion. Full results can be found here.
The Puzzle playoffs featured Przemysław Dębiak, Matus Demiger, Zoltan Horvath and Tomasz Stróżak. The final results remained almost the same with Przemyslaw Dębiak finishing first, followed by Zoltan Horvath, Matus Demiger and Tomasz Stróżak. Full results can be found here.
I contributed a set for the Puzzle Championships for the individual round and wrote a team round together with Zoltan Horvath.
You can find all puzzles of the Championships in the following link: Sudoku Rounds + Team Round, Puzzle Rounds. My puzzle set is round 4. This post will feature all the puzzles from my individual round. Tomorrow I will post the Team round puzzles with a special surprise.
Last year's set was a bit on the difficult side, so I tried to think of a way to rectify that this year. I decided to write 2 puzzles per type, one smaller/easier one and a larger/harder one. I didn't want to make any too difficult. I selected 10 varying types of puzzles. I was hoping to average about 1.5 minutes per puzzle on the smaller ones and about 4.5 minutes per puzzle on the larger ones. I had the set tested by Prasanna Seshadri, James McGowan and Stefan Gaspar. The smaller puzzles made that average pretty well, but the larger puzzles were more inching towards 5-5.5 average and all of them had some outliers. I couldn't really decide well which puzzles to cut so I sent in the whole set and let them know that they could leave out a puzzle type if necessary. During their testing 3 of the larger puzzles seem to have cause some problems as they went up in score. I think the set will have worked well none-the-less for all solvers with the easier puzzles to work with as well, but I'd love to hear some feedback form those who were there.
Puzzles can be found below.
The Sudoku playoffs featured Tiit Vunk, Jakub Ondrousek, Jan Mrozowski and Krystian Swiderski. Jakub Ondrousek finish first in the playoffs, followed by Krystian Swiderski, Tiit Vunk and Jan Mrozowski, making Krystian Swiderski the new Polish Sudoku champion. Full results can be found here.
The Puzzle playoffs featured Przemysław Dębiak, Matus Demiger, Zoltan Horvath and Tomasz Stróżak. The final results remained almost the same with Przemyslaw Dębiak finishing first, followed by Zoltan Horvath, Matus Demiger and Tomasz Stróżak. Full results can be found here.
I contributed a set for the Puzzle Championships for the individual round and wrote a team round together with Zoltan Horvath.
You can find all puzzles of the Championships in the following link: Sudoku Rounds + Team Round, Puzzle Rounds. My puzzle set is round 4. This post will feature all the puzzles from my individual round. Tomorrow I will post the Team round puzzles with a special surprise.
Last year's set was a bit on the difficult side, so I tried to think of a way to rectify that this year. I decided to write 2 puzzles per type, one smaller/easier one and a larger/harder one. I didn't want to make any too difficult. I selected 10 varying types of puzzles. I was hoping to average about 1.5 minutes per puzzle on the smaller ones and about 4.5 minutes per puzzle on the larger ones. I had the set tested by Prasanna Seshadri, James McGowan and Stefan Gaspar. The smaller puzzles made that average pretty well, but the larger puzzles were more inching towards 5-5.5 average and all of them had some outliers. I couldn't really decide well which puzzles to cut so I sent in the whole set and let them know that they could leave out a puzzle type if necessary. During their testing 3 of the larger puzzles seem to have cause some problems as they went up in score. I think the set will have worked well none-the-less for all solvers with the easier puzzles to work with as well, but I'd love to hear some feedback form those who were there.
Puzzles can be found below.
Friday, 14 March 2014
Puzzle Competitions: ZeKa 2014
Last weekend was the ZeKa competition in Croatia. It featured both a individual and a team competition this year. The individual competition was won by Goran Vodopija; Marko Obradović and Dragan Tolomanoski finished second and third respectively . The team competition was won by Dragan Tolomanoski, Bojana Vojnović and Vanja Fornazar.
I provided one of the Team rounds this time. The theme of the round was Imposters. The round consisted of four classic puzzle types. Each type had 4 puzzles, where one of the puzzles was an Imposter. It wasn't actually solvable as that puzzle type, but was solvable under a different set of rules. The rules of this puzzle was provided. The imposters weren't designed to be logically deduced, but purely intended to break down under the original rules.
