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

 

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Puzzle No. 420 : Heyawacky

Oh btw, I placed 2nd in the Times Sudoku Championship National finals here in India, with Rishi Puri winning it, Rohan Rao coming in at 3rd and Jaipal Reddy completing the top 4.

There were a few articles covering us, I’ll just post the ones related to the finals – here (Times of India, 1st page of Times Sport)  and here.

The rounds themselves were nicely organized by LMI, with the 1st round being a sprint round of 6x6s (classics and mostly variants), the 2nd round just 9×9 Classics, the 3rd round had 9×9 variants and the 4th round was a piece-placement type mechanical round. It was all great fun, especially since I was competing against 2 of the best Sudoku solvers in the world in Rishi and Rohan. I goofed up bad on the 1st round and so did Rohan (even worse). Rishi was super consistent throughout the 4 rounds. Rohan made up a lot of his deficit in round 2 and a little more in round 3, and I had an excellent round 3, meaning we were all really close come the final round, which didn’t have much separation unless one of us didn’t finish it at all. We all finished, and so there wasn’t much change by that round. In the end, I tied with Rohan, but the 3rd round was prioritized and since that was the round where I excelled, I ranked ahead of him. Rishi was a little further ahead.

So to the puzzle. This Heyawacky has quite a tricky start. After the tricky start, there isn’t a whole lot to it, but still a good flow to the end I think.

Heyawacky rules.

Rated – Medium.

Enjoy!

P420

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. 347 – 349 : More UKPA tournament puzzles

It just shows how lost in other things I am, that I actually missed an entire round that had 3 more puzzles of mine. I only realized now while quickly solving through the rounds. The puzzle quality in general is superb. Refer to the previous post for a link to the forum topic where all the puzzles are posted.

Out of these 3, 2 I think are the hardest ones of the set I sent. I guess its appropriate they were used in the team round. The Odd Even Heyawacky requires a lot of thinking of patterns, and the Dotted wall, is just an unfamiliar type with some tricky deductions. The Yajisan Kazusan though, I don’t think is that hard. People who’re used to solving these will find it fine enough until a pause moment near the end, if I remember right. There were 6 more puzzles I sent that’ll be used at a later time. My personal favorites of the set are among those 6.

Anyway, Enjoy! Next post, Tuesday Sudoku.

P347 : Dotted wall – Reading from left to right, top to bottom, every Nth shaded cell is marked by a dot. N is a constant value that needs to be determined by the solver. The shaded cells must form a contiguous wall. No 2×2 group of cells can be entirely shaded. The number at the top of the clue gives the number of shaded cells around it, and the number at the bottom gives the number of dots around it.

P348 : Odd Even Heyawacky – Shade in some cells. No two shaded cells should be adjacent, and all of the unshaded cells should be in one contiguous region. There may never be a horizontal or vertical line of unshaded cells that crosses two thick boundaries. An O in a region means there are an odd number of shaded cells in that region. An E in a region means there are an even number of shaded cells in that region (including zero).

P349 : Yajisan Kazusan – Shade in some cells. Shaded cells cannot be orthogonally adjacent. The remaining white area has to be connected. The clues indicated the number of shaded cells in the direction of the arrow. The clues that are unshaded must be true. Once shaded, a clue is irrelevant.

P347

P348

P349

Puzzle No. 316 – 336 : Polish Championship set

I’d mentioned a few posts earlier, that I’d contributed some puzzles to the Polish Championships this year. There was an offline qualifier, an online qualifier, the finals, and the playoffs. I think there was a good share of my puzzles in all 4 of these rounds. Its pretty confusing which was used where, since I’ve not organized it that well in my folders, so I’ll just post all the themed ones together (as mentioned in that post linked to above, the online qualifier had puzzles that I used simultaneously elsewhere and were more of a hurried solution).

The theme I was working on should be pretty obvious on seeing all the puzzles. It started with the easier Tapa, which I made completely by accident while writing a bunch of newspaper puzzles, and then I just tried a similar thing with the Corral and that happened quickly too. So, just decided to go along with it, discarded those two from the newspaper bunch and started off the Polish set with them. I couldn’t really try and retry the puzzles to get the exact appearances I wanted, and this is apparent from the 2 LITS and the Killer Sudoku among other ones. The LITS is of course something difficult that I set myself to do in a pretty short timespace, as both LITS were required hurriedly for the qualifiers, and to make it have duplicated regions throughout on the first try seems almost impossible, at least for me.

Anyway, here they are. As with the Zeka set, rules are either linked to by the puzzle names or just added here. These puzzles have varying difficulties, but I don’t think anything was exceptionally hard.

Enjoy!

P316 – ABC Box – Fill the grid with letters A, B and C. The clues outside give the sequence of letters in that row or column. If the clue is a number, that is the number of times a letter appears in that position of the sequence (Which letter is determined while solving). If the clue is a letter then that letter appears in that position of the sequence (The number of times it appears continuously is determined while solving). A “?” means that an unknown letter is appearing an unknown number of times in that position of the sequence.

