Rules: Camping

Place a number of tents, trees and caravans in the grid. Each tree has a tent and a caravan orthogonally connected to it. No two equal symbols can touch eachother, not even diagonally. The numbers on the outside indicate how many of each symbol are in that row or column.

Puzzle #108: Not Alone

While creating the Black and White Matchmaker as a practise puzzle, I discovered an interesting logic deduction regarding the "Not Alone" puzzle type, which I thought could lead to an interesting puzzle and severely reduce the amount of clues necessary to make it unique. So I tried it and brought it down to only 10 clues. I'm not convinced this is the minimum, but it's far fewer than I thought at first. At first the puzzle reminded me of the Binary puzzles, which are now also published here in a seperate booklet, which I find a boring puzzle type. But this rule is actually far more interesting that those puzzles. This one was pretty fun to create. I wonder how it will be perceived as difficulty. If you realise the one logic deduction I exploited here, it shouldn't be too hard. When you don't realise it, I don't know how people will feel about it.

Rules:

Fill the grid with black or white circles so that each row or column has the same amount of black circles and white circles. One circle of a color can't be sandwiched by circles of the other color horizontally or vertically.
An array of two or more circles of a same color may be sandwiched by circles of the other color  horizontally or vertically.

No Number Practise: Black and White Matchmaker

This weekend is the No Numbers test at Logic Masters India. It is written by Ko Okamato (Xevs). It contains  only puzzles without numbers in the grid, Most types are new to everyone, although I have come across Synchronised Maze before. It might not be my best performance as some of the types are a bit prone to error. The 2 "No numbers" puzzles have to be approached very carefully as it's easy to accidentally leave a number in when you make a small transcription (No Numbers Field) or reading (No Numbers Loop) error. Prasanna created practise puzzles for the other puzzle types, which can be found here, here and here.

I decided to make a Black and White Matchmaker as practise. I've never been any good at these matchmaker type puzzles. I tend to just avoid them unless it's the only one left. In this test it's over a quarter of the points, so probably wise to attempt. Also it contains the most familiar puzzle types. So I figured it would be worth a try to design one so I could find some easy ways to exclude certain types from certain puzzle grids. I've put in a few of ways I found in the grids. The puzzle turned out okay, but with a bit more effort I could have probably made the puzzles overlap in a few more genres.

I've put all puzzles in a single image with a table to match the puzzle types. I also have all puzzle grids as a seperate image. If it would be preferred that I post them all seperately, I can do that as well.

General Rule

There are 6 puzzle grids given with black and white circles and 5 puzzle types. Match each type to one puzzle grid and solve it under that rule. One of the grids won't be used. Certain grids might be solvable under multiple rules, but it's only possible to match them in one way so all 5 rules can be solved in a seperate grid.

Puzzle Types

Masyu:

Draw a single loop that runs horizontally and vertically though every cell with a circle. In cells with black circles, the loop must make a 90-degree turn and go straight in both neighboring cells. In cells with white circles, the loop must go straight and makes a 90-degree turn in at least one of neighboring cells.

Black & White:

Fill the grid with black or white circles so that all of the circles with same color will be connected vertically or horizontally. Circles with same color can't form a 2x2 square.

Sun & Moon:

Draw a single loop that runs horizontally and vertically through every cell in the grid once. The loop can't make turns between cells with circles of the same color, and makes just one 90-degree turn between cells with circles of different colors.

Not alone:
Fill the grid with black or white circles so that each row or column has the same amount of black circles and white circles. One circle of a color can't be sandwiched by circles of the other color horizontally or vertically.
An array of two or more circles of a same color may be sandwiched by circles of the other color  horizontally or vertically.

Signal loop:
Draw a single loop that runs horizontally and vertically through every cell except cells with black circles. The loop goes straight in cells with white circles.

Click to enlarge

Puzzle #107: Blind Spot

Here's another genre taken from Naoki's website. Although I think I've seen it before somewhere else as well. It just seem familiar from a few years ago. So possibly it featured on a WPC at one point.
 The first puzzle I made I liked a lot, except I thought it was a bit too hard as the first one on my blog. So I made another one, which was much easier. But I figured I need something a little bit more challenging to post. So I made a third one, which fell a bit in between both puzzles. And instead of posting just one, I'm going to post all 3. If you solve the example and then the first 2 puzzles in order, you should gradually get all the insights to also solve the third puzzle.

Rules for Blind Spot

Easy Puzzle

 Medium Puzzle

 Hard Puzzle

Rules: Blind Spot

This genre was developed by Naoki Inaba

Place an arrow for all four directions (up, down, left right) once in every row and column. No arrow points at another arrow. Black walls block the view of an arrow.

Puzzle #106: Killer Sudoku With Hidden Cages

This puzzle was inspired by a question raised on a sudoku forum if the Sunday Telegraph's Killer Sudoku With Hidden Cages was also solvable without the constraint that the number was always in the top left cell of the cage. It was never succesfully answered as those killers are probably meant to be solved that way. The Top Left cell constraint is a very powerful one, so it would probably not be unique. From here I figured it might be interesting to try to design a puzzle without that constraint. I'm guessing it's been done before, but I can't directly recall any of them.
I really like how the puzzle turned out. It looks nice and solves really smoothly. The opening probably isn't the most obvious one though. I don't think it's overly hard, but most of my Sudokus turn out a bit on the harder side. I think it's just something that automatically happens when I create Sudoku variants as I like to exploit and explore the opportunities a variant offers. Hope you all enjoy it.


Rules for Sudoku

In this Killer Sudoku the cages are hidden. Each cell with a clue number is part of a seperate cage. Each cage consists of orthogonally connected cells. The number indicates the sum of the digits in those cells. No digit can repeat within a cage. Cages consist of at least 2 cells. No two cages can overlap.

Puzzle #105: Quattro Stagioni (Corral, Nurikabe, Tapa LITS)

I have made a bunch of puzzles for friends for various reasons. Mostly for special occasions. I usually try to theme them in a certain way. This is mostly just based on the way the givens are oriented. For this puzzle though I had the fortune to get three handy numbers to work with, namely 2, 3 and 7. The numbers were handy to build into most genres, so I attempted to use them as best as I could. This puzzle is built up of four quadrants that each belong to a different genre. I thought a while about a good fourth genre to add as Nurikabe, Tapa and LITS have a similar general puzzle idea behind it. I couldn't come up with a good fourth genre that used this type of clue. So I cheated a bit by using corral-like clues, within the same puzzle structure. I think the puzzle worked out well, not overly difficult but still interesting.

