World Puzzle Championship 2023

This post is a bit late. I never really got around to posting these puzzles. There's some nice puzzle in the set, so I figured I'd still share all of them.

I focussed my writing mostly on Rounds 7 and 20. They contained the most types I hadn't seen before.  I also played around a bit with round 13. I think I got the most out of writing puzzles for round 7 as I could actually keep up pretty well with Ken Endo, finishing in second place only slightly behind.

Puzzles can be found below.

World Puzzle Championship Puzzles - Round 12

The last set of puzzles are from round 12. This was the innovative round. There were a few types in there that were interesting to write. My favourite two types were Inner ABC and Coral with Letters. I think those are also the nicest puzzles in this set. One rule that popped up a lot in this championship was the "Worms" rule of alternating higher and lower digits within a path of numbers. It's probably not a rule that will be used much in the future. It didn't really strike me as a rule that added much to any of the puzzles.

World Puzzle Championship Puzzles - Round 6

Round 6 had puzzles that were all combinations of different types of puzzles. There were some interesting ideas, but I doubt many of these will be seen more often again in future puzzle sets.

There's a few puzzles in here that I'm pretty happy with. The Starwacky puzzle is a nice solve. Snail on Snake worked out pretty well because it didn't need any extra given numbers, except for the head and tail. Galaxies and Tetrominoes is my favourite in the set, because it really forces the two types to work together.
The other puzzles should also be nice to solve.

World Puzzle Championship Puzzles - Round 3

I wrote a number of practice puzzles for myself, to help prepare for the World Puzzle Championships this year. I didn't have as much time to prepare, but it helped in the long run. Some people wanted to see them afterwards, so I promised to post them all on my blog.

I only really made puzzles for three rounds on the championship: Round 3, Round 6 and Round 12. This post contains puzzles from Round 3.
Most puzzles were overall a bit harder than the puzzles at the actual championship, because I took a bit more liberty with the design of most puzzles, especially in the amount of clues given. One puzzle ended up being broken, but I guess it still helped in a way to find out the logic in the genre.
For examples, please check the WPC instruction booklet.

Puzzle #166: Domino Extra

The last puzzle are two Domino Extra puzzles. I'd written two at the start, but they ended up testing too hard. So I wrote a third one that was much easier than these ones to be included in the WPC set. They have a similar opening, but should both still be fun to solve.

Rules:

Divide the grid along the grid lines so that each given pair of numbers appears in exactly one shape.

 

Puzzle #165: Blind Spot

Today the second puzzle that wasn't used in the WPC. This is a Blind Spot puzzle. It's actually a size smaller than the puzzle used at the WPC, which was 7x7. But I actually think this was the harder of the two puzzles. That's why the larger puzzle was used in the WPC. I like writing these puzzles, but I think they can be tricky to solve as the logic is a bit unfamiliar compared to other Latin square type puzzles.

Rules for Blind Spot

Puzzle #164: Gemini Loop

I was going through my puzzle files and realised I had a few unused puzzles that I had written for the WPC 2013. One of each type was used, but for certain types I'd written a few just to have a choice depending on how they tested. I had posted two sets of puzzles before, that I had originally written for the WPC, but these puzzle types were rejected. These puzzles were the following Yajilin and Pentopia puzzles.
Today's puzzle is a Gemini Loop puzzle. I think it's a nice puzzle but I selected the other one for the WPC as I thought that one solved a bit nicer.

Rules:

Draw a single closed loop through all squares in the grid by connecting them horizontally and
vertically. The loop doesn't touch or cross itself. Cells with the same letter all have the same
appearance as to how the loop passes through it. Cells with different letters have a different appearance.

World Puzzle Championship 2013: 80 puzzle around the world and blog

Here are some announcements about the 2013 World Puzzle Championship.

This year's WSC/WPC will be held from October 12th-October 19th in Beijing, China. Any additional information can be found on http://wscwpc2013.sudoku.org.cn/.

