Realized I hadn’t put up a 2014 puzzle yet. This YK should do fine. It’s a genre where it’s relatively easy to get the number patterns the way you want.
Rated – Medium.
Enjoy!
P481
Puzzle No. 481 : Yajisan Kazusan
Category Yajisan Kazusan
Puzzle No. 382-396 : Czech Puzzle Championship Puzzles
I think this was a set I wrote when I wasn’t that well. That’s not meant as an excuse, but as a warning – I tend to make things harder when I’m ill. However, some of these are also rejects from newspaper bunches for being not-too-easy (Heyawake for example) which means there’s some easy in there too. Unlike my previous puzzle set posts, I decided to find out a bit more this time, which basically means that I can add the points that were assigned to each puzzle. The Skyscrapers Pentomino was not used, but since it was not used for being too hard, I’ve simply valued it at points higher than any of the others.
The Championship had 5 rounds and then a playoff at the end. The first round had the largest time slot and so two of the hardest puzzles of my set, the Yajisan Kazusan and the Shakashaka were moved into that round. Two others, Heyawake and Multiplicative Corral were moved to the Playoff/Final. There’s no point valuing for these, but I’d put their difficulty around the LITS or the Country Road, something of a medium difficulty.
There were 25 participants, and Jan Novotný emerged