The four puzzle types were LITS, with Double Back as imposter; Shikaku, with Corral as imposter; Skyscrapers with Haido as imposter; Slitherlink, with Turning Fences as imposter. Two of these combinations have appeared on my blog as a Double Trouble puzzle. One of them appeared as such on Grant Fikes' blog. The other is probably possible as a Double Trouble puzzle, but haven't tried that yet.
Puzzles can be found below or in the following PDF.
I provided one of the Team rounds this time. The theme of the round was Imposters. The round consisted of four classic puzzle types. Each type had 4 puzzles, where one of the puzzles was an Imposter. It wasn't actually solvable as that puzzle type, but was solvable under a different set of rules. The rules of this puzzle was provided. The imposters weren't designed to be logically deduced, but purely intended to break down under the original rules.
The four puzzle types were LITS, with Double Back as imposter; Shikaku, with Corral as imposter; Skyscrapers with Haido as imposter; Slitherlink, with Turning Fences as imposter. Two of these combinations have appeared on my blog as a Double Trouble puzzle. One of them appeared as such on Grant Fikes' blog. The other is probably possible as a Double Trouble puzzle, but haven't tried that yet.
Puzzles can be found below or in the following PDF.
Tuesday, 17 September 2013
Czech Team Puzzle Championship
In the weekend of 7-8 September, the Czech Sudoku and Puzzle Teams Championships were held. The championship was held in Brno. The teams competed in a number of team and individual rounds over the weekend. The Sudoku event was won by the team of Michaela Bieliková, Matúš Demiger, Zuzana Hromcová and Jakub Ondroušek. The puzzle event was won by the Hungarian team of Zoltan Horvath, Pal Madarassy, Major Boglár and Zoltan Nemeth. Full results can be found here.
All Sudokus and puzzles of the championship can be found here. I also provided some of the Sudokus and puzzles for that event. This post will contain all my puzzles.
All my puzzles featured in a single round, together with 2 other puzzles. I hadn't written these puzzles to be a complete round and just wrote a number of different puzzles. It was Karel's idea to use them all together. I chose to write a number of common puzzle types, a number of uncommon and a number of variants of common types. So it's a good mix of puzzles to be featured in a single round. They are mostly puzzle types I had written before, so I knew what to do with them. I'm happy how they turned out and think it was a good mix of easy and hard puzzle.
Puzzles can be found below.
All Sudokus and puzzles of the championship can be found here. I also provided some of the Sudokus and puzzles for that event. This post will contain all my puzzles.
All my puzzles featured in a single round, together with 2 other puzzles. I hadn't written these puzzles to be a complete round and just wrote a number of different puzzles. It was Karel's idea to use them all together. I chose to write a number of common puzzle types, a number of uncommon and a number of variants of common types. So it's a good mix of puzzles to be featured in a single round. They are mostly puzzle types I had written before, so I knew what to do with them. I'm happy how they turned out and think it was a good mix of easy and hard puzzle.
Puzzles can be found below.
Czech Team Sudoku Championship
In the weekend of 7-8 September, the Czech Sudoku and Puzzle Teams Championships were held. The championship was held in Brno. The teams competed in a number of team and individual rounds over the weekend. The Sudoku event was won by the team of Michaela Bieliková, Matúš Demiger, Zuzana Hromcová and Jakub Ondroušek. The puzzle event was won by the Hungarian team of Zoltan Horvath, Pal Madarassy, Major Boglár and Zoltan Nemeth. Full results can be found here.
All Sudokus and puzzles of the championship can be found here. I also provided some of the Sudokus and puzzles for that event. This post will contain all my Sudokus.
This is the first time I actually provided Sudokus to a championship. Before the start of the Daily League I didn't really regularly write Sudokus. I think I'm getting a bit better on judging difficulty. I provided 3 easier and 3 harder puzzles. I also wrote an examples for each puzzle type. Two of the examples were also included in the championship. I think from the point values of the puzzles, my judgements of difficulty were pretty accurate.
Puzzles can be found below.
All Sudokus and puzzles of the championship can be found here. I also provided some of the Sudokus and puzzles for that event. This post will contain all my Sudokus.
This is the first time I actually provided Sudokus to a championship. Before the start of the Daily League I didn't really regularly write Sudokus. I think I'm getting a bit better on judging difficulty. I provided 3 easier and 3 harder puzzles. I also wrote an examples for each puzzle type. Two of the examples were also included in the championship. I think from the point values of the puzzles, my judgements of difficulty were pretty accurate.
Puzzles can be found below.
