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.

Puzzle No. 400 : Fillomino [No Rectangles] [Big]

Rules – Follow regular Fillomino rules. Additionally, none of the polyominoes can form a rectangle.

Solution to this puzzle can be found here. Password – NRFillo.

Wait, why am I posting 400 before I find 399? I thought I said I’d find 399! And why am I linking to the solution to this puzzle? What’s wrong with me?!

Heh. Whatever. Enjoy! Once you solve this, be sure to check the solution. You know… for tallying purposes.

P400

Puzzle No. 399 : Norinori [Big]

Rules –  Shade in some cells such that every region contains exactly two shaded cells, and every shaded cell shares an edge with exactly one other shaded cell.

…

I seem to have lost the puzzle. Oops. I need to sleep now, I’ll search for and upload it within 9 hours.  Sorry folks.

Edit : I now seem to have misplaced the puzzle somewhere.. Maybe its somewhere in the next post…

Puzzle No. 313 : Knapp Daneben Tapa (Birthday Special)

Puzzle Marathon has now begun, and the Daily League Sudokus will now be available to solve on an online interface on Sudokucup. But, today’s not about all that 😉 Today’s about me being depressed that I’ve become one year older. And for that, here is a huge puzzle. Its the season for those after all, right?

Rules for Tapa. Additionally, all given clue numbers are either one more of one less than they should be. Therefore a 1 can mean a zero.

I have also put this into a PDF form, for those of you who find that more convenient.

Enjoy!

P313 PDF

P313

Puzzle No. 200 : Domino Loop [Marathon]

Did I really make a Marathon of a new hybrid? (Well at least new to this blog, and there’s a good chance that name’s been used elsewhere too, but I’ll stick with it till someone says so 😛 )

Anyway, quite many competitions this weekend.

1. USPC – This one, messed up bad. Long story short, I didn’t realize the test had started until there were just 50 minutes remaining. I submitted what little I could, and just couldn’t finish the Gapped Kakuro in time. I’ll be solving the rest of them later today sometime.

Also, Congrats to Thomas Snyder for winning his 6th title.

2. UKPC – I was just tired I think. Not at all happy with my performance. But, anyway, figured out a few of the new puzzle types on the spot so moderately satisfied with that. This one’s still going on btw. You can still participate for a day or so I think.

3. LMI Killer Shootout – This one’s complicated. I’m happy and not happy with how I did at the same time. Anyway, this one’s still going on too. Whole of Monday and Tuesday too.

Now back to the puzzle. I took a long time deciding what type I wanted to do for this one. Thats why, the few days delay in between 199 and 200. I finally settled on this, and I hope its fun. Its kind of a cross over between Norinori and Country Road.

Rules – 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.

Rated : Marathon.

Enjoy!

Puzzle No. 200

Puzzle No. 150 : Yajilin [Marathon]

Yay, this one works! ^_^

Rules for Yajilin. The grey cells should be taken as clue cells without numbers, as in the loop can’t pass through them, but they can have shaded cells adjacent to them.

Rated : Marathon.

Enjoy!

Puzzle No. 150

Puzzle No. 100 : The Great Wall of Puzzlania?

Yea I suck at titles.

Anyway, this is a triple decker puzzle(to signify going into 3 digits and all I suppose). A 10×10 LITS is embedded in a hollow 20×20 Tapa which is in turn embedded in a hollow 30×30 Nurikabe.

The regular Rules :

Each partition follows the respective rules.

1. LITS.

2. Tapa. As in my earlier Tapas, the “=-=” clue means both clues are the same number.

3. Nurikabe.

Combined Rules :

1. There is no LITS logic outside the 10×10.

2. Tapa clues include Nurikabe and LITS parts of the grid as well in their application.

3. Nurikabe islands can travel into the inside grids as necessary, and can even contain Tapa clue cells in them, which will also be counted as 1 cell in the island count. There can still be white cells that are not islands as long as they don’t travel into the Nurikabe grid.

4. Draw a continuous wall considering all the rules.

A note : The 42 can only go as far as is necessary from the givens.

Rated : Marathon.

Solution here. Password – GW

Enjoy!

Puzzle No. 100

Puzzle No. 62-82 : My birthday puzzles!

Because, even though I’m gonna be stuck in college on my birthday, doesn’t mean all of you shouldn’t enjoy yourselves. The regular readers of this blog will know, I’ve been struggling to even put up a single puzzle on most days. So in preparing this, obviously most would be easy, and some of them may even fall under the category of “Evil Zingers”. However, I do think quite a few of them are fun, and the last one is probably one of my best. Heh, anyway, you decide.

This set features my first attempt at a Liar Loop, and a non-variant Slalom. 🙂

Birthday Puzzles

Birthday Puzzles Solutions

That should do for today’s puzzle post I suppose. Enjoy!

Update : Apparently the PDF is crashing for some people. The error is for some reason that it requires a Japanese Fonts plug in. For what its worth, I downloaded the same and its completely fine. But of course, you may want an alternative, so I’m uploading just the PNG formats of all puzzles in the rar file, with a txt file for the rules and descriptions. The solutions PDF is fine I suppose.

21.rar 

Hope that fixes any issues. 🙂

Puzzle No. 50 : Akari [Marathon]

First of all, I fixed my puzzle 47 (Tapa Mosaic) yesterday. It solves fine now. My sincerest apologies to anyone who tried that and got the uniqueness issue.

Coming to today’s puzzle, I’ve always wanted to construct a marathon puzzle ever since I saw this. Just to be sure I got it done, I chose Akari for the first time. I’ve triple checked this, and I’m quite sure it works fine, but still, I’ve uploaded the solution too today itself, so you can check in case you go wrong.

Rules for Akari.

Rated : Marathon. Solution here. Password : FM

Puzzle No. 50

 

Puzzle No. 25 : Corral [25×25]

Yes yes, not very subtle to mention it in the title but I do believe the dimensions save some needless counting in Corral puzzles. Anyway, this wasn’t supposed to be today’s entry, but 25’s supposed to be some kind of a mini-landmark right? On a side note, I’ll post all the pending solutions and get up to date on 27th hopefully 🙂

Rules of Corral.

Rated : Marathon. Solution here. Password : 25.

Enjoy!

Puzzle No. 25