Puzzle No. 500 – 9 Shady Masterminds [Special] [Marathon]

I thought quite a bit about what I wanted for my 500th puzzle here. There was a stage when I thought I’d just ignore the milestone and post something normal. Then I got a bit of an idea of a simple theme which might still give out a nice solve path with different logical deductions combining.

The puzzle that resulted from this idea is pretty narrow and quite difficult, according to my and Swaroop‘s test solving experiences. Still, I think its ended up being quite varied in the thinking required and I like how it turned out.

Unlike my usual approach of posting a single image, for this puzzle I am attaching a PDF instead. This PDF has 4 pages. The first page contains the puzzle. The 2nd and 3rd pages contain the rules (The length is just because there are 9 different puzzles to cover, but most of them are familiar and should just be a quick read-through). There are two newer puzzle types, and one variant which I couldn’t immediately find an example for, so I have added 6×6 examples for these three rule-sets. The remaining are all classics, so I’ve just linked to the respective page where I got the rules from, and you can visit these links if you want an example. If you are new here and haven’t seen those sites before, I suggest visiting them anyway for more great puzzles.

Here’s the PDF:

9 Shady Masterminds

Please let me know in the comments or by mail (prasanna16391@gmail.com) if you have any queries regarding the rules or any other issues.

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Puzzle No. 438 : Bosnian Road

Tapa Season (TVC, CTC) is past halfway and now getting really interesting at the top in both competitions. I’m really happy with my improvement this year from last year’s inconsistencies. Hoping to end well now. TVC XV is going on this weekend.

Nothing much to say about this puzzle. Just that I like the top opening, although its not that tricky to spot.

Rules

Rated – Medium.

P438

Puzzle No. 382-396 : Czech Puzzle Championship Puzzles

I think this was a set I wrote when I wasn’t that well. That’s not meant as an excuse, but as a warning – I tend to make things harder when I’m ill. However, some of these are also rejects from newspaper bunches for being not-too-easy (Heyawake for example) which means there’s some easy in there too. Unlike my previous puzzle set posts, I decided to find out a bit more this time, which basically means that I can add the points that were assigned to each puzzle. The Skyscrapers Pentomino was not used, but since it was not used for being too hard, I’ve simply valued it at points higher than any of the others.

The Championship had 5 rounds and then a playoff at the end. The first round had the largest time slot and so two of the hardest puzzles of my set, the Yajisan Kazusan and the Shakashaka were moved into that round. Two others, Heyawake and Multiplicative Corral were moved to the Playoff/Final. There’s no point valuing for these, but I’d put their difficulty around the LITS or the Country Road, something of a medium difficulty.

There were 25 participants, and Jan Novotný emerged as the winner, mainly by having a good playoff, as Matej Uher was ahead after the first 5 rounds (377.8 – 299.2). In fact, Jan was 4th before the playoffs, behind Jana Vodičková (332.5) and Jakub Hrazdira (306). Congrats to him, and the other qualifiers. For my round (the 4th round, valued at 110 points), the top scorers were Matej Uher (85), Jakub Ondroušek (77) and Jakub Hrazdira (62). I’m posting only my own puzzles but as a test solver for the event in general, I did have access to the other puzzles too, and the quality is quite high throughout. If you’re interested in knowing more, or you are a Czech/Slovakian interested in becoming a member of the HALAS Association (where I think you will gain access to all these puzzles), I’d suggest you contact Jiří Hrdina, who co-ordinated/organized this Championship.

Rules/links and points –

P382 : Bosnian Road (8 points).

P383 : Country Road (12 points).

P384 : Easy As Tapa (14 points) – Follow regular Tapa rules. Clues outside must be placed in the first unshaded cell in that row or column.

P385 : Fillomino (7 points).

P386 : Heyawake (Playoff puzzle).

P387 : LITS (12 points).

P388 : Masyu [Alternative] (4 points) – Follow regular Masyu rules. Additionally, the loop cannot pass two circles of the same colour continuously.

P389 : Multiplicative Corral (Playoff Puzzle) – Draw a single closed loop along the grid lines that contains all the numbered squares and does not touch itself, not even at a point. Each given number is the product of two numbers: the number of interior squares that are directly in line vertically with that number’s square (including the square itself) times the number of interior squares that are directly in line horizontally with that number’s square (again, including that square itself).