Thursday, 21 March 2013
UK Puzzle Championship 2013
Today my puzzles for the UK puzzle championships. The UK Puzzle and Sudoku championships were held last weekend. Tom Collyer won the UK Sudoku championship and Neil Zussman won the UK Puzzle championship. My puzzles were the last individual round of the championship. It featured a relay, with 9 puzzles that have to be solved in order. Each puzzle solution would in some way transfer to the next, so that this puzzle would become solvable. I will be posting all puzzles and relay tags below, but to see how everything works, you can check the instruction booklet for this round here.
The original idea for this round came from the 2003 WPC in Arnhem. I have made a round like this before for another online competition. I used similar relays in that round as well. As that round wasn't done on time, I wasn't sure how many of these relays would work on time. Some relays are good without time, but things like copying the shapes of a Fillomino solution are very annoying in my mind for a speed contest.
The first puzzles I wrote were the Snake and Nurikabe puzzles, as I had used the Snake to Nurikabe relay before and liked it. I wrote a Snake puzzle with few clues, so that I could easily write a puzzle that had these clues inside the grid, which could then be transferred to the side. I then opted writing a Kakuro puzzle as the opening puzzle, as most solvers are familiar with that. With this the first 3 puzzles were all types that most people in the puzzling community have done multiple of. The next part of the design was getting from Nurikabe somehow back to number clues. I then found the combination Yin Yang/Hiroimono, which I thought was a nice transition, with a few less familiar puzzles. I did have to figure out how to properly write Hiroimono puzzles without any given clues as I had never done that before. From here I opted to write a Doppelblock puzzle. It was easiest to write this puzzle without any repeating clues as this would make the relay the smoothest. It was a bit hard to get it right, as some clues are just more conductive in this puzzle type. I was planning on writing a Minesweeper puzzle next, and figured I could easily relay it to any puzzle type. That's why I chose to write a Magnets next, which could transfer to a Battleships puzzle. I wrote a Magnets puzzle with missing clues, which I have written many of. I chose a smaller size as they are generally viewed as hard to many people. I had to make sure the remaining clues were under 20 as that's the max number of ship segments a standard Battleships puzzle has. It worked out perfectly and the Battleships construction was really easy to finish. When I went back, I couldn't get the Minesweeper in a way that the relay to it and from it was nice. That's why I tried a number of other puzzle types. Then I tried Country Road, which caused an odd design experience. I tried to write them normally, except I couldn't get it so it would transfer to the already written Magnets puzzle, so that's why I changed it around. I first marked a bunch of empty squares so that it would transfer properly to the Magnets puzzle, and then reversely engineered the regions so a solvable valid puzzle would exist which has those empty squares in those places. I think the result is nice and I doubt anyone would expect it was designed that way from the solve. I thought 9 puzzles would be enough, even though I had originally planned on making 10 puzzles. I just think some of the relays would take more time than others, so I thought this would make a long enough round for the championship.
The puzzles can be found below.
The original idea for this round came from the 2003 WPC in Arnhem. I have made a round like this before for another online competition. I used similar relays in that round as well. As that round wasn't done on time, I wasn't sure how many of these relays would work on time. Some relays are good without time, but things like copying the shapes of a Fillomino solution are very annoying in my mind for a speed contest.
The first puzzles I wrote were the Snake and Nurikabe puzzles, as I had used the Snake to Nurikabe relay before and liked it. I wrote a Snake puzzle with few clues, so that I could easily write a puzzle that had these clues inside the grid, which could then be transferred to the side. I then opted writing a Kakuro puzzle as the opening puzzle, as most solvers are familiar with that. With this the first 3 puzzles were all types that most people in the puzzling community have done multiple of. The next part of the design was getting from Nurikabe somehow back to number clues. I then found the combination Yin Yang/Hiroimono, which I thought was a nice transition, with a few less familiar puzzles. I did have to figure out how to properly write Hiroimono puzzles without any given clues as I had never done that before. From here I opted to write a Doppelblock puzzle. It was easiest to write this puzzle without any repeating clues as this would make the relay the smoothest. It was a bit hard to get it right, as some clues are just more conductive in this puzzle type. I was planning on writing a Minesweeper puzzle next, and figured I could easily relay it to any puzzle type. That's why I chose to write a Magnets next, which could transfer to a Battleships puzzle. I wrote a Magnets puzzle with missing clues, which I have written many of. I chose a smaller size as they are generally viewed as hard to many people. I had to make sure the remaining clues were under 20 as that's the max number of ship segments a standard Battleships puzzle has. It worked out perfectly and the Battleships construction was really easy to finish. When I went back, I couldn't get the Minesweeper in a way that the relay to it and from it was nice. That's why I tried a number of other puzzle types. Then I tried Country Road, which caused an odd design experience. I tried to write them normally, except I couldn't get it so it would transfer to the already written Magnets puzzle, so that's why I changed it around. I first marked a bunch of empty squares so that it would transfer properly to the Magnets puzzle, and then reversely engineered the regions so a solvable valid puzzle would exist which has those empty squares in those places. I think the result is nice and I doubt anyone would expect it was designed that way from the solve. I thought 9 puzzles would be enough, even though I had originally planned on making 10 puzzles. I just think some of the relays would take more time than others, so I thought this would make a long enough round for the championship.
