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. 422 : Yajilin

Today’s puzzle is tricky. It just about makes a hard because this looping logic still isn’t commonplace in my opinion, even though regular blog-solvers in general should find this nearer to medium.

Follow Yajilin Rules (linking to Grandmaster Puzzles because this has the similar gray cell layout).

Rated – Hard.

Enjoy!

P422

Puzzle No. 377 : Yajilin

Been such a long time since I posted a  (Non-regional) Yajilin. You’d have to go all the way back to my Polish set if I’m not mistaken.

Anyway, LMI hosts May Puzzle Test, Deception this weekend. It features some known, some not so common puzzle types with a little deceptive variation. The author is Ivan Koswara, better known as chaotic_iak.

Anyway, the puzzle below has a few places that’ll definitely need you to stop and think.

Rules for Yajilin. The blank gray cells are just clue cells without any numerical indication. The loop cannot pass through them and black cells can be adjacent to them.

Enjoy!

P377

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. 260, 261 : An Anti-Knight Sudoku and an Anti-Knight Yajilin

My 2nd Sudoku and a variant puzzle.

With the Sudoku I was trying for as less digits as possible in the middle columns, but I started creating by placing the 2 digits there. I wanted to keep it just to those 2, and it works out nicely. There’s no really hard step, but because of a narrow solve path, I’ll call it a medium.

The Yajilin is just a little variant I tried while thinking of a puzzle I can compliment this post with. The two types I thought of were Heyawake and Yajilin. I went with the latter as I’d posted a Heyawacky less than a week ago. It worked out well enough, and the variant forces quite a lot of the solve, so half the clues just had to be there as dud cells, and didn’t need to offer anymore information. I’m happy enough with how it turned out, and it should be pretty easy.

For 260 – Rules for Sudoku. Additionally, same digits cannot be a knight step (referring to chess) away from each other.

For 261 – Rules for Yajilin. Additional to filled cells not being adjacent, they also can’t be a knight step away from each other. The given gray cells are just numberless clues, and neither adjacency nor antiknight rules apply to them, its just that the loop cannot pass through these cells.

P260

P261

Puzzle No. 247-256 : Chinese Beginners’ Puzzle Contest

Between writing puzzles for the Polish Championship, preparing for a Sudoku Workshop I’ll be conducting this Saturday, the usual solving side of things, and the fact that its submissions time in college, I’ve been way too busy again. If you still haven’t tried, today is the last day of the December Edition of LMI Beginners’ Sudoku Contest. The author is Tom Collyer and the variants are Untouch, Killer, Outside, Anti Knight, along with the 4 Classics as usual.

Coming up this weekend is the 3rd LMI Screen Test. This one’s a bit different from the last 2, but similar in concept. There are 30 6×6 Sudokus to be solved with all kinds of variations. The solving will all be on the online interface, with no pdfs. The duration is 60 minutes of solving time (not counting the 15 seconds to read instructions that can be ended manually). The designer is Deb Mohanty.

While I’m at it, I’m looking for a team to join in the Croco Liga. Any takers?

Anyways, today’s post is just the 10 puzzles I sent for the Beginners’ Puzzle Contest hosted at the Sudokufans site, and also, I am told, an offline event in Beijing. The requirement was 10 easy/medium puzzles of 5 different genres. The genres, in order, are Yajilin, Tapa, Norinori, LITS, Bosnian Road. Click on the puzzle names for rules.

Enjoy!

Puzzle No. 234 : Myopic Yajilin

The November edition of LMI Beginners’ Sudoku Contest is here! Its started earlier today, and will go on for a week as is the norm. With last month’s format changes, you can submit the solutions any time over the week and still get half  the points at least. This time’s author is Fred Stalder, and its a really fun set including new variants like Outside and No Knight Step, in addition to Classics and 2 of last month’s variants, Toroidal and Consecutive.

To today’s puzzle, I think the Myopia clue-type can be used in many puzzles. I was thinking at first to create a Tapa variant with it, but I got another idea later which I wanted to use with Tapa. So that one will probably be up tomorrow. For now,

Follow regular Yajilin rules. Instead of the number-arrow clue structure,  the clues point in the directions (orthogonally as well as diagonally) where the shaded cells are closest.

