Puzzle No. 172 : Tapa [Skyscrapers]

Rules for Tapa.

Additionally, numbers outside the grid show the number of separate wall segments visible in that direction. A segment of length n, is taken as a skyscraper of height n. Skyscrapers of length n can block visibility of other skyscrapers of length n and below.

I’m not overly happy with how this turned out, but I still like the start-up.  Had to change a great ending because of a slight contradiction, and ended up with this. Should be good for a first time variant anyway.

Rated : Easy.

Enjoy!

Puzzle No. 172

 

By Prasanna Seshadri Posted in Easy, Tapa

Its as easy as IPC (practice puzzles) (Part 1?)

I’m not numbering these simply because I don’t want to rush to 200 as I’m not ready with an idea for that 😛

These are puzzles that can be used for practice for the Indian Puzzle Championship and you can refer to the Instruction booklet provided on that link for better understanding of the rules with examples.. These are mostly around the difficulty I’ve generally seen at IPC, i.e. , around easy for experienced solvers, somewhere from medium to more for the first time solvers.

I’ve concentrated on types that are not on my blog already. You can see previous posts for Masyu, Slitherlink, Tapa, Graffiti Snake here and here.  I wasted a lot of today making a Liar Slitherlink only to find that I’d made a stupid error right at the start. Thats why only 6 puzzles, I hope to have either a Liar Slitherlink, or some other puzzles ready tomorrow, and Friday. Lets hope I get them working 😉

Anyway, obviously the heading suggests what I’m gonna open with.

As Easy As IPC

Enter the letters I, P and C, so that each letter appears exactly once in every row and column. Some cells will remain empty in each row and column. The letters outside the grid show the first seen letter from that direction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tapa Borders

Paint some empty cells to create a continuous wall. Numbers in a cell indicate the length of painted blocks on its neighboring cells. If a cell has more than one number, there must be at least one white cell between the blocks. No 2×2 squares can contain only painted cells. The borders between some cells may be thick or non existent. A thick border separating two cells means one is painted and one is not. Lack of a border means the 2 cells are either both painted or both white.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Battleships 

Locate the indicated fleet in the grid. Each segment of a ship occupies a single cell. Ships can be rotated but cannot be reflected. Ships do not touch each other, even diagonally. Some ship segments, or sea cells without ship segments, are given in the grid. The numbers outside the grid reveal the total number of ship segments in that row or column.

Note : The letters A, B, C may be equal or unequal, the only constraint I’ve added is that their sum equals 4. This is just to introduce first timers to the summing up logic that can be used sometimes in this type.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snake 

Locate a snake in the grid, whose head and tail are given. The snake does not touch itself even at a point. Numbers outside the grid indicate lengths of snake segments in the corresponding direction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Star Battle 

Place the given number of stars in each row, each column and each region. Stars cannot touch each other, not even diagonally.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colored Star Battle

I’m new to this type myself even as a solver, so the puzzle may leave a lot to be desired. Sorry about that. Although it should be an easy warm up for first timers, I do think the difficulty of the IPC one will be higher given the high points. Anyway,  Place the given number of stars in each row, each column and each region. Similarly colored stars cannot touch each other, not even diagonally. Some stars may be given.

Announcement : The Indian Puzzle Championship is a week away! Also, Puzzle No. 165 and 166 – A Tapa and a Yajilin

I think thats the longest title yet on this blog ^_^

Anyway, the Indian Puzzle Championship features among many others, some puzzles like Sudoku, Kakuro, Hitori, Slitherlink(Fences) that will be familiar to Indians.  This will be held on June 3rd, online, at 2 PM. I encourage all Indians to take part. I was 6th in my first IPC in 2010, so you never know how good you are till you try 😛

You can visit the main contest link with a PDF download of the instruction booklet here.

Any questions/doubts can be asked here.

If you’re new to the logicmastersindia site, you’ll have to register here.

Tapa is one of the types on the test, so you might as well use it for practice while you’re here 😉

Now to the puzzles.

Puzzle No. 165 : Tapa.

Rules for Tapa.

Rated : Medium.

Puzzle No. 165

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Puzzle No. 166 : Yajilin.

Rules for Yajilin.

Rated : Easy.

