Non Puzzle Post : Jagran Championship, follow-up Interview

A little background can be seen here and here. Now, we have the interview they conducted with me after I helped with conducting the Lucknow Championship. Overall, it’s really good.

The link for it is http://epaper.jagran.com/ePaperArticle/30-jan-2014-edition-LUCKNOW-page_21-10090-9836-11.html but here’s an image below.

Dainik Jagran, Lucknow, Jan 30th, Page 21

So a gist for my foreign readers –

0) (the part in the middle) My birthday, place of birth, rankings in World Championships, educational qualifications, Dad’s name and job, Mom’s name and job, and that I had conducted one of Jagran’s events in Lucknow on Sunday.

1) They cover my childhood, and the list of things I tried and lost interest in as a kid before getting into puzzling.

2) My achievements, National Championships, rankings in World Championships, WPC author, and all that.

3) How I got into it, and when I was introduced into it (Rohan introduced me to LMI).

4) How I don’t feel cold and am allergic to the heat (yeah, this seems to fascinate people all the time).

5) That I see a future in Sudoku and Puzzles, and that there’s a big online community for all of this, and newcomers will feel more interested and inspired if they visit the sites and communicate with like-minded individuals, as opposed to solving alone at home and just considering Sudoku a one-off game.

Puzzle No. 488 – Fillomino [Instructive]

Check this post for reference on this blog’s 3 main types of posts from now on.

The instructive post-type is (for now) mainly a way to “rehearse” my way of explanation for a certain target audience, while also giving the general puzzle solvers an easy puzzle to solve. I will not cover any complex techniques here, because the end result I’m looking at is designing a curriculum with more detailed explanations. I will mostly just hint at the starting point and a basic technique that’s necessary to solve the puzzle in question.

The instructive PDF’s definitely just for complete newcomers to the puzzle type, so I’m posting the puzzle image below the PDF anyway, so the experienced solvers can solve it directly.

PDF – Fillomino_Instructive

Enjoy!

P488

Puzzle No. 484-487 : Polish Qualifier Puzzles [Ex-Contest]

Check this post for reference on this blog’s 3 main types of posts from now on. I’ll post smaller sets like this one here, and keep I’m hoping to start a patronage system of my own for bigger sets. More on that later.

Right, just about got this in today. I won’t be home over the weekend, so whether I get a sample of the Instructive tagged post out depends on getting an internet connection where I’ll be staying. I’ll be back on Monday though, so will have it up at latest by Monday night.

This set might seem to have some tough puzzles for a National qualifier (not finals), but I was told that there were many easy puzzles already. Two of the puzzles are types I saw in a book purchased from team Japan at the WPC. It is a collaborative work featuring Serkan Yurekli and many Japanese authors. I’ve changed one rule slightly for Heyawacky block (more an omission than a change) but I prefer it this way personally. Anyway, here they are. Enjoy!

Rules –

484 – Yajilin.

485 – Heyawacky Block – Blacken some cells so that all remaining cells must be connected orthogonally. Any single horizontal or vertical line of white cells cannot traverse more than one thick line. Numbers indicate the amount of black cells in that region. If there is no number, there can be 0 or more black cells. Inside each region, all black cells are connected orthogonally. But black cells must not be orthogonally connected beyond the border lines.

486 – Nurikabe.

487 – Snake BY – Draw in the grid a snake, not touching itself, even diagonally. Each outlined region must contain exactly 3 cells occupied by the snake. The regions that contain the head and the tail of the snake are marked by grey color.

P484

P485

P486

P487

 

Puzzle No. 483 – Arrow Sudoku [Daily League] + updates

A few things –

If you haven’t already, please like/tweet/comment for my blog here (if you like my puzzles of course). The blogging awards will be handed out in a public ceremony on the 9th of February (you can find out from the link how to attend if you want to) and some publicity for what we do is always a good thing.

The blog will now be divided into 3 main tags.

1 – Daily League – Medium to difficult mostly-variant Sudokus.

2 – Ex-Contest – Although I won’t be releasing everything I contribute to Championships free anymore (more on that later), I’ll release some of the smaller doses, like when it’s not enough puzzles to make up an entire set.

3. Instructive – I am working on a curriculum for puzzles, and as a result, I feel the need to put some easy puzzles and some preview of tips and so on, without giving the entire content away of course.

I will be linking to this post in the future for reference about the tags. Hopefully I’ll post 2 and 3 tomorrow and day after itself to give a full view of the plan going forward, but can’t be sure of that as I have travel coming up. Definitely within the week.

Now to to the Daily League.

First, PDFs!

The League of Extraordinary Ladies and Gentleman_week01_2014

The League of Extraordinary Ladies and Gentleman_week02_2014

The League of Extraordinary Ladies and Gentleman_week03_2014

Remember that you can solve the puzzles from the League online on the Sudokucup Guest League page with a 24h delay.

Rules – Follow regular Sudoku rules. Additionally, the number in a circle is the sum of the digits which are covered by its arrow. For circles with multiple arrows, apply the rule for each arrow separately.

Enjoy!

P483

Update

I’m now a contributing Puzzlemaster at Grandmaster Puzzles. This obviously raises questions about this blog and whether I’ll continue posting as usual (not that I’ve been posting as usual recently anyway) here. Realizing that a post about any plans would just get lost in a pile soon enough, I’ve simply updated my About the Blog page to address this matter. That should cover everything.

I hope everyone enjoyed my debut week on GM Puzzles, even though many of you figured out it was me before the introduction puzzle. 🙂

Puzzle No. 482 : Search 9 Sudoku [Daily League]

Another one from the Czech set I mentioned maybe 2 Daily League posts ago. I’m in a slight hurry, so I’ll post PDFs next week.

Remember that you can solve the puzzles from the League online on the Sudokucup Guest League page with a 24h delay.

Rules – Follow regular Sudoku rules. Additionally, each arrow points to the 9 in the respective row or column. The number in the cell with the arrow is the distance from the cell to the 9 in this row or column.

Enjoy!

P482

Puzzle No. 481 : Yajisan Kazusan

Realized I hadn’t put up a 2014 puzzle yet. This YK should do fine. It’s a genre where it’s relatively easy to get the number patterns the way you want.

Rules

Rated  – Medium.

Enjoy!

P481

 

Puzzle No. 480 : Kropki Sudoku [Daily League]

First, PDFs!

The League of Extraordinary Ladies and Gentleman_week51

The League of Extraordinary Ladies and Gentleman_week52

Remember that you can solve the puzzles from the League online on the Sudokucup Guest League page with a 24h delay.

Rules – Follow regular Sudoku rules. Additionally, if the difference between two cells is 1 then there is a white dot. If digit in a cell is the half from a neighboring cell then there is a black dot. The dot between two cells with 1 and 2 can have any of these two colors. All possible dots are given.

Rated – Medium.

Enjoy!

P480