Quattro Stagioni

General Rule:
Colour some cells to form a single contiguous shape. The shape doesn't form any 2x2 squares anywhere.

Left Top: "Corral"
The numbers in this section are all part of the shape. The numbers indicate how many cells that are part of this shape can be seen from this shape in horizontal and vertical direction, not including the cell itself. The numbers can't see past white cells. [Note: This section doesn't work like normal Corral. The clue type doesn't include the cell itself. Also there's no loop constraint.]

Right Top: Nurikabe
The numbers in this section each indicate a seperate island of orthogonally connected white cells. The numbers indicate the size of the island they are part of. All remaining cells in this section not part of an island belong to the shape. The islands can cross the border of this section.

Left Bottom: Tapa
The numbers in this section indicate how many consecutive cells are to be coloured around it. If there is more than one number in a cell, then each section of consecutive cells must be seperated by at least one empty cell.

Right Bottom: LITS
In this section colour 4 orthogonally connected cells in every boldbordered region. Two identical shapes in different regions can't touch eachother by a side. Rotations and reflections are considered the same shape.

Click to enlarge

Puzzle #104: Yajilin

I had a pretty good weekend solving sudokus. I finished 13th in the Swiss championship, finishing all puzzles within the set 2 hours. I knew I wouldn't at all be close to the top solvers, so just happy I finished all. I had a lot of trouble with the half squares sudoku and messed up the thermometers on the first try. Although when I recognised my mistake I could just use the second option and the solve was far easier than purely logical.
My Sudoku 8x8 solve leaves me with a bit of mixed feelings. On the one hand I equaled my best performance in an LMI Sudoku test, on the other hand I screwed up in both parts and could have possibly gotten my first top 10 finish. In part A I made a few transposition errors in the Foursome Sudoku, leading to digits in the wrong place and thus having to restart even though the grids I had solved at that point were correct. In part B I wasted my first 20 minutes breaking the Skyscraper, Irregular without regions and Irregular Cube and only finishing the Cube in the end. When I finally got going, I managed to brush off 10 more puzzles in the remaining 44 minutes, but it could have all been far better. But in the end I did as well as I had hoped for both tests.

Now about today's puzzle. On May 10th there was a sudden spike of blog visits, which coincided with the arrival of my latest Akil Oyunlari magazine. This issue featured 4 Yajilin and 4 Tapa puzzles by my hand. Most visits to my blog that day featured my Yajilin pages. So from that I'm guessing people liked them and wanted to try some more. I do think that my Yajilin puzzles on my blog have generally been well received, so I decided to post another one for that reason today. This one is a bit larger than my normal ones, but not as big or challenging as my previous oversized Yajilin. I do think it's again a nice layout of givens, so enjoy.

Rules for Yajilin

Click to enlarge

Puzzle #103: X Sums Sudoku

It's been a while since I've posted. This is mainly just through lack of inspiration on my part. I hadn't written any puzzles for the last month or so.  I recently wrote a bunch again and that went off pretty well, so I'm going to start posting puzzles again.

If you like Sudokus, this weekend can be an enjoyable one for you. With 2 Sudoku tests running, there is plenty to solve. Firstly there's the 8x8 Sudoku Contest on Logic Master India. This competition has 2 seperately solvable parts to it. Both parts have a variety of different 8x8 sudokus in it. One part with regular 2x4 nonets. In the second part the puzzles all have an abnormal layout, either irregular cages, or differently placed 2x4 cages.
There's also the Swiss Sudoku Championship hosted on Logic Masters Deutschland. This is a collection of mostly well known variants. It has a halved squares sudoku in it, which featured in its own round at the WSC in Hungary last year.

This Sudoku will feature in the LMI test. It's an interesting genre, which has some overlap with my own Frameless Sudoku. This idea though needs far fewer clues to get unique though. I am not sure if the puzzle in the championship will also look like this, but I think it's nicer by leaving clues out.

X sums sudoku

Fill in the whole grid with numbers 1-8 so that each number appears exactly once in every row, column and blackbordered area. Numbers outside the grid indicate the sum of first X-numbers in corresponding direction. Number X is always the first number in corresponding direction. F.E. - if the first number in row is 5, the outside number indicates the sum of first 5 numbers in that row.

TVC XII Recap

So, result-wise this was my worst performance of the series with a 17th place. I think I solved pretty well during the test though. I wasted some time on the large Compass and large Twilight, which I just couldn't crack. The Twilight Tapa was a bit sad as when I resolved it I noticed I had forgotten to put down one simple cross, which set the whole second half of the puzzle in motion. Thus I should have been able to do it. But overall I solved in good speed, no real breaking points and was overall happy with my performance. This was of course till I saw the results and had 12/16 marked correct. I had forgotten to colour one duplicate symbol in the Sweeper Tapa, I had forgotten to colour the 21 clue in the left bottom at the end of my solve even though I had concluded it depicted the white cells around it. I ahad lso messed up the way to enter the key for the Tapa-like Loop. The first one I did completely the wrong way, but I got the points for it because they were all +1. Somehow for the large one, I only did the first segment of A wrong but the rest correct. This of course led to a mix of correct and incorrect numbers and thus I didn't get the points. I had at least solved it correctly on paper.
I think this practise kit helped myself best in preparing out of all 4 tests. There were a few puzzle types for which I hadn't completely figured out how they would look or feel. Making them helped me a lot. I think it definitely increased my Wired Tapa solving, which I found surprisingly fun to solve. Also the Tapa-Like Loop puzzles were a lot easier when I figured out a few tricks from the genre while making them. I think my Twilight also should have helped well for the test puzzles.

Overall I finished 4th, which seems appropriate I think. But I do think this normalised system with best 3 out of 4 isn't 100% perfect. Because if I hadn't made the small solving and answer key mistakes, I would have beaten Hideaki comfortably in this test and would have thought it might have been good to beat him for 3rd place as I did exactly what I had needed to do. Except because Palmer beat everyone by a mile, this whole test wouldn't have counted as everyone's normalised score is very low. And I don't think it accurately depicts the difference between all players. Really it now only compared everyone to Palmer as he was just better than the rest. I feel that if you take Palmer out of the equation in all tests, that you might see a bunch of shifts in the leader board as TVC XII would be far more influential than it is now. Nyuta and EKBM did particularly well compared to many in this test, but only got a normalised score of 720 and 685 to show for it, which seems a bit unfair. It might be better to do something similar to the CTC, where not only the highest score sets the mark but a group of the best scorers. That way it could lead to a better representation overall for all players. I'm not sure of this and can't really run the numbers very quickly on what the results would be, but I'd be interested to see though if someone feels like it.