P316

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P317  : Akari.

P317

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P318 : Corral.

P318

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P319 : Country Road.

P319

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P320, 321 : Fillomino.

P320

P321

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P322 : Heyawacky.

P322

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P323 : Killer Sudoku 8×8 – Follow regular sudoku rules. Additionally, the numbers at the top left of a cage gives the sum of numbers in that cage. Numbers cannot repeat in a cage.

P323

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P324, 325 : LITS

P324

P325

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P326 : Masyu

P326

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P327 : Pentasight

P327

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P328 : Pentopia

P328

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P329, 330 : The Persistence of Memory

P329

P330

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P331 : Regional Yajilin

P331

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P332, 333 : Tapa

P332

P333

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P334 : Tapa Skyscrapers

P334

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P335 : Yajilin

P335

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P336 : Yajisan Kazusan

P336

Puzzle No. 294 : Product Heyawacky

Daily League update –

Little Killer Sudoku by Rishi on Thursday.

Odd Sudoku by Tom on Friday.

Scattered Sudoku by Bram on Saturday.

Multiplication Table Sudoku by Kwaka today.

I’ve been trying out some variations recently, which has resulted in many incomplete puzzles. I liked this one though, so finished it. There’s nothing too tricky about the puzzle, just the allowance for the variant related deductions.

Follow Regular Heyawacky Rules. Additionally, the number at the top left of a cage is the product of shaded cells in each different region within the cage.

Enjoy!

P294

Puzzle No. 270,271 : A Copy Sudoku and a Copy Heyawacky

Firstly, a daily league update :

Yesterday was Bastien‘s day, and he provided quite an amazing Arrow Sudoku for us to solve. Unfortunately, I got inadvertently lucky, and had an unbelievable time on it. But I’ll take it 😛 This Arrow Sudoku is difficult but comes highly recommended from our group as an excellent logical construction.

Today is Rishi‘s day and he’s posted a No Donkey Step Sudoku a while back. I’ve not yet solved it, but I’m sure it’ll continue the all round high quality of the league so far. Do check out those blog links and/or our facebook group to know more/contribute yourself either in solving or constructing.

Now, back to today’s post. I’ve had continual health issues, and couple that with working on a few sets, I haven’t had much time for posting here. I still want to keep the series going, so two easy ones today, but I tried to use the variation as much as I could.

Now these might just as well have been called Clone Sudoku but I like the name Copy, and also I like cages for solving convenience in the puzzle. Its been suggested to me to make the cages of different pairs into different colors but that might take a while doing, so if anyone else wants that feel free to ask and I’ll provide it in time.

For 270 : Follow regular Sudoku rules. Additionally, the same shape cages are copies of each other and must contain the same digits in the same positions (no rotations/reflections)

For 271 :  Follow regular Heyawacky rules. Additionally the same shape cages are copies of each other and if a position is shaded in one it has to be shaded in the other too (no rotations/reflections)

Enjoy!

P270

P271

Puzzle No. 257 : Heyawacky

Happy New Year everyone! A year ago, on Jan 1st, I posted my first puzzle, a childishly easy, non-square grid Heyawacky. I had this target of putting up a puzzle a day since I had no clue how things would go. Now I know how things went and how they’ll go from here. Considering (Newspaper + blog + Contests), I wrote quite a lot of puzzles in my first year (roughly triple the blog number). It was maybe quantity above quality and by the end of the year, I must confess I burned out and pretty much lost the will to create any more half way into December.

So then, this year, I’ll mostly post like every 2nd day on the blog. That seems to be easy right now, so I’ll stick to it as far as I can. So anyway, full circle, and on the 1st Jan (well, its still 1st Jan in a lot of places even if its 2nd in India), I am posting another Heyawacky. Its highly probable that this one is slightly more challenging than last year’s 😉

Rules for Heyawacky.

Rated – Medium.

Enjoy!

P257

Puzzle No. 236 : Heyawacky [Untouch]

I think I’ve mentioned in some previous post that me and Deb co-authored a set for the 24 Hours Puzzle Championship. This Championship was held this weekend, and when I release the puzzles I welcome any feedback on it, including guessing who contributed what puzzle 😛 Anyway, the puzzles themselves will get released in due time, but for now, Congrats to Nikola Živanović for winning the competition this year.

To today’s puzzle then,

Follow regular Heyawacky rules. Additionally, regions having the same number of shaded cells can’t touch each other, even at a point.

Rated – Medium.

Enjoy!

P236

Puzzle No. 231 : Heyawacky

I haven’t created a Heyawacky for the sake of it in a long time.

Rules for Heyawacky.

Rated – slightly on the hard side.

Enjoy!