Rated : Medium.

Enjoy!

P234

Puzzle No. 211 : Tapa/Yajilin, and Announcement – Borders & Beyond!

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

Puzzle No. 211 V-2

Puzzle No. 201-207 : Di… Practice Puzzles

Update – Thanks to Bram for pointing out that the Diayajilin actually works without the added arrows.

Right then. I haven’t posted all week since I’ve not been well. This basically meant I’m behind all my plans by 2 days, and seeing as I’m traveling for a week from Sunday, that leaves me really less time to do everything I want to. So anyway, this was the best I could force out in the little time I had. Some of the puzzles have quick fixes, one of the Yajilins has a segment given, and there are some other places where I decided to experiment a little like the Division fleet. Anyway, practice is practice, and for what its worth, here they are. It’d be weird to post these after the test anyway, and weirder to just put them away. You can find some others from other sources on the Discussion thread for Di… Anyway, I actually made a Diagonal variant of Yajilin a long while ago here. Its got some different formatting but I think the rules are pretty much the same. I must thank my testers Tom and Murat Can Tonta for getting this done so fast. I have tons of things left to do. I shall resume posting on the 7th/8th September mostly, and will mostly have a good announcement lined up too 🙂

So in order, the below puzzles are – Diayajilin(2), Disposition(with Fleet), Diversion, Diversion without Borders, Division(with Fleet), Dioxides(with 21 Os atoms, though I don’t see how that affects the solve anyway). All rules taken from the IB here. Unlike my usual style, all rules are below the respective puzzles.

Enjoy!

Diayajilin – Blacken some cells so that you can draw a single closed loop through all remaining white cells. Black cells cannot be adjacent to each other. The loop cannot touch or cross itself. Each number in the grid shows how many black cells can be seen in the direction of the arrow. Numbered cells cannot be blackened. Addendum – A loop segment is given in one of them. Also, clues pointing in two directions indicate that many number of black cells for each of the directions, and not the sum of them.

 

Disposition – Place the given fleet following the grid lines. Ships cannot touch each other even diagonally and cannot occupy cells with digits. Each number in the grid shows how many ships (Rectangles or Squares) are located in the horizontally, vertically and diagonally adjacent cells. Addendum – “?” is a digit not given to you, so it basically just means that there’s no ship segment on that cell.

Diversion – Each number in the grid shows how many mines are located in the horizontally, vertically and diagonally adjacent empty cells. The object is to reveal all the mines in the grid, providing that a cell can contain only 1 mine. Mines cannot occupy cells with digits.

Diversion without Borders – Cut the grid into 1×2 rectangles. Each number in the grid shows how many mines are located in the horizontally, vertically and diagonally adjacent empty cells. The object is to reveal all mines providing that a 1×2 rectangle can contain only 1 mine. Mines cannot occupy cells with digits.

Division – Place the given fleet and 20 mines into the grid. A cell can contain only 1 mine. Each number shows how many parts of ships OR how many mines are located in the horizontally, vertically and diagonally adjacent empty cells. Mines and ships cannot occupy digits. Ships cannot touch each other and cells with mines, not even diagonally.

Dioxides – Place letter “s” in 21 cells with letter “O”. Cells with Os(Osmium atom) cannot touch each other, not even diagonally. These, along with 2 other oxygen atoms O, will form 21 Osmium dioxides with either a 180 degree turn at the Os atom, or a 90 degree turn. i.e. atoms can’t be connected diagonally. Addendum – Test puzzle will have 27 wherever 21 is above.

Puzzle No. 195 : Yajilin [Domino]

I realized all too late that this type, by definition, requires either an even dimension or a central clue to keep the symmetry. There’s really no time to go back to the central part and fix it, so I’ll put it up anyway.

There seems to be some problem with wordpress right now, so no formatting of this post.

Rules – Shade some cells, and then draw a single closed loop passing through all the remaining cells. Every shaded cell has exactly one shaded cell adjacent to it. The clues give the number of shaded cells(not number of pairs) in the direction of the arrow.

Rated : Hard due to a first time, and because I myself had a bit of difficulty getting out of the normal Yajilin mentality for it.

Enjoy!

Puzzle No. 195