I'll also talk a little bit about the CTC here. I finished 5th overall. I had a bit of a false start in the first 2 weeks with a lot of errors. Halfway through it became clear that Palmer was running away with this one. Hideaki and Nyuta settled into a comfortable 2nd and 3rd and there was a group of 5 players who formed a subtop, which included me at 8th place. This was kind of the point where I thought 4th place was the highest possible, which I had talked to Zoltan a bit about. I started in 8th place and slowly made my way up. Then there was a week of harder puzzles, through which I made my way pretty well and in which Hideaki and Nyuta dropped some points and all of the sudden 3rd place became a possibility. I made it to 5th place behind Zoltan, who came agonisingly close to taking 3rd place, but eventually had to concede 4th. Sadly it wasn't to me as Psyho overtook me on the same day I overtook Zoltan. Two days before the end I had a bad solve and lost all chances on 3rd place. Psyho came pretty close to getting 3rd, but made a mistake on the last day. I just missed out on getting 4th though. If there is another CTC next year, I will know I'll have a pretty good chance of reaching the top 3 as long as I stay a bit more mistake free as I really made far too many mistakes. Or if the penalty for mistakes isn't so big.

Okay, enough talk. I still have one Tapa puzzle for you all. It's a Tapa Tapa, which didn't match the rules. I really liked this puzzle. It worked out well. I know not all cities can be defined, but the Tapa Wall is unique though, which I think should be good enough.

Rules for Tapa

Tapa Tapa

Follow regular Tapa rules. Additionally each train represents a city. The shortest possible distance between certain cities are given. The shortest distance is the shortest of all routes traveling horizontally and vertically along the Tapa wall that touches 2 cities (diagonal touching is enough).
[Note: There is no clue restriction on the cities, the wall can touch them any way possible]

Double Trouble #6: Heyawake (wacky) and Regional Yajilin

It's been a while since I have done one of these. I had been trying to play around with Ripple Effect/Heyawake and Ripple Effect/Regional Yajilin, except those never came off the ground much. It didn't feel that nice as I had to overload the Ripple Effect puzzles with uneccesary clues to get the other puzzles unique. So I thought that maybe Heyawake and Regional Yajilin might work as they can have a comparable amount of necessary clues. I found it a bit hard to make it work with rectangular regions, so I gave irregular reginos a try and that turned out a lot better. They're both not the hardest puzzles, but I like how they turned out.

Rules for Heyawake

Rules for Regional Yajilin

So firstly this puzzle have be solved as a Heyawake (wacky) puzzle. Opposed to normal Heyawake the puzzle has irregular rooms. The white area still can't span over two or more boundaries, even if they belong to the same room. This one is probably the easiest Heyawake on my blog.
Secondly it can be solved as a Regional Yajilin puzzle. It's not too hard, but it has some trickier steps than the Heyawake, but these are more because of the genre type.

Rules: Regional Yajilin

This genre was developed by Naoki Inaba.

Colour some squares, so that a single closed loop can be drawn through all remaining cells. The loop run horizontally and vertically through the centers of the cells. It can't touch or cross itself. No two black cells can share a border. The grid is split up into different regions. A number in a region indicates the amount of cells that need to be coloured in it.

TVC XII Practise Part 3

And here is the last part of practise puzzles. Or maybe the first part if you go by the order of the instruction booklet. I'm a bit late as I noticed an error in one of the puzzles and had to rectify it. I think out of these puzzles I like the Compass Tapa the best. The path oriented structure in it works very well. I also like the Twilight Tapa, but I'm finding them hard to construct.

Firstly the Visionary Tapa. I think it worked out well. The double clue structure makes the puzzle always a bit more challeging, but overall it's not too hard. At least once you get past the opening.
Secondly there's Make Room for Tapa. This puzzle is pretty easy. In the test it will most likely be a lot harder if we go by the puzzle that has been in the test before. Some of Thomas' puzzles will be more at that difficulty.
The Twilight Tapa is the hardest in this set. I found some interest number combinations that are semi unique. I used one as the opening here. Semi unique here means that there are 2 ways to colour that both look the same, except the coloured and white cells are switched around.
The Compass Tapa worked out well. It is of medium difficulty. I'm expecting trickier puzzles in the test for this one.
The Wired Tapa is nothing special. It just feels like a lot of the same. I didn't really think I put in much interesting. One part I liked, but I'm not even sure if that is necessary to solve.

The puzzles can be found below.
[After a bunch of edits I hope they are actually all correct now. Sighhhhhhhh.]

TVC XII Practise Part 2

Here is the second part of practise puzzles. This set contains a Broken Tapa, Tapa Tapa and a Sweeper Tapa. I've recreated the Sweeper Tapa. This is because I agreed with the comments that it might be a bit too hard for a practise puzzle. I think this one flows a bit smoother, but still uses the same opening and a similar layout as the first puzzle.
The Broken Tapa is a challenging puzzle. But I expect the actual puzzle on the test will also be challenging. Of course I won't know for sure till I see the points table tomorrow. I still think it's a fun puzzle though.
The Sweeper Tapa should be a bit nicer than my first one. Sometimes you need that extra bit of time to make the puzzle better.
The Tapa Tapa worked out okay. It's a nice variation, except I find the 1 clue constraint around the cities a bit restricting as they block a lot of the paths for the Tapa. Remember that the numbers indicate the shortest possible routes.

Puzzles can be found below.

TVC XII Practise Part 1

Even though Palmer also made a practise set, I figured I would still give it a go. I've been having fun making them, so I went at it again. I think it will help my solving in the end.
This time I started at the end of the booklet. this is partly because I had a nice idea for Tapa Tapa and partly because I am somewhat looking up to making a Make Room for Tapa and Wired Tapa puzzle. Can't really get those two started. Sadly I won't be posting my Tapa Tapa puzzle as I missed a rule regarding the Tapa cities. They can only have a segments of 1 cell around them, which I didn't do for my puzzle at all. Overall I'm happy with the puzzles, but I guess there's always room for a little improvement. I will post it after the test again, like I did before with a puzzle that broke the test rules. Next time I'll be more careful reading the rules and not just by checking the example.