The puzzles can be found below.
Tuesday, 19 March 2013
Polish Puzzle Championships 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, 12 February 2013
Polish Online Qualifiers: Magnets and Yajilin
The Polish online qualifiers were held December last year. You can find the puzzles and sudokus here: Puzzle Set 1, Puzzle Set 2, Sudoku Set 1, Combination Set. I'm not sure on the details what each set was used for as I can't read Polish. I contributed 2 puzzles, which can be found in the first Puzzle Set. They are a Yajilin and a Magnets puzzle. I tried to make them easy, but I was told after the testing that the Magnets puzzle still wasn't very easy. I seem to not able to write easy Magnets puzzles. I'm guessing some of the deductions just come standard to me but they don't come standard to others. They're both still nice puzzles, so hope you enjoy them too.
Rules for Yajilin
Rules for Magnets
Rules for Yajilin
Rules for Magnets
Saturday, 22 September 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, 20 September 2012
Hungarian Puzzle Championship: Star Battle
Today will feature 4 Star Battle puzzles I contributed to the Hungarian Puzzle Championship. The Star Battle puzzles also featured in the Classics round.
Designing Star Battle puzzles in the 10 minute time limit is easier than Kakuro puzzles, because the average solving time for a Star Battle puzzle is much lower than a Kakuro puzzle. So puzzles don't have to be overly easy to have a solving time of 1-2 minutes for the best solvers.
For the two easier puzzles I wanted two different types of openings.Most Star Battle puzzles employ one of these two openings. The first one is the easiest of the two. It revolves around a single star that can be directly placed. From there the puzzle quickly resolves.
The second puzzle has a different standard opening, although maybe in a not so standard place. I do think it stands out among the other areas. This puzzle resolves a bit slower than the first puzzle as it has a few key points in the middle of the solve to make progress.
The third puzzle has the type of opening I like to do. At first sight, neither of the standard openings seem to apply but with a simple deduction one appears. It's a bit harder in this puzzle to keep making progress as there are a few key deductions that have to be made in order.
The fourth puzzle has a more atypical opening. I've used a similar one before in my other Star Battle puzzles. The opening doesn't stand out instantly but it should be clear how it works none-the-less. I think this puzzle is the hardest because it employs the most obscure opening and the way to make progress afterwards is hardest among the four puzzles.
I've added a fifth puzzle that wasn't used in the championship, but I constructed for it though. It was actually the first puzzle I constructed, using three cages that spell out HUN, that was meant as the hardest puzzle of the four. But after making three others I found it was too hard to be included in a set of three other puzzles, I made an extra one that is a bit easier to solve. To solve this one you need to see how different cages work together far more than the other puzzles. This makes the solve far trickier than any of the other four puzzles.
Rules for Star Battle
Puzzles can be found below.
Designing Star Battle puzzles in the 10 minute time limit is easier than Kakuro puzzles, because the average solving time for a Star Battle puzzle is much lower than a Kakuro puzzle. So puzzles don't have to be overly easy to have a solving time of 1-2 minutes for the best solvers.
For the two easier puzzles I wanted two different types of openings.Most Star Battle puzzles employ one of these two openings. The first one is the easiest of the two. It revolves around a single star that can be directly placed. From there the puzzle quickly resolves.
The second puzzle has a different standard opening, although maybe in a not so standard place. I do think it stands out among the other areas. This puzzle resolves a bit slower than the first puzzle as it has a few key points in the middle of the solve to make progress.