P390 : Nanro (14 points).

P391 : Norinori (5 points).

P392 : Product Heyawacky (25 points). Follow regular Heyawacky rules. Additionally, the number at the top left of a cage is the product of shaded cells in each different region, only pertaining to its area within the cage.

P393 : Shakashaka (40 points).

P394 : Skyscraper Pentomino (60 points?). (Edit – It should be noted that the puzzle in the link has “X” marks where pentominos can’t be placed, whereas the puzzle below has black cells denoting that)

P395 : Sum Skyscraper (9 points). Follow regular Skyscrapers rules. This skyscraper uses the digits 1~7. The numbers outside indicate the sum of the visible digits.

P396 : Yajisan Kazusan (40 points).

Now, the puzzles! Enjoy!

P382

P383

P384

P385

P386

P387

P388

P389

P390

P391

P392

P393

P394

P395

P396

Puzzle No. 297 – 312 : Zeka 2013 Puzzle Set

I realize I’m crossing 300 with this without the usual special puzzle, but with Puzzle Marathon coming up, I’m sure everyone will have their fill of special puzzles. I’ll make it up later sometime between 300 and 400. Anyway, this was a 1 hour set at the Croatian competition. I basically started off with trying 1 classic puzzle and one variant of it, but then some pairings are just similar genres. For the variants, I’ll just put the additional rules. The Classic puzzles have links to their rules, and some are fully described here. The difficulties are obviously varied but barring the Pentomino I can’t immediately think of anything particularly difficult. All puzzles tested by Bram De Laat.

Enjoy!

P297 : Bosnian Road.

P297

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P298 : Bosnian Road Odd Even – The clues only give the information that the number in that clue cell is either Odd (O) or Even(E). All the clue substitutions are non-zero.

P298

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P299 : Masyu.

P299

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P300 : Corral Masyu – The cells not visited by the loop must be able to reach the edge of the grid by being orthogonally connected to other such cells.

P300

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P301 : Hashi (Probably the easiest puzzle of the set) – Draw single or double straight lines between the circled numbers. The number in a circle indicates how many lines must end there. The lines must run horizontally or vertically and must not cross or branch off. All circles must be connected to each other; i.e. it must be possible to travel from any circle to any other circle following the lines..

P301

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P302 : Gokigen naname (Known as Slalom in some places like Croco Puzzle) – Draw exactly one diagonal line in each cell of the diagram. A number in some intersections of the grid lines denote how many diagonal lines end in this intersection. The diagonal lines must not form a closed loop.

P302

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P303 : Norinori

P303

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P304 : Trio Cut – Paint some cells to make some triminos so that each trimino will be cut twice by thick lines. Each region bordered by thick lines should have 3 painted cells.

P304

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P305 : Easy As ABC (Range – A-C)

P305

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P306 : Easy as ABC Untouch – Additionally, same letters cannot touch each other even diagonally. Range is A-D.

P306

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P307 : Nurikabe

P307

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P308 : Cipher Nurikabe – The numbers are replaced by letters. All instances of the same letter have same values and different letters have different values. Note that the rule says values, so one letter can stand for a multi-digit number too.

P308

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P309 : Tapa

P309

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P310 : Disjoint Groups Tapa – Additionally, clues in the same box cannot have the same position around them shaded. E.g. 2 clues in the same box cannot both have the cell directly above them shaded.

P310

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P311 : Pentomino – Place the 12 Pentomino pieces into the grid. They can be rotated and reflected. They cannot be placed in black cells. Two pieces cannot touch each other even diagonally. The numbers outside give the number of cells occupied by pentomino pieces in that row or column. Pentominos given at the end of the post.

P311

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P312 : Pentomino Areas – Instead of the numbers outside, the grid is divided into regions, each of which consists of exactly one entire pentomino.

P312

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Puzzle No. 259 : Bosnian Road

This is just a placeholder actually. I’ll be posting a puzzle sometime in the next 24 hours again as a temporary come-out of my new 48 hour schedule.