The Roman Tapa is pretty basic. I think it is some good practise in breaking apart possible givens.
Sweeper Tapa has a nice opening. I could have put down TAPA everywhere instead of PARA, but thought that might happen in the test, so I figured I could just make it read my own nick everywhere. This puzzle is pretty hard though, so I put an easier variant of this puzzle in the second set. It will probably be better practise.
Tapa Like Loop is a fun genre, even though I question its Tapa-ness. I think it turned out a nice puzzle. I'm expecting this puzzle to go a bit bigger in the test.
Tapa Borders is not my best puzzle, especially in comparison to Palmer's. I had a nice idea for the basic structure of the puzzle, but I couldn't make it work completely the way I wanted to. Still helpful practise I think though.


The puzzles can be found below.

TVC XII

The first observation one can make in this test is that the definition of Tapa is being stretched a bit for this test. Wired Tapa and Tapa Like Loop don't really seem to be actually Tapas to me. They just employ a similar clue type. I somewhat feel that if there isn't a Tapa Wall, it's not a Tapa.
Secondly, many of these variants already have a few examples available. I've collected the places I have been able to find examples of the puzzles in this test.

Palmer Mebane's Practise Set:

http://mellowmelon.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/tvc-xii-practice-pack/

Visionary Tapa: 

TVC XI: http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/?test=TVC11
TVC XI  practise: http://puzzleparasite.blogspot.com/2012/03/tvc-xi-practise-part-1.html

Make Room for Tapa:

Thomas Snyder's Blog:
http://motris.livejournal.com/137423.html
http://motris.livejournal.com/138177.html
http://motris.livejournal.com/163574.html
TVC VII: http://logicmastersindia.com/TVC/VII/

Twilight Tapa: 

Logic Master's Deutschland:  http://logicmasters.de/Raetselportal/Raetsel/zeigen.php?id=0000F0
Palmer Mebane's Blog: http://mellowmelon.wordpress.com/2011/08/31/puzzle-351/

Compass Tapa:

Takeya Saikachi's Blog: http://buyaketa.blogspot.com/2012/02/compass-tapa.html

Broken Tapa:

Logic Masters India, Broken Pieces: http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/?test=M201008P
Logic Master India, Best of LMI Puzzle Tests: http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/?test=M201112P

Roman Tapa:

TVC VIII: http://logicmastersindia.com/lmitests/?test=TVC8

Tapa Like Loop:

Takeya Saikachi's Blog: http://buyaketa.blogspot.com/2012/02/tapa-like-loop.html

Tapa Borders:

Palmer Mebane's Blog:
http://mellowmelon.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/puzzle-382/
http://mellowmelon.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/puzzle-388/

Puzzle #102: Penta Sight

This pentomino variant is a bit like a mix between Pentopia and Kurodoku puzzles. It currently leans a bit more towards Pentopia, because it implements a no touching rule. I could also make it lean a bit more to Kurodoku and allow diagonal touching and have all white cells form a single contiguous area. But I'll leave that for another try. I might make a seperate rules page if I try this again. Just like to see how people like it now.

Rules:

Place a number of different pentomino pieces in the grid. Rotations and reflections are considered the same piece. The pieces aren't allowed to touch eachother, not even diagonally. The numbers in the grid indicate how many white cells can be seen from that cell in all horizontal and vertical directions, including the cell itself. Pentomino pieces block their sight.

Puzzle #101: Island

Another easier Island puzzle. I like the layout, just couldn't get all circles in order.

Rules for Island

Puzzle #100: Maxi Loop

What is this? A puzzle and it's not a Tapa? How odd. It means I'm resuming my puzzle posts. I tried to make something special for puzzle #100 but my idea crashed and burned. It now occupies about 3 pages in my notebook but still isn't finished as it doesn't want to cooperate into a solvable, unique puzzle. It was actually my second idea as I had an idea with cubes at first. But I scrapped that idea as I got no comments on my LITS cube. I was really happy with that puzzle and was expecting some feedback on it. I figure no one felt like solving a puzzle on a cube when they have to construct it themselves.
Here's a Maxi Loop puzzle. I hadn't posted one in a while as I made the choice to put out Liar Loop puzzles instead. I think it worked out well. It's relativey difficult. The most tricky deductions come towards the end on the left side of the puzzle.

Rules for Maxi Loop

TVC XI Recap

I didn't do so well this time. Okay, I finished 8th, which isn't really that bad. It's just that this puts me behind in the standings a bit. I am still ranked 4th overall with a small gap to 3rd, but when you take only the best 2 out of 3, which is what's really important the gap widens considerably. Both Hideaki and Ko will be far ahead of me then for 3rd place.
I had one of my false starts again, not solving anything the first 10 minutes by breaking the Meiosis Tapa twice. After that it went okay till I attempted the Full Tapa. I kept breaking it till after four attempts I noticed I had missed the word MAN. This is why I prefer simple lists of words, so it's far less likely to miss a word. These gimmicks can be interesting to some, but I don't like them very much for competitions. Then I spent a long time looking for the opening around the 5^1/2^1^2 in the Power of Tapa, but when I found it, it went smooth. I made a silly mistake in the Tapa Balance, having the left 4 wrong. I found the Modern Tapa much harder than the 43 points it was worth. I got the solution to the hard Mad Max Tapa 5 seconds over the 75 minute mark, but I wasn't convinced it was correct so I didn't submit it.
As for my puzzles, I nailed the Tapa Balance idea. I hadn't done it as extreme as Serkan, but I saw the skewed balance coming. I thought the Dissected, Visionary and Fractional Tapas were good preparing practice for the test. The Modern Tapa didn't help me get through the puzzle any smoother. The Meiosis Tapa in the test was somewhat gimmicky. I'm not a fan of overt symmetry in puzzles, where both the clues and solution on each side is the same. I thought my Full Tapa was less intuitive than the one in the test. I also thought it was easier to work my Mad Max Tapa, but when I saw that a lot of the Tapa was actually solvable, I must admit I had missed that.
I hope they helped other people as well and will try to bring out another set next time.