There will also be a blog with information specifically about the World Puzzle Championship hosted by the Hungarian organisation on the following link: http://wpc-2013.blogspot.hu.

Lastly, there's a new initiative tested in this year's WPC. There will be numerous outside puzzle contributing teams, each preparing a set of puzzles to solve. This round is called "Around The World in 80 Puzzles", a play on the famous Jules Verne novel. There are four contributing teams, from four different countries, each providing a set of 20 puzzles each. One of the four sets is provided by me and three other Dutch puzzle authors: Hans Eendebak, Tim Peeters and Richard Stolk. If you want to read more about it, you can on the following link: http://wpc-2013.blogspot.hu/2013/08/around-world-in-80-puzzles-introduction.html.

World Puzzle Championship 2012: Round 12 Half Dominoes

This round contains a single puzzle for which we have 50 minutes to solve. This seems like a considerable time, but we'll see how it works out. It seems finishable.
The puzzle is a Samurai Half Dominoes, where the rows and columns are counted as a whole. So if it's on the same height but different 9x9 grids, they still cant repeat. It's an interesting variation and funnily enough it doesn't even mean you need a lot more clues than normal. Just as a note, the Half Dominoes are a seperate image as that was easier.

12 Half Dominoes:

Rules:

Place the given Half Dominoes in each 3x3 square so that each of the five 9x9 grids contains each half domino once. No Half Domino can be repeated in any row, column or main diagonal, even if they are in seperate 9x9 grids. Numbers on the outside indicate the amount of dots in that complete row, column or diagonal. Arrows with numbers indicate the direction of possibly ambiguous clues.

Click to enlarge

World Puzzle Championship 2012: Round 11 Something Newish

The round name says it all. There's some new puzzles or variations. We have an hour to solve 9 puzzles. This leaves chances for bonuses.
My favourite are the Domino Arrows and Fishermen, although they both would be nicer by removing one of the clue types. I didn't do that in my puzzles though. I figured I'd stick as close to the instructions as possible.
The Domino Arrows puzzle is a challenging puzzle. This is partly caused by its size. The logic isn't overly difficult, but you have to understand some of the tricks. This can be hard as it's a new genre. The Fishermen puzzle isn't too hard. It's basically an Anglers puzzle, with size 2 fishermen. The third puzzle I made was a Rural Tourism. I mainly made that one to completely understand the rules. It has a complex rules set. But once you figure it out, the puzzle solves nicely, although a bit challenging.
There's one more puzzle to come later today. Enjoy.

Puzzles can be found below.

World Puzzle Championships 2012: Round 10 Anthology

This round seems to be a dedication to previous championships. There's no actual explanation given, but it seems to be the fairest guess. You can see a bit of development in the type of puzzles over the years. From more observation and word types to the now more common logic types. I'm not exactly sure on why certain types were chosen.Types like Yajilin and Corral can't be that specific to a championship. A few of the ones from championships I've been to are easier to understand. The round will last 90 minutes for 20 puzzles, which is a pretty high average per puzzle.
I've only made 3 puzzles because many of the puzzle types I either don't really find interesting to construct or too hard to construct. The first puzzle I made is a Hiroimono. It's nothing new and many people will have come across it a few times. I'd just never tried it and wondered how it's done. I haven't really figured out how to best make them and I don't think it's too hard. At least I learned a bit about some of the tricks of the genre with it though. The Jumping Crossword I wanted to try to make for a while but I never find my results at all interesting. I don't really think this one is anything special either. I'm not sure how to make them turn out great but that's a general problem with word puzzles for me. The last one is a Tetrascope. I like polyomino genres, so I figured I'd give it a try. It's not really hard but then again I don't really think they can be.
Enjoy.

Puzzles can be found below.

