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. 449 : Nurikabe

Just a random Nurikabe with a pleasant theme.

Rules for Nurikabe

Rated – Medium.

P449

Puzzle No. 416 : Nurikabe

I’m back on my own laptop, and hopefully with no more problems to come, I’ve decided its about time I started my regular schedule again. I’ve also decided to stop keeping reserves. My laptop and an external hard disk have both stopped working in the recent past, and that just makes me too worried that my good puzzles could disappear without use, which is far worse than not being used for something special. I’ll get back to just backing my ability to write puzzle sets as and when needed.

So, here’s a Nurikabe that I’d written a good while ago.

Rules.

Rated – Medium.

Enjoy!

P416

Puzzle No. 411-414 : UKPC 2013 Puzzles

Edit: Congratulations to Neil Zussman from UK, the overall winner.

Following up from my non-puzzle post before this, I’m still not well folks. And my laptop’s still not fixed. Overall, not a good time. I’m just hoping everything becomes fine by the time the Championships come along.

Speaking of Championships, the UK Puzzle Championship was held recently, around the same time as the IPC. I contributed 4 puzzles to the UKPC. Two of these were fairly common types, Nurikabe and Corral. I had been doing many Kurotto and Yosenabe puzzles around this time, Yosenabe in particular seemed fresh, so I used that and themed a UK into it, adding to my other UK themed puzzle, the Corral. For the other puzzle, I actually wanted to do either a snake variant or a true-false type puzzle. As is usually the cases with me I just ended up combining both and we have True-False Snake.

Anyway, to the puzzles, (with points as they were awarded to each during the UKPC).

P411: Nurikabe. 15 points.

P412: Yosenabe – Move all circles, vertically or horizontally, so they enter the grey areas. Show the movement of a circle by an arrow, with the tip of the arrow in the first cell it enters of its grey area. Arrows can cross through grey areas if they need to reach a grey area beyond. The arrows do not bend, and do not cross other white circles or lines of other arrows. The number in a grey area must be equal to the sum of the numbers of the circles which enter the area. Empty grey areas may have any sum total, but at least one circle must enter each grey area. Example with solution. 20 points.

P413: Corral. 20 points.

P414: True-False Snake – Draw a snake in the grid of unknown length. The head and tail of the snake are given. The body of the snake cannot touch itself, not even diagonally. The numbers indicate the number of cells the snake visits in the direction of the arrow. If the snake does not pass through a clue cell, then that clue is true, otherwise, it is false. Example with solution. 40 points.

Enjoy!

P411

P412

P413

P414

IPC Preview – Practice, Solving Tips, Links

Update: Fixed the typo in Pentomino Kakuro. New PDF uploaded. No other change.

Update: There is an erratum published on the IPC site that says the 2×2 restriction applies to Happy Dots too. Since the practice puzzle in the PDF still gives a nice practice for placing the dots and forming regions, and only uses 2×2 regions minimally, it stays the same in the PDF. We’re sorry for the inconvenience. 

If you’re having trouble with some puzzles, seeing/adding to the discussion in the comments might help. (This also serves as a spoiler alert for those who want to work on the puzzles without help)

Right, took a while, but we’re finally there. If you’re still not aware, the Indian Puzzle Championship will be held on 7th July. Here are our (me and Swaroop) best efforts, with the main goal being to try to help the newer participants.

This PDF features –

1. Practice puzzles for B1, B2, C, D, E2, F1, F2, G2, I1, I2, J1, J2, K1, K2, L1, L2, M2.

2. Beginner-level solving tips for all the puzzles in the set.

3. Solutions to all the puzzles in the set.

4.  Links to other practice material, pattern guides, and other technical tips.

Link to PDF – Practice

Enjoy!

Puzzle No. 372 : Nurikabe [Windows]

Well, not exactly Windows. I’d made this variant in a slightly more restrictive way earlier which made it too easy, so wanted to use it a bit more this time. I wouldn’t call it difficult as such, there’s one tricky Nurikabe bit, and the rest goes smoothly enough.

Rules – Follow Nurikabe rules. Additionally, the 2 regions need to be negatives of each other. If a cell is determined as island part in one, its corresponding cell in the other region needs to be a stream part, and vice versa (rotations or reflections do not need to be considered).

Enjoy!

P372

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. 285-289 : Random College Test + Polish Online Qualifier

Daily League Update –

A beautiful Classic Sudoku by Bastien on Wednesday.

A Trio Sudoku for the easy sprint enthusiasts by Rishi today (Thursday).

I’ve been working on many sets recently. One of these is the Polish Championship set. There is one offline qualifier round and one Online qualifier that have been released so far. The final Championships is yet to happen, in March I think. When I was approached for this, I started mainly for the final set, and discarded the easier ones for the offline qualifier. However, the decision to hold the online qualifier was a bit impromptu. They had a shortage of puzzles to hold this. Around the same time, one of my friends here in India approached me to make a set of some quick easy puzzles for a competition in his college. Also, they had apparently forgotten to use my big LITS in the offline round. So the big LITS and 3 out of these 5 were used in the Polish online qualifier as well, as the dates were just after the college offline competition. I won’t be posting the big LITS here as I worked on a theme for all the puzzles meant for the original set, whether they got on it or not, and I’d like to post them together after the final round is over. However, if you’re the impatient kind (like me), here and here are the two qualifiers with the remainder of my puzzles (and some others by other authors).

But anyway, if you can wait for the main themed set in full, here are the easy puzzles that were used in 2 separate events. I did rush a bit through these though.

P285 – Rules for Nurikabe.

P286 – Rules for Simple Loop – Draw a single closed loop passing through every cell in the grid, except the given black cells.

P287 – Rules for Star Battle.

P288 – Rules for Double Back.

P289 – Rules for Masyu.

Enjoy!

P285

P286

P287

P288

P289

 

 

Puzzle No. 268, 269 : A Windoku and a Windokabe

This is a continuation of the Daily League on facebook, that has a new and improved name now – League of Extraordinary Ladies and Gentlemen 🙂 . After my Palindrome Sudoku, there was a Thermo Sudoku by Seungjae Kwak to end week 1. Since Kwaka has no blog of his own, at this point you have two options.

1) Wait for the pdf we will release with all the week’s Sudokus in it.

2) Visit the facebook group, of course.

Earlier today was the start of week 2, and its started of nicely with a Clone Sudoku by Fred Stalder that can be seen here. I will, henceforth, be providing daily league updates so you know the variants on each specific day and how best to reach them.

I have taken Tuesday, so this Windoku is part of that, I am posting it early as I’m a bit unwell so I’ll probably be away resting later on. The Windoku is probably on the easy side, and the puzzle variant is easy too.

For 268 : Follow regular Sudoku rules. Additionally, the shaded 3×3 boxes must also contain the digits 1-9.

For 269 : Follow regular Nurikabe rules. Additionally, if two cells in the same row/column are in the same position of their respective boxes, they must both be different (i.e. one stream and one island). e.g. In the puzzle below, R2C4 and R2C9 are 2 such cells, as they are the top right corner of their respective boxes and in the same row.

Enjoy!

P268

P269

Puzzle No. 233 : Nurikabe [Domino]

Uniqueness issue definitely fixed. Apologies. 

Just a reminder, Fugitive Warrant is still open for about 29 hours more. As for today’s puzzle, just felt like it. Nothing special.

Follow Nurikabe rules. Additionally, it must be possible to tile all of the shaded cells by nonoverlapping 1×2 dominoes.

Rated : Just about Medium.

Enjoy!

P233