TVC XI Practise Part 3

Here are the last few examples for TVC XI. They are a bit on the late side, but I had only 3 days. I did what I could. These genres were the trickiest to construct, so that's why they come last. I don't know how representative of the test they will be as they can be a lot harder than what I made now. I just needed puzzles that I could logically construct. I am also learning the logic involved in these genres.

First up is the Full Tapa. I had a lot of trouble to come up with an idea for this puzzle. When I settled on the 3 and 4 word lengths it slowly got started. I like how it worked out. Most of the puzzle runs on the word lengths, but you need to place the words to get to a unique solution. I assume it's easier than the actual test puzzle, considering the amount of points it's worth.
Secondly is the Power of Tapa puzzle. I don't think it's especially hard. Tried to get a mix of power and normal clues in, but didn't succeed as well as I had hoped. It's still a nice puzzle. The puzzle in the test is worth a the most points of all puzzles, so will most likely be harder.
Lastly the Meiosis Tapa. It's really tricky to construct because there are a lot of options for multiclue cells. Which is also why I avoided multiclue cells for the most part of the puzzle. I at least succeeded in implementing both types of division in the puzzle. It's not too hard, but as the points table goes, it could be of equal difficulty of the test puzzle.

Puzzles can be found below.

TVC XI Practise Part 2

Today features the least finicky puzzles in the test. For these 4 you can pretty much expect a nice logic solve. The remaining three are variants that I haven't worked out how to construct nicely yet. Especially the Full Tapa is a problem as I can't even figure out how to solve the example in the booklet. There's a chance I will find a way to make it work for me, which isn't reflective of the actual test. Battle Tapa from TVC IX was a good example of that.

First up is the Combined Tapa. I'm not really happy with the Digital Tapa part because of the changed 0 rule, but the rest is nice in my opinion. It is 12 by 12 just like the previous time a Combined Tapa appeared on the TVC.
Secondly is the Fractional Tapa. I finally gave up on trying to incorporate the 3 by 3 fractioned cells and then the construction went far more smoothly. I put some clues inside the fractioned cells as Serkan said it could happen, so there's a good chance it will. I think it worked out well. I'm happy with the result.
Then we have the Modern Tapa. I have not a single clue why it's called Modern, but that's unimportant. I think I exploited the set layout very well and it's important not to forget the no reflections rule.
Lastly there's the Tapa Balance. I employed a small gimmick in this puzzle as I expect that Serkan might do the same thing. I would have at least if I were to make the test. So pay attention to the puzzle before you get started. I think this one is relatively tricky.

Puzzles can be found below

TVC XI Practise Part 1

Fidgety could be the word to decribe this test. It doesn't have to be, but it could be if you wanted to. A bunch of these variants have a chance to give unique puzzles that will involve a lot of trying without being able to be 100% sure you are on the right path. It's just this feeling that comes out during construction. I've tried to make the puzzles so that there is no need for it though. I'm not a good instinct solver, so I wouldn't want the test to turn out this way.

There's only going to be 3 puzzles in this post as the Irregular Tapa part I made doesn't match the rules for the test. I will try to fix it. I thought I had all rules clear, but it doesn't seem to be so anymore. The Fractional Tapa I haven't really been able to work out for how to design it nicely. I keep running into non-uniqueness for the fractional cells.
The Mad Max Tapa I think worked out well. It isn't like the example in the instruction booklet but has a more regular Tapa feel to it. This type could come out fidgety, where you get very little clues and/or a weirdly shaped grid where you just have to cram a lot of squares in it and hope that your solution is the max number. For this puzzle if you understand the ways to maximise the square count, you can solve it very smoothly.
The Dissected Tapa has some commonalities with variants you have encountered before. It needs very little clues to solve. This one can turn out figety too as it can be unique quickly, even though you can't find a smooth logical finish to it. This puzzle turns logically harder if you were to change the 22 and 6 clues both to a 23 clue, but I wouldn't like to see it in the test this way. This puzzle solves very easy if you get how to open the puzzle.
The Visionary Tapa is probably the best practise out of the 3 as I see no fidgety variant for it. I'm most sure of it appearing similarly in the test. I do think the clue type makes for a challenging solve, where the difficulty of the deductions doesn't really matter. I find it tricky to keep looking at the right distance for the second set of clues.

The puzzles can be found below.

TVC XI

Sorry for the long hiatus. I'd been trying to make something special for puzzle 100, but I have a feeling that is never going to come together the way I want it. Most likely I will just start posting puzzles again and not worry to much about outdoing myself. And if I ever manage to create something special I will just post it as normal, like what I did with my Four Colour Loop.

As for TVC XI, I will again try to post a set of practise puzzles. I've gone over the instruction booklet and I suspect it's going to be a challenge though. Cihan Altay has always been a puzzle maker that can confuse me to no end. You can't accuse him of lack of creativity, but I sometimes think it's going a bit crazy.
It's also a bit how I feel now having read through the instruction booklet.

I have 2 options to post these puzzles. I can again deliver the puzzles in 1 or 2 big batches like I did before. The first batch will then probably come wednesday evening the earliest. I think this is nicest for post count and makes it look more organised. The other option would just be to post a puzzle whenever I finish one. I will probably be a bit chaotic, jumping all over the puzzle booklet as I don't really construct all puzzles in order. I tend to just work on what puzzle type gives me inspiration at the moment. I have posted the puzzles nicely in order before, but that's not the order in which they were constructed. If people prefer me posting puzzles whenever they are ready, I'll go for that but my preference goes to the batching.

I hope to get everything ready by Friday, but I can't promise anything. Just hope whatever is ready will be helpful.

TVC X Recap

TVC X has finished. I finished 3rd and am now the only puzzler to reach the podium on both tests. Ranking-wise I'm doing the best out of everyone. But with each test having one puzzler who outsolved the rest by a mile, the normalised rankings puts me in third place.
I wasn't completely happy with my performance after finishing. I broke the Magnetic Tapa twice and the Toroidal Tapa once. I also had to guess my way through the end of the Tapa Guard, which didn't go all that smoothly. But that probably only cost me the 24 points in penalty I got in the extended time. I don't think I'd been able to get anything from the Tapa Distiller if I had been error-free. It took me 25 minutes afterwards to solve that puzzle and even though you get points per grid by the time you finish one grid you're almost done with the whole puzzle.