World Puzzle Championship 2012: Round 9 Metropolis

This round features seven Skyscrapers puzzles. One standard and six variants. A few new variants and a few more common variants. I think this puzzle should be fun. I think I can do well in it.
This was my favourite round to design. That's why I designed an example of each variant. At first I was planning to do only 3, but I couldn't really choose which ones. So in the end I ended up making one of each. The Dubai puzzle is medium to hard. The normal way of thinking is changed a bit by the extra number. New York makes this even a little harder, because one cell remains empty. This increases the amount of possibilities for each clue. This puzzle is my favourite in the set. Toronto isn't that hard a puzzle. It's the most common variant in the bunch. The Sydney puzzle has very little clues and I think it worked out really nicely. Tokyo I thought would be hardest to design, but it actually went pretty well. The first try ended up correct and I think the puzzle is fun. Sao Paulo isn't too hard. I like how the idea works as it's different from other variants seen before.
Hope you enjoy them as much as I did making them.

Puzzles can be found below.

World Puzzle Championship 2012: Round 8 Assorted Puzzles

This round lasts one hour and features mostly new puzzle types. Most are small variations or hybrids on known puzzle types. It's hard to judge how this round will go. We will see in about an hour.
The puzzles I made an example of were Pipeline, which is a U-bähn variant, Russian Field, which is a simple division puzzle, Coded Tetramino, a tetramino division variant and Squares, a possibly annoying squares placement puzzle. I chose these ones, because I had some idea of what to put in these puzzles. Another possibly challenging one was Dominoes in the Water, but I had no real idea how this would look and thus how to construct an example.
The Pipeline puzzle is pretty simple once you get the basics. The Russian Field is relatively tricky as it features a silly trick. But the small size should compensate. The Coded Tetramino should be somewhat challenging. I employed one possible opening in the puzzle. Also the easiest to build in. The Squares puzzle is pretty easy. I am not that handy in constructing this type.
Have fun with them.

Puzzles can be found below.

World Puzzle Championship 2012: Round 7 Lines and Arrows

The first round this morning is based around, well, lines and arrows. Drawing loops, lines and placing and following arrows. It will bean hour long round with a considerable amount of puzzles. From the values of the puzzles, there don't seem to be any really hard puzzles. There's two higher scoring puzzles but other rounds have had far bigger values puzzles.
As practise puzzles I made an example of each of the types: one loop puzzle, one line puzzle, one arrow placing puzzle and one arrow following puzzle. For the Loop puzzle I chose one of the easy types: Looking for the Loop. It doesn't leave very much room for freedom as the clues are not very restricting. So to make it unique, you basically end up with an easy puzzle. For the Line puzzle I chose Pipes, which is basically an Anglers puzzle, except multiple fishermen can catch the same fish. It's not very challenging. I think they can become difficult in a larger size with higher numbers, just like with Anglers. The Arrow placement puzzle is Pointing at the Treasure. It's a twist on Marbles puzzles where you place marbles, so that each marble is pointed at by one arrow and each arrow points at one marble. Except now the Marbles are placed and you have to place the arrows. This is my favourite puzzle in this set of four. I really like how it worked out. Lastly there's an Arrow Maze puzzle, which is more often known as 1~36(or whatever the end number is). I think my puzzle is relatively tricky. I like the end result as it has very few given numbers and is far more path based than number based.
Hope this second day is as enjoyable as the first day.

Puzzles can be found below.

World Puzzle Championship 2012: Round 5 Black and White

This is the last individual round of the day, which is 90 minute round. The round is based around binary determination. A cell is either coloured or empty, a cell is either black or white. There's a few common puzzle types, a few new ideas and a few small variants on common puzzle types. I'm not really sure how this round will go for me as there are many types where the contrustion of the puzzle can really make a difference.
I prepared 3 new types and 2 more common types as practise puzzles. The White Pentamino puzzle is nothing spectacular but I think it's a fun solve. The no mirroring rule is not technically necessary for my puzzle. It still has the standard somewhat innate difficulty pentomino puzzles generally have. The Paint-by variants worked out really nicely in my opinion. It helped me a lot in seeing how these types work. The Tapa and Corral aren't anything spectacular. They were being very stubborn in construction and in the end I decided to just go for something simple.
Hope they are enjoyable.