The third puzzle has the type of opening I like to do. At first sight, neither of the standard openings seem to apply but with a simple deduction one appears. It's a bit harder in this puzzle to keep making progress as there are a few key deductions that have to be made in order.
The fourth puzzle has a more atypical opening. I've used a similar one before in my other Star Battle puzzles. The opening doesn't stand out instantly but it should be clear how it works none-the-less. I think this puzzle is the hardest because it employs the most obscure opening and the way to make progress afterwards is hardest among the four puzzles.
I've added a fifth puzzle that wasn't used in the championship, but I constructed for it though. It was actually the first puzzle I constructed, using three cages that spell out HUN, that was meant as the hardest puzzle of the four. But after making three others I found it was too hard to be included in a set of three other puzzles, I made an extra one that is a bit easier to solve. To solve this one you need to see how different cages work together far more than the other puzzles. This makes the solve far trickier than any of the other four puzzles.
Rules for Star Battle
Puzzles can be found below.
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
Hungarian Puzzle Championship: Kakuro
At the request of Zoltan Horvath I contributed some puzzles to the Hungarian Puzzle Championship held this weekend. I will post all puzzles this week. The general requirements were 2-4 puzzles for a solving time of 10-15 minutes. The test consisted of a classics and non-clasics round. Today we start with Kakuro, which was featured in the classics round.
I've always liked writing Kakuro puzzles, but I generally tend to write difficult puzzles. So my first goal was to write 2 easy puzzles with all basic deductions, with openings in multiple places. It took me a while to get that done actually as I automatically tend to put in harder things without thinking about it. I made 2 easy puzzles which turned out well. In hindsight it would have probably been better to make them a bit smaller to make the solving time less. But I figured they'd both fall between 1-3 minutes in solving time for the fastest solvers. The first one was just a simple circular pattern you can almost go in on big haul around the track. The second puzzle was a bit more open pattern, with a few more places where the puzzle can open up. I had the first one tested to see if this was actually enough on the easy path, as I find it hard to actually judge difficulty of Kakuros and it seemed to be okay.
The third puzzle I wrote had a few harder deductions, but the main thing that made it harder is that is has a single opening from which you have to work through the puzzle. It turned out to really not be anything special. It was one of those puzzles I have written many of.
The fourth puzzle I wrote is actually one of my favourite Kakuros I have written ever. It was built around a pattern which employed eight interlocked 8-cell sums. I made them all a different value. Because of the many larger sums it uses certain techniques which you don't normally encounter much in Kakuro puzzles. It has some similarities in layout and solving to another puzzle I have written before. I think this one turned out better.
During testing of course it again turned out that my judging of Kakuro difficulty was far off the norm and instead of four puzzles, only two of the puzzles were used. Only the second and third puzzle ended up in the championship but I'm still posting all four puzzles in this post.
Rules for Kakuro
Puzzles can be found below
I've always liked writing Kakuro puzzles, but I generally tend to write difficult puzzles. So my first goal was to write 2 easy puzzles with all basic deductions, with openings in multiple places. It took me a while to get that done actually as I automatically tend to put in harder things without thinking about it. I made 2 easy puzzles which turned out well. In hindsight it would have probably been better to make them a bit smaller to make the solving time less. But I figured they'd both fall between 1-3 minutes in solving time for the fastest solvers. The first one was just a simple circular pattern you can almost go in on big haul around the track. The second puzzle was a bit more open pattern, with a few more places where the puzzle can open up. I had the first one tested to see if this was actually enough on the easy path, as I find it hard to actually judge difficulty of Kakuros and it seemed to be okay.
The third puzzle I wrote had a few harder deductions, but the main thing that made it harder is that is has a single opening from which you have to work through the puzzle. It turned out to really not be anything special. It was one of those puzzles I have written many of.
The fourth puzzle I wrote is actually one of my favourite Kakuros I have written ever. It was built around a pattern which employed eight interlocked 8-cell sums. I made them all a different value. Because of the many larger sums it uses certain techniques which you don't normally encounter much in Kakuro puzzles. It has some similarities in layout and solving to another puzzle I have written before. I think this one turned out better.
During testing of course it again turned out that my judging of Kakuro difficulty was far off the norm and instead of four puzzles, only two of the puzzles were used. Only the second and third puzzle ended up in the championship but I'm still posting all four puzzles in this post.
Rules for Kakuro
Puzzles can be found below
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
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.
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.
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