As for the puzzles, my favourites were the Anglers Tapas and the Shortest Segment Tapas. I'm not really sure why the Shortest Segment Tapas got such low ratings as I really enjoyed them. In my mind the Braille Tapa was highly overrated. I raced through that one. The Tapa Guard was underrated and i felt was the hardest single puzzle in the set. I obviously also found the Tapa Distiller challenging. That was partly as there seemed 3 places where you could possibly start solving and only one of them was any good to break it open in my mind. Of course I started with the 2 that didn't help much. The Magnetic Tapa was probably my least favourite, but that's just because the Magnetic aspect was a bit too little in my opinion.
I think my Combination, Shortest Segment and Braille Tapa were probably the most helpful for the test. For the Braille Tapa I think the most important thing you had to pick up is studying the letters before solving and seeing what the implications of colouring squares and leaving squares blank meant. I was expecting the Anglers Tapa to have the little loops as well, which is why I put it in my puzzle.

There always seem to be puzzle types returning to the next set. My choices would be Magnetic Tapa and Toroidal Tapa. The Magnetic Tapa I choose because I think I've shown with my second and third puzzle it has a lot more to offer than the puzzle that was in the test. So I think it deserves another showing. The Toroidal Tapa is just because I'm a fan of Toroidal puzzles and it uses the most Tapa thinking. Even though I liked the Anglers puzzle I don't need to see it back as I think the puzzle will probably be very similar as the ones in this test.

Finally I'm posting my Shortest Segment reject. This puzzle didn't match the rules that appeared in the test.


Rules for Tapa

Shortest Segment Tapa

Use regular Tapa rules. Additionally the numbers on the outside indicate the shortest segment of connected squares in that row or column. At least one segment of that length will appear in that row or column, but no segments shorter than the given number.

Click to enlarge

TVC X Practise Part 3

TVC X starts tomorrow. There's been an errata file posted with some clarifications on the rules which should be handy to read before the start. Especially for the Shortest Segment Tapa, it is very important. But if you have done my practise puzzles, you should be clarified on those rules as my puzzle matches the rule. Also the points table has been announced on the forum.
There was a sudden surge of visits to my practise puzzles this morning. That's because my practise puzzles are now featured on the TVC X main page, which is greatly appreciated.

I put out the option for requests for more practise puzzles.The request was for Magnetic Tapa and Combination Tapa, which are posted below.
The Combination Tapa worked out okay. I still think it can all work out a bit cleaner, but it's still not totally a Tapa to me. You don't do much solving Tapa wise as the wall construct is also used in genres like LITS and Nurikabe.
I'm again very happy with the Magnetic Tapa. I had mentioned before how I thought the Magnetic Tapa would probably be in between the first 2 puzzles I posted and this is what I had in mind. There's Tapa clues in the grid, but the puzzles isn't close to being unique by only using the Tapa clues.

Puzzles can be found below.

TVC X Practise Part 2

Here is the second part of the TVC X practise. I think the puzzles worked out well. If there's any variants you'd like to see one more of, I can try to give it a go. I am excluding the Tapa Distiller from this request as it's a bit too much trouble to make. I'd love to know what you think of the puzzles as that will help me in preparing these sets.

The Shortest Segment Tapa worked out well. I made another one, but that doesn't match the rules that will be used in the actual test. I will post that puzzle with the TVC recap after the test.
There are two Magnetic Tapa puzzles. One is a puzzle that matches the instruction booklet. I don't find it very interesting this way as the Magnets influence is very little here. The numbers outside are more needed to get the magnets unique and not the Tapa unique. This means they are mostly inconsequential for the answer key. The second one is a puzzle that uses the magnet clues to shape the Tapa. I really like this puzzle. It's a challenging one. It could be that the actual test puzzles will fall in between these two puzzles. At least you'll have gotten practise in both ways.
The Tapa Distiller is 7x7 because 10x10 seemed a bit overkill. I find these puzzles always tricky as you have to be careful with your deductions. Accidentally eliminate a clue from a correct grid and you'll have no clue where you went wrong. The reasoning to assign clues to grids isn't too hard for this one.
Anglers Tapa is a genre that isn't too bad but I think can improve a bit. I think all anglers being of unknown length might be better or possibly the anglers being in the grid hidden as Tapa clues (so a 15 could be a length 15 angler or a 1-5 Tapa clue). This one I made according to the example. I think it turned out nicely and uses the Tapa more for the opening than the Anglers bit.
Tapa Difference is an okay puzzle. I think it runs nicely. It's not my favourite as many of the clues are known at the start and the Difference bit adds very little to them.

You can find the puzzle below

TVC X Practise Part 1

I will do these practise puzzles in two days. Some of the types don't come as easy as others. I try to put in something that will help learn a bit about a variant, so that it will actually be helpful.

Total False Tapa is still a tricky genre. I think the logic path is better than my previous one.
Tapa Guard is more like the puzzle in the test I hope this time. Last time I was happy with the result, but not completely applicable to the test.
Tapa and Pata is the same puzzle as my Double Trouble #4. I might make a new one, but I find the gimmick very hard to acchieve. Both puzzles are somewhat challenging.
Toroidal Tapa is the puzzle I'm happiest about in the set. The edge 2x2 squares are the hardest to keep track of when solving.
Braille Tapa is not my favourite variant. Somewhat interesting to disallow certain shapes, but it can sometimes be a bit limiting in design.
Combination Tapa doens't always feel like you are doing a Tapa. I'm happy with how I managed to get the grey cells to work out.

You can find the puzzles below.

Puzzle #99: Liar Loop

This month the new issue of Akil Oyunlari has been published, which includes four LITS and four Liar Loop puzzles by my hand. I made more than 4 Liar Loop puzzles  for the magazine, so there was more to choose from for finding the right difficulty.
The puzzle doesn't have all pentomino cages as my previous one. It actually has all hexomino cages and one tetromino cage in the centre. It was a play on one of my smaller puzzles for the magazine, where I used all 12 pentomino shapes and a single tetromino shape in the centre. I think it worked out well.

Rules for Liar Loop

Puzzle #98: LITS; Cube

I know I'm a day late. Yesterday was Valentine's Day. This puzzle I made for my girlfriend, who luckily thinks me being able to make puzzles is awesome. So every year I make a special puzzle for Valentine's day.  This year I made a LITS puzzle on cube. I build the cube out of cardboard as you can see in the picture.
The puzzle for you is an unconstructed cube, which you can fold. The red lines are to fold, but otherwise mean nothing special.