Puzzles can befound 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.

World Puzzle Championship 2012: Round 3 Twisted Puzzles

The third round of the WPC feature a number of classic puzzle type, with a slight twist. This slight twist usually means one of the main rules of the genre is broken and can't be applied while solving till you've fixed the twist. The twists in the puzzles not featured in this post are are an Easy as ABC clue in a Skyscraper puzzle, extra numbers in a Domino puzzle, empty cells in Kakuro and Arrows puzzles, 2 touching ships in a Battleships puzzle and an incorrect clue in a Four Winds puzzle.
I opted to design a Worms, Star Battle, Ariadne's Thread, Tents and Trees and Magnets variant. These were chosen for different reasons. Worms and Ariadne's thread I had never made myself and wanted to see how they are constructed and what the impact of the extra rule was. Star Battle I saw as the most dangerous twist to make a mistake in and construction clearly showed I was right as my first 2 attempts were broken as I had messed up with the twist somewhere. The Tents and Trees isn't so much different, but it was important to get one automatic solving technique out. the Magnets was just because I like designing Magnets and that was all for my own constructing pleasure.
I hope they are enjoyable, I surely enjoyed constructing them.

Puzzles can be found below.

World Puzzle Championship 2012: Round 2 Blackjack

The second round we are facing consists of twenty-one puzzles around a twenty-one theme as it is the twenty-first World Puzzle Championship. This is one of the larger mixed rounds, lasting 2 hours, which generally means far too many puzzles for the amount of time. So, a lot of options to choose from and hopefully make the right choices in which puzzles to start with, getting all the big pointers done in the middle and finishing on some quick low pointers to get those last extra points in and not end up leaving 25 points out by just running 30 seconds short on solving the puzzle. Usually my timing and puzzle choices are pretty good. This was shown best at the 2010 WSC, where I managed to put the last digit in exactly when the timer ran out. I was sitting near the spectators, who could see me solving and got a congratulatory pat on the back for finishing so nicely within the time limit.
This post will feature five puzzles from the twenty-one genres featured in this round.

Puzzles can be found below.

World Puzzle Championship 2012: Round 1 Domino Hunt

Good morning everyone. Here is the first "live" post from the WPC. The first round of the WPC will feature eight Domino puzzles. Except in the puzzles some of the numbers are missing. You'll have to restore them and fix the puzzle. It doesn't make a whole lot difference in the solving process, except that you have to watch out that you don't think a domino has only one place to go.
At the release of this post all WPC-participants should be bent over a booklet solving these puzzles if everything runs smoothly. This post contains only a single puzzle for you to solve. Enjoy!

Rules:

A complete 0-6 set of dominoes has been placed in the grid. Then all the borders were removed. accidentally also some of the numbers were removed. Restore the numbers and the borders of the dominoes.

World Puzzle Championship 2012: Live Puzzle Release

I will be traveling with many others to Croatia today for the World Sudoku and World Puzzle Championships in Kraljevica. I will be aiming to repeat last year's performance by qualifying for the playoffs in the WPC and finishing on the first page of the WSC.
Last year this meant a hiatus of puzzles on my blog. This year this means the opposite. I wrote a big set of practise puzzles for the WPC for my Dutch compatriots this year. I will be sharing these puzzles on my blog during the championship. The puzzles will be posted while the WPC is going on. All puzzles will be posted "live" on my site. This means that every set of puzzles from a particular round will be posted at the time the round begins at the championship, so you can solve the same types of puzzles at the same time as the WPC competitors. Each puzzle in a round will be accompanied with the number it has in the round. If you would like to see an example of a puzzle before attempting it, you can easily check it in the instruction booklet.
Over Thursday and Friday everyone can thus get a taste of the puzzle types featured at the World Puzzle Championships. There will be 40 puzzles released from the 11 individual rounds at the WPC. Hope you all will enjoy them.