I promise to use uniform arrow patterns from the next effort, I just wanted to mimic a certain pattern here.
Anyway, follow regular Tapa rules. Additionally, black arrows mean there are an even (non-zero) number of shaded cells in that direction, and white arrows mean there are an odd number of shaded cells in that direction.
I’m sleepy. I’ll rate this at Easy.
Enjoy!
P235
After the WSC, we had a night of mild puzzle-racing, I say mild because I wasn’t participating of course 😛 We had a team of Vasso(Greece), Kamer(Turkey) and Jason(USA) vs Tom(UK), Gaurav(India) and Bram(The Netherlands) battling it out on connected Sudokus from a book given by Yuhei(Japan).
The next day, in the play-offs part, I don’t think I can add anything to motris’ post, so I’ll just say, I felt really sorry for Jakub’s plight, and I then had a feeling of “what the hell is happening” as the top two battled it out for 15-18 minutes on an Irregular Diagonal grid. I think a lot’s been said about that too on Melon’s post, so I’ll just leave these things, Congratulate Jan, Kota and Hideaki again, and move to the recreation day after the playoffs.
The first thing we had was a tour to Rijeka with a tour guide who had a really nice accent, and was definitely more religious than the other tour guides, going by the extended time we spent in the Church and all compared to the other groups. Apparently there was a monk in one of them, just to my right, and I missed that, instead talking to Jason Z about how temples are slightly different. It was a day for discussions.
I then had a long and interesting talk with Richard Stolk from the Netherlands about authoring in general, authoring an LMI test, and other things. It was nice to talk to someone whose puzzles I really enjoy solving, and also whose two LMI tests were probably among my favorites in this year.
After this, and a brief bragging session of my Team round exploits to a lovely audience, I met Nikola Z from Serbia, and had an interesting talk with him about puzzles and sudokus and the WSC-WPC in general. I was a bit sad Branko C couldn’t come with the Serbian team too, as I wanted to meet people I’d corresponded with in the past. This was all going on as the tour drew to a close.
While walking back to the bus I found myself in the midst of 2 Englishmen and an American discussing the two kinds of footballs and I joined in as I at least follow one “football” being a big fan of Manchester United. After a little discussion about this and that in the Premier League, we were in the bus to Jelačić Square where we would be left to wander along and find our own way for some time. It was here that I had the longest discussion of the day with Thomas S (motris).
The discussion was 10 % about how drunk Tom C can get and how useless Jason Z is, but the other 90% of the time we were discussing play-offs and WPF and organization of the Championships. He’s been pretty outspoken about his views, and I must say I agree with a lot of them. A few points I agreed on were that the playoffs this time didn’t give enough advantage to the top solvers, and also the Sudoku part was a bit mismanaged(as the WPC was yet to come, this was the only evidence we had) and that the play-offs can be kept as a separate attraction(he gave me an example of Antalya where something like this happened). If not as a separate thing, maybe you can keep it as a Round 14 for example, this time, where it just added to the existing points. You have your audience attraction but you’re also not telling someone who’s solved 100s of puzzles that he could get knocked out based on 1 puzzle instead. The Play-offs as an aspect of puzzling sound better than a final judge for puzzling.
So anyway, after all this we went for dinner, where I sat around the huge middle table with the US team and Tom. The experience was really interesting as we ended up solving some Count the Triangles puzzle among other things. It was nice to meet Anderson who I later practically commanded to upload a puzzle upon his return. I’m glad he has, and he better keep things slightly active now 😛 At dinner, my main conversation was with Todd G about general stuff, and with Jason Z about women in India (yea, that was interesting).
During dessert, and after the Sudoku prizes were handed out, 2 Greeks, Iliana G and Antony F, joined our table, and started solving some classic puzzles. Well, mainly Iliana was solving, Antony was coaching. I joined in the coaching, while getting another chance to brag about my Team exploits, as these were 2 members of Greek B, the team that I beat single handedly. But after introducing myself to them, Iliana practically did all my bragging for me! At this point Thomas was to my right explaining to two people how to create a Sudoku. I think he’s had a blog post for that too. So I had 1 eye on Iliana and her puzzles, the other eye on dessert, and the other eye on Thomas creating and explaining a Sudoku. No wait.. thats not right.