Rules for LITS

This puzzle is on a cube, running over all 6 sides. Normal rules of LITS apply. No corner of the cube can be fully coloured. The pink areas are only for aestetics.

[Edit 19/02/12: Fixed small uniqueness issue in left face]

Click to enlarge

Rules: LITS

This genre was developed by Nikoli.

Colour a shape of 4 orthogonally connected squares in each black bordered region so that all coloured squares form a single contiguous area. This area can't contain any 2x2 coloured squares. Two identical shapes in different regions can't touch eachother by a side. Rotations and reflections are considered the same shape.

TVC IX Recap

So, I finished second, which is my first podium finish on an LMI-test. I think making all these puzzles helped me in doing well. The most use I got from preparing the No Squares and Total False Tapa. I picked up some number patterns that also came back directly in the puzzles. The Tapa line helped see how the path creeps through certain holes. The least useful was probably making the Digital Tapa and Battle Tapa. The Digital Tapa in the test was a bit gimmicky, which I'm never much a fan of for tests. The Battle Tapa was designed around the fleet, whereas I designed the fleet around the Tapa.
I hope others found them useful as well. If people want me to make a set for the following TVC's, I'll give it a go for those too. I just hope the instruction booklet is out a little bit earlier. One or two extra construction days would be helpful.

Puzzle #97: Shakashaka

With all the Tapas posted this week, I figured a nice easy puzzle would be a good break. This puzzle is just a silly little puzzle. I was wondering if it was possible to create a Shakashaka puzzle without any clue numbers. This was the result. Nothing difficult of course, just creative use of black squares. Enjoy.

Rules for Shakashaka

TVC IX Practise Addendum

This addendum is being posted because of 2 reasons. One is to also post a Digital Tapa puzzle. Secondly because of a correction for the Tapa Guard puzzle. I jumped the gun on that variant and assumed that undivided cells could also contain multi-digit clues. Serkan rectified that this wouldn't be the case. I think it's more interesting for the genre to not have any divided clues, but maybe that's just my opinion. I think it would be nice to come back that way in another TVC.

The Digital Tapa puzzle isn't the most interesting, but it turned out okay. Last night's draft turned out non-unique as I had forgotten that 0 could be presented as a single digit clue. Some of the digits don't actually need a segment given, but I didn't want to do something that might not happen in the test. The layout is a bit dodgy with me doing it in paint.
Tapa Guard is now presented the way it would in the test. It makes the puzzle a bit easier, Especially the 1-5 clue, which I was really happy about working out.

Rules for Tapa

Digital Tapa

Follow regular Tapa rules. Each Tapa clue is represented in digital form, as shown below. However, some segments may be missing from the original numbers. There cannot be a 0 in a multidigit clue.

Click to enlarge

Tapa Guard

Tapa clues have 2 functions:
1 - They function as normal Tapa clues.
2 - They indicate how many coloured cells can be seen in the corresponding directions. A digit in an undivided cell, may observe in any of the four directions.

TVC IX Practise

This weekend is the start of the Tapa Variations Contest 2012. It will consist of four tests in four weekends over February and March. The first test of this year is TVC IX. It will consist of 10 different Tapa variations. I've made samples of a few of the variations. I think these will make better practise than my Shapes and Sizes practise puzzle. For examples, check the instruction booklet.

My favourites in this set are the Tapa Guard and Tapa Shape puzzle. For the Tapa Guard for the fact there's no divided cells. For Tapa Shape for having a double of all shapes and using few smaller shapes.
The hardest to construct was the Total False Tapa. I was hoping to make all clues to be valid Tapa clues, but I failed for one clue.
Tapa Restoration is nothing special, but I'm not too much a fan of this variant.
Tapa Line is probably the easiest, with maybe one sticking point halfway through the puzzle. Both no 2x2 square and no more than 3 cells in a row leads to a lot of constrictions on the loop.
Battle Tapa I enjoyed constructing. I looked up to it at first. I was a bit disappointed how little information you got form the type of fleet though.
No Squares Tapa uses some interesting number combinations for this variant.
The Equal Tapa puzzle worked out very nicely. I didn't like the idea at first, but I do like my puzzle very much.
Tapa Trimino has its tricky points, but still an enjoyable puzzle.
I'm still working on a Digital Tapa puzzle. It might be ready later tonight. It's a struggling process. I didn't have that much time to work on these. I already delayed posting an hour.

You can find the puzzles below.

Puzzle #96: Pentopia

I still like this genre, especially the clue type. I've been trying to incorporate it in other genres, but so far nothing popped out that seemed to work well. Maybe I can just make it work well with pentominos (Pentopia) and loops (Myopia) as those are the two logic puzzle constructs I enjoy most.

Rules for Pentopia

Puzzle #95: Ripple Effect

I still find Ripple Effect one of the most fun puzzle types to construct. I don't actually get to solve very many though. I am not able to find many online. Most of what you find online is computermade. They just seem to use a backtrack algorithm, where you get a valid solution and remove as many digits as you can while it stays unique. That just leads to a chaotic image of givens, which I don't find very appealing for these kinds of puzzles. My goal is always to have no givens or place the givens at the start and design the puzzle around it.

Rules for Ripple Effect

Puzzle #94: Yajilin

So today a puzzle to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the marriage between Dutch prince Willem-Alexander and princess Maxima. I'm not especially a fanatic of the Royal family, but it's still a special day here in the Netherlands.
It didn't take too much time to decide on a genre. I wanted to incorporate the dates 2-2-(20)02, 2-2-(20)12 and the number 10. As those only use the digits 0,1 and 2 I figured Yajilin would be the easiest choice. It did take a while to get a good puzzle. The fixed order and position of clues made it a lot harder to design the puzzle.

Rules for Yajilin

Puzzle #93: L-Labels

This is another simple idea by Naoki Inaba. I enjoyed his puzzles a lot, so I figured I'd give them a try too. They're harder to design than I thought. So I start off  with an easier puzzle. I changed the layout a bit to coincide with other genres like Masyu. I think people will remember more easily what each symbol represents this way. For his puzzles a circle is a corner cell, a triangle is an edge cell and a cross is an end cell.

Rules for L-Labels

Rules: L-Labels

This genre was developed by Naoki Inaba.

