Update – The Tapa Diagonal Neighbors has now been fixed. Thanks to Para for pointing out the error. Apologies to anyone who began to solve it.
I’m back home after a week away in South India, where I got burnt alive 80 % of the time. The other 20 % of the time, I tried to create a few puzzles. The majority of these have gone towards my newspaper employers, and another percentage will be held back for future tests, etc. But a few have nowhere to go and shall therefore be here for all to see, and hopefully enjoy. The first of these, I actually made just before my trip. I had to create a few Bosnian Roads for a competition, and I ended up wanting to do one more. The second one, Is a failed attempt at trying something with my Diagonal Neighbors Tapa variant. Its still alright to solve though. The last one, I again forgot that my favorite dimensions of 13×13 are not suitable for a domino-based puzzle. So the little cross mark, but I was just about able to shift it right to the corner for what its worth. This puzzle has some very tricky starting steps, but goes smoothly towards the end once you get through them. In any case, I do believe its a better “introduction puzzle” than the marathon I threw at you puzzle lovers as my 200th.
On a side note, the September Edition of LMI Beginners’ Sudoku Contests has begun and as organizer, I invite and encourage all Sudoku enthusiasts (beginners/newcomers especially) to participate.
All puzzles below rated Medium to Hard.
Rules for Bosnian Road – Draw a continuous snake-like loop of one-cell width, that does not touch itself, even diagonally. It does not go through clue cells. The clues indicate how many of the 8(or less for edges and corners) cells around the clue cell the loop passes through. This does not necessarily imply that all these cells have to be passed through at once, they can be broken up too(I guess you can think of them as Minesweeper-like clues).
Rules for Diagonal Neighbors Tapa – Follow regular Tapa rules. Additionally, every shaded cell must have at least one diagonally adjacent shaded cell. A “?” clue functions as any other non-zero numeric clue, you just need to determine what the number is.
Rules for Domino Loop – Shade in some cells such that every region has 2 shaded cells and every shaded cell has exactly one shaded cell orthogonally adjacent to it. Additionally, draw a loop passing through all the remaining cells and passing through every region exactly once. Cells marked with “X” contain neither domino cells nor loop segments.
Puzzle No. 208 : Bosnian Road
- Puzzle No. 209 : Tapa Diagonal Neighbors
- Puzzle No. 210 : Domino Loop
PS's puzzles + 