Puzzle No. 166

 

Puzzle No. 151 : Tapa

As I have mentioned before, Tapa’s my go to puzzle when I need to get something out super quick, and thats the case here. I need to sleep! 😐 Anyway, there are actually a few other reasons. One of them is that I actually like solving my own creations in this puzzle type, not really sure why thats not the case for others. The other reason is that I have a fascination with the amazing rate at which Serkan put out them Tapa puzzles for the CTC, and want to see if, even though I may be short on quality in comparison, I can produce these at the same rate.

Blah. To the puzzle now.

Rules for Tapa.

Rated : Medium probably..

Enjoy!

Puzzle No. 151

 

Puzzle No. 133 : Tapa

Yes I know I’ve been doing a little more Tapas lately, as I said, this is my go-to puzzle when I’m too busy. Will pick up on the variety again  by the end of April. Still, this should be one of my better ones.

Rules for Tapa.

Rated : Medium.

Enjoy!

Puzzle No. 133

 

Puzzle No. 129-131 : Yajilin, Tapa-Snake, Tapa

LMI April Sudoku test Killing time is there this weekend. Killer’s my favorite Sudoku type so I hope I do well! Also, nice to see Rishi back and an Indian authoring a test after a significant break 🙂

IB and submission link – http://logicmastersindia.com/M201204S/

The 3 puzzle post is for two reasons.

1. It took me till my 4th puzzle to create one that I felt was ideal to submit to my publishers.

2. I won’t be posting tomorrow. Mad weekend ahead.

On an unrelated note, I barely get time to post the puzzles, so anyone who wants to check the solutions and such can mail me at the id given in the “About the Blog” section and I’ll help you out.

Coming to the puzzles, the Yajilin is ok enough, I didn’t really get what I wanted there but it’ll have to do. The other two, I’m happy with the layout. I don’t know why but I really like to get equal sums here and there among the clue pairs and all… I should probably make some without this constraint, but heh.

All of these puzzles are rated somewhere between easy and medium so I’ll just categorize the entire post in both 😛

Puzzle 129 :

Rules for Yajilin.

Puzzle No. 129

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Puzzle 130 :

Rules for Tapa Snake(I went back to the snake variations contest and noticed that this is indeed the name of this variant) – Draw a snake, that doesn’t touch itself even diagonally. Clue cells with numbers may not be filled in and tell the length of each consecutive black cell block in the eight surrounding cells. Two cell blocks clued by two different numbers must be separated by at least one white cell. The head and tail are given as grey circles.

Puzzle No. 130

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Puzzle 131 :

Rules for Tapa.

Puzzle No. 131

Puzzle No. 124-125 – Tapa

Yea, so I just realized(took me long enough right?) that other than my birthday puzzles post, I haven’t made a non-variant Tapa at all. So just felt like doing them today. Why? Because they’re the easiest to make on inkscape right now in the short time left before I fully immerse into Digital Signal processing *damn you exams!*. For the 2nd one, I know Palmer’s made something similar, and I know I’ve messed it up a bit. Problem? I’m pretty happy with the 1st one though, with the symmetric clues having equal sums and all.

Rules for Tapa.

Rated  : Easy.

Enjoy!

Puzzle No. 124

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Puzzle No. 125

 

By Prasanna Seshadri Posted in Easy, Tapa

Puzzle No. 118-120 : Snake variants and a Nurikabe

Update : Nurikabe fixed. 

Right, so since I wasn’t in a mood to do anything for most of the day, and since I know I won’t get time later in the day, I knew I won’t be able to give any sort of quality today. Hence, 3 small, stupid, easy puzzles for you.

The first two are a variant of snake using Tapa clues. While I’m quite sure I’ve seen such a thing before(possibly in SVC), the most ones that have refreshed my memory on the variant can be found on Swaroop’s blog.

As such the rules are the same :

Draw a snake, that doesn’t touch itself even diagonally. Clue cells with numbers may not be filled in and tell the length of each consecutive black cell block in the eight surrounding cells. Two cell blocks clued by two different numbers must be separated by at least one white cell. <the last two statements taken from Melon’s Tapa description>. The difference from the ones on Swaroop’s blog however, is that mine don’t have the head and tail given. You need to determine those yourself.

Both rated easy.

Puzzle No. 118

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Puzzle No. 119

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now to the Nurikabe. Its meh.

Rules for Nurikabe.

The “?” is an island of unknown size. Its size will be forced.

Rated : Too easy.

Enjoy!

Puzzle No. 120