Divide the grid in L-shaped areas. All areas are one cell wide. Each black circle marks a corner. Each white circle marks a straight edge. Each grey circle marks an end.

Puzzle #92: Frameless Sudoku

I had a few ideas to create openings in this genre, when I had first thought of it. This puzzle uses one I hadn't put in before. It's much easier to put in than to spot. Although I made sure to at least mark it better than I had originally wanted to put it in. But the first time I showed someone the opening, they never found it till I pointed it out. So this is an easier variant of the opening. It's still a challenging puzzle, but I always enjoy playing around with this sudoku variation.

Rules for Sudoku

The numbers on the outside indicate the sum of the first digits encountered in that row or column from that side. The amount of digits can differ from sum to sum and can be only one digit.

[Edit: fixed a typo in column 2]

Puzzle #91: Turning Fences

I got good feedback from this puzzle type when they were published in Akil Oyunlari. So here's another one. The puzzle is of the same difficulty as the ones in the magazine, not too difficult but still a bit challenging. I think that's what most of these puzzles are like.

Rules for Turning Fences

Puzzle #90: Heyawake; Twins

This weekend has been a busy one puzzlewise. It was also a good weekend for me. It was the first time I've done as well as I wanted to do. I won the puzzlefountain competition. At the point of writing this, which is Monday evening, ranked 4th for the puzzle marathon at Logic Masters India, while being fastest for 2 of the puzzles. And I had a good showing on the German Sudoku qualifier even though I lost 10-15 minutes at the start trying to figure out why my printer wouldn't print, while eventually finding out I plugged the USB in a non-USB port. In between that I've been having fun with this month's optimisation puzzle at Logic Masters.de. I recommend giving it a go. It's a fun challenge.
As for this puzzle, it's of medium difficulty. I like the twin concept for heyawake like puzzles.

Rules for Heyawake

In this puzzle, every coloured square shares a border with exactly one other coloured square.

Puzzle #89: Contact

I had actually thought of this idea myself at first. I figured it would be the logical combination between Slitherlink and Line of Sight. I couldn't really get them to work very well though. Then I spotted the same genre on Naoki's website. After doing his puzzles I got a bit of an idea how to work the genre properly. This first puzzle has some standard deductions concerning the corners that you'll need to learn to solve these puzzles.

Rules for Contact

Rules: Contact

This genre was developed by Naoki Inaba.

Draw a single closed loop by connecting dots horizontally and vertically. The numbers in the grid indicate the total length of straight line segments touching their square.

Puzzle #88: Island

The trouble I have with making easier puzzles in this genre, is to keep them interesting. I like to always have my puzzles to have something interesting. I think this one is about the same difficulty as the first puzzle I posted.

Rules for Island

Puzzle #87: Line of Sight

I know my production has faultered a bit since the holidays. It's been a bit of a busy period. I'm now going to try to post 3 puzzles per week. One on Tuesday, one on Thursday and one in the weekend.
I'm starting this off with a Line of Sight puzzle. It's still a genre I really like. I tried to incorporate some standard tricks that show up in these puzzles. I think it worked out nicely and I especially like how it finishes.

Rules for Line of Sight

Puzzle #86: Yajilin; Toroidal

I always liked the toroidal idea for loop puzzles. As I understood from Mathgrant's post Nikoli has published a Toroidal Yajilin too. I was somewhat curious how the clue execution worked. I spend a while considering if it was appropriate to let the clues end on the non-existing edge of the grid. But I figured the puzzle should actually be able to be posted on a torus, so the clues have to point past edges.
I made a few of them to test out how to best construct them. This was the easiest to come out of it. I figured I should first post this one for a change as a lot of times I introduce something new with a (too) hard puzzle. It's still tricky to solve because of the toroidal nature. Especially the deductions that span over the edges can be hard to see. But I didn't really see how to avoid that.

Rules for Yajilin

In this puzzle the grid is toroidal. This means the loop can pass through edges and come out on the other side. The clues also pass through the edge. This means each horizontal arrow sees the whole row and each vertical arrow sees the whole column.

Alternate image

Click to enlarge

Puzzle #85: Corral

This Corral is the hardest I have posted on this blog so far. This is mostly cause by the end of the puzzle. The opening is relatively standard, with a nice bit in the left top corner. The clue arrangement leaves room for some deductions I hadn't really used before. The interactions lead to a hard middle section.

Rules for Corral

Puzzle #84: Scattered Sudoku with Added Clues

This weekend there will be Richard Stolk's Shapes and Sizes test on Logic Masters India. This is one of the puzzle types that will feature in the test.
The twin sums concept I first encountered on a Dutch Sudoku Championship. I really enjoyed that puzzle then. I hadn't come across any since reading the instruction booklet. The original puzzle employed standard Sudoku grids. I think using different jigsaw grids is actually an improvement. It removes the ambiguity of which grid will hold which solution. So I figured I'd try my hand at designing one. I think the result turned out pretty well. I think the puzzle is pretty tricky and am thus not sure how it relates to the difficulty of the test. It will still be some good last minute practise before the test, if people want it. Otherwise just enjoy it on your spare time.

Rules for Sudoku

Place the digits from 1 to 7 in every row, every column, every boldly marked area and the grey cells of both empty grids. The numbers in the top grid indicates the sums of the digits in that position in both grids.

Click to enlarge

Puzzle #83: Akari

Happy New Years to most of Europe and Africa. Gelukkig nieuwjaar voor alle Nederlanders.

As this is the last post and 2012 has started for me, this is the last post. I will be missing the New Years of people in the UK, USA and Canada. None-the-less:

Happy New Years to the UK, USA and Canada when the time comes.

I had some trouble choosing a genre with a 0, as it is negative information. There were 2 genres that cam to mind and that were Heyawake and Akari. As I haven't posted any Akari puzzles before on my blog, I figured it was a good one to start the new year with. I am not very skillful in constructing (or solving) Akari puzzles. This puzzle therefore is easy. I like how it looks and solves though. Just remember the one rule when you start.

0. Akari

Place a number of lightbulbs in the grid, so that every square is lit by at least one lightbulb. Lightbulbs illuminate all squares it can see horizontally and vertically. Black squares block its view. No two lightbulbs are allowed to see eachother. The numbers in the grid indicate the amount of lightbulbs that touch that square horizontally and vertically.