This weekend is the Contest titled Best of LMI Puzzle Test, featuring 2 puzzles from numerous past LMI tests from Nikoli Selection to Akil Oyunlari Magazine Competition. You can also still vote (for about another 2 days) for your favorite LMI Sudoku and/or Puzzle tests of 2012 here.

Ok, back to today’s puzzle, or placeholder puzzle. I was just experimenting on a numberless Bosnian Road. Of course, such gimmicks might border on boring sometimes, but I feel this may be a good basic version of the puzzle, kinda like a Simple Loop that uses a no touching rule instead of “all cells must be filled” rule. Anyways, this one isn’t much in terms of difficulty or quality as I was just getting an idea of how things work.

Rules for Bosnian Road

Rated : Easy.

Enjoy!

P259

Puzzle No. 247-256 : Chinese Beginners’ Puzzle Contest

Between writing puzzles for the Polish Championship, preparing for a Sudoku Workshop I’ll be conducting this Saturday, the usual solving side of things, and the fact that its submissions time in college, I’ve been way too busy again. If you still haven’t tried, today is the last day of the December Edition of LMI Beginners’ Sudoku Contest. The author is Tom Collyer and the variants are Untouch, Killer, Outside, Anti Knight, along with the 4 Classics as usual.

Coming up this weekend is the 3rd LMI Screen Test. This one’s a bit different from the last 2, but similar in concept. There are 30 6×6 Sudokus to be solved with all kinds of variations. The solving will all be on the online interface, with no pdfs. The duration is 60 minutes of solving time (not counting the 15 seconds to read instructions that can be ended manually). The designer is Deb Mohanty.

While I’m at it, I’m looking for a team to join in the Croco Liga. Any takers?

Anyways, today’s post is just the 10 puzzles I sent for the Beginners’ Puzzle Contest hosted at the Sudokufans site, and also, I am told, an offline event in Beijing. The requirement was 10 easy/medium puzzles of 5 different genres. The genres, in order, are Yajilin, Tapa, Norinori, LITS, Bosnian Road. Click on the puzzle names for rules.

Enjoy!

Puzzle 212-215 : Hungarian Championship Bosnian Roads

Firstly, Borders & Beyond is now over. You can find a Solutions booklet with my thoughts on the puzzles linked to in the forum here.

The coming weekend sees a short-duration test authored by Rohan Rao called 123GO, and yea, it is nice to have 2 Indians (well 2 guys from the same building, for anyone who doesn’t know yet!) authoring LMI tests in consecutive weekends. The test itself has 19 puzzles and is an 80-minute test so I suppose the puzzles will be of an easier difficulty than the ones in Borders & Beyond 😛 It looks to be a fun test and even though the WSC-WPC IBs are out, I think sparing 80 minutes on this one will be some good practice for the short-time rounds that will be there in the WCs.

So anyway, my break from creating is now over, but I first needed to get my 10 newspaper puzzles done today. I planned to do some more, including 1-2 for the blog, but I couldn’t get time as there is a festival going on here in India. Anyway, what I can do is display the puzzles I contributed to the Hungarian Championships on Zoltán Horváth‘s request. He has told me Zoltán Gyimesi has won both Hungarian Championships so Congrats to him and I look forward to meeting both Zoltáns and the rest of the Hungarian team in Croatia 🙂

Anyway, my mind’s wandering. He asked me if I could send 4 Bosnian Roads, and I was quite fine with that since I really like creating this genre.

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).

So here they are –

Puzzle 208-210 – Bosnian Road, Diagonal Neighbors Tapa, Domino Loop

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

Puzzle No. 196 and 197 : Bosnian Road, Tapa

Update : I was all ready to post this last night, but wordpress bailed on me again. Even now I had to go back to the base html to make the upload and post. Bah. 

Its been a mad few days. I am already exhausted with a hectic weekend ahead 😐 Anyway, I’ll upload whatever I can. I made these 2 quickly yesterday but as I said in the non-puzzle post earlier, there’s been a problem with wordpress.

Rated : Around easy and medium.

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 Tapa.

Enjoy!

Puzzle No. 196

Puzzle No. 197

Puzzle No. 188 : Bosnian Road

I did this kinda suddenly.

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).

Rated : Medium. 

Enjoy!

Puzzle No. 188