After dinner, the bus back was spent solving Frame Sudokus in an Akil Oyunlari with Joshua Z from USA, and that was quite nice, as Frame Sudoku is one of the variants I like. I’d like to think I helped him a lot with them 😛 We then had the WPC Doubts session where I was half asleep, but managed to listen to all the doubts somehow. Vasso asked an interesting question about offsides in the football puzzle. We should have a Referee in that thing.
Thats all for the 3rd day. My Puzzle link to this is the Even variation Tapa. Most of the day went in discussing the formats, and fairness, and all that, so I thought its apt. If it isn’t, sue me. I have all of no money at all. When the WPC had a Tapa variant that was obviously my first choice to go for. I was doubtful about the Even variation but after creating the 3 puzzles I realized that a lot of fun can be had here. Unfortunately, I think the WPC Puzzle didn’t use the variation enough. It was a nice puzzle, don’t get me wrong, but it was just kind of a huge sized easy puzzle that I finished in under 3 minutes, and you’re expecting more for a really high weight-age puzzle.
Anyway, this one is a PDF Link, as I don’t have it in PNG format. The link is below. I think I should clarify that the ?s can’t be zero, as that was asked by one of the people who tested these.
Enjoy!
Firstly, I can now announce that I will be authoring an LMI puzzle test for the first time. The contest, called Borders & Beyond, features puzzle types where the grid is divided by borders in some way. I could just call it Regional variations but then I think the borders tag is more apt for puzzles like Parquet, etc. Anyway, this test will be held from September 15th-17th. The link for discussion is here. The test page is here. I encourage all puzzle enthusiasts to participate, especially if you’ve taken a liking to the puzzles on this blog.
Coming to today’s puzzle, this was also done on the week’s trip like the previous 3, I’m just posting it separately because its a first time hybrid and I wanted it to have its own space. So anyway, I was thinking about Mad Max Tapa in a TVC this year and I thought, why not a Yajilin mix. I’m sure people must have thought this before, and maybe even tried it, and maybe even been successful. But if they have I haven’t seen that and I’d love to see any existent work. It seems an interesting combination.
Below, there are 2 puzzles. They both have very similar solutions. The 2nd one below is actually the original. I then decided to modify it to exclude the red clues part. The resultant puzzle is the first one. The first one is rated easy. The 2nd one is rated hard. To really make it challenging, try to just consider red clues as clues without the anti-tapa restriction given below. i.e. they only function in the yajilin part and nothing else.
Rules – Shade in some cells to form a continuous wall. Unshaded cells cannot be orthogonally adjacent(an unshaded cell can be adjacent to a clue cell, even though a clue cell can’t be shaded). No 2×2 group of cells can be fully shaded. The clues have a double function. The Yajilin part, which gives number of unshaded cells in the direction of the arrow. And the Tapa/anti-Tapa part – The black clues mean that there is at least one block of cells of that number around that clue cell(there can be other blocks of different numbers too. e.g. a “3” clue can function as a 3-2 or a 3-1-1 or a 3-3 of regular Tapa). The red clues mean that that a block of that number of cells cannot exist around that clue cell.
If you do not like the grey clue layout, you can use a white fill clue layout here and here.
Enjoy!
Puzzle No. 211 V-1
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
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).
Enjoy!
Puzzle No. 196
Puzzle No. 197
I’m done with almost all the other-place puzzles, so figured I’d start posting again here. I didn’t know what to return with, so nothing fancy, just two average puzzles I felt like doing. I’ll just ease back in with the familiar types while I get back to the normal frequency 😛
Anyway, the first LMI Beginners’ Contest just got over. It had some excellent participation stats with 315+ participants out of which around 200 were Indians. The next Beginners’ Contest shall be announced soon in August, so watch out for that. The next LMI test on the schedule though, is this weekend, Classics vs Innovatives. This features some really interesting new Sudoku Variants along with some familiar ones. I suggest even the participants who were new to the Beginners’ Contest can do this, since I figure you can target the one Classic Sudoku as well as the familiar variants in the 2 hour duration.
Now to the puzzles. Like I said, nothing fancy. I give both a rating of around or just under medium.
Enjoy!
P182 – Rules for Masyu.
Puzzle No. 182
P183 – Rules for Tapa.
Puzzle No. 183
I see that July 5th was the last time I posted. A lot’s happened since then. I stopped my ridiculously bad run of errors in the LMI Copy Paste test, had a more than decent performance in Fred’s novel Heads or Tails tournament, but still managed to have a bad bad day in the competition that mattered most this month – the Times Sudoku Championship.
The finals are this Sunday, and I’m quite disappointed to say I didn’t make it. The Mumbai rounds were highly competitive, and since the sudokus were mostly easy, one mistake cost a lot as there were numerous people finishing them before time and getting bonus points. As it so happens, I ended up making not one mistake but 3. The first round consisted of 6x6s, and anyone who finished 7 out of the 8 in the given 15 minutes would advance to the next round. And thus, 1500-2000 participants got cut down to 108. The next 2 rounds consisted of first 4 classics and then 4 variants in 30 minutes each. In the classics round, I finished 3 of them in 6 minutes, and was looking at a hefty bonus. But the remaining one turned out to be pretty tough, and I must have kept repeating a mistake somewhere because thrice I thought I’d finished it, and found a repeat somewhere.
This meant I knew I had to go for broke in the variants round. The variants consisted of Trio, Odd Even, Alphabet, Diagonal. I made a mistake in Trio and thought I’d corrected it, so went on to finish the round in 11 minutes, 2 minutes slower than Rohan Rao’s 9 minutes which was the fastest time for the round. I had a projected score at 71 points. It turns out this would’ve been enough to take me to the finals, but due to a silly mistake in the Trio(For some inexplicable reason I’d changed a correct solution into a wrong one thinking the other way round) and 2 unfilled cells in the Alphabet, I lost those points and my bonus, which kicked me all the way down to 14th. So.. I’ll have to wait for next year to be on the Indian Sudoku team again. Good thing I’m at least on the Puzzle team.
Now to the present. This blog hasn’t had an update in a while. This is because I’ve been preparing puzzles for something else which has also gotten delayed due to the above. But anyway, I had a bet with a friend recently, and made some quick easy Tapas to win it. The bet should vaguely become apparent looking at the puzzles. Just thought I’d while away a day or two more by uploading these, since I didn’t know exactly what else to do with them. These are below.
Moving on, there’s an LMI monthly puzzle test this weekend. Logirace features known and new loop-types. All loop fans should enjoy this one.
Also, I’m not numbering these, not sure why. Maybe because most of them are really easy. They’re in the order in which I made them, if that is of any interest. Enjoy!
Sudoclones is over, but my bad run isn’t. The grids of Sudoclones were very enjoyable, with a difficult theme carried out quite impressively. My favorite was the Little Killer, though I wasn’t able to solve during the contest.
Now, the next LMI monthly test is this weekend itself, and it is a similar theme, as it coincidentally happens that two authors thought of it simultaneously. Richard Stolk’s Copy-Paste features pairs of grids with the same givens that solve differently. So, if you missed Sudoclones but really would’ve enjoyed such a theme, this is for you. If you played Sudoclones and inevitably liked it, this is for you.
Today’s puzzle is a Tapa variant. I have once again successfully made a variant I don’t really know what to name and therefore called it the third name I came up with O.o
Follow Tapa Rules. Additionally, the cells that are not part of the wall, and not clue cells, must have at least one other such cell horizontally or vertically adjacent to them. i.e. there can be no isolated non-wall+non-clue cell.
Rated : Medium.
Enjoy!
Puzzle No. 181
Name’s a bit week.
Anyway, Follow Tapa rules.
Additionally, every shaded cell must have at least one diagonally adjacent shaded cell.
Bit of a pain to check the solution for this, but got there in the end. Also messed up the layout, and believe it or not, realized this only when I uploaded it 😐
Rated : Medium.
Enjoy!
Puzzle No. 177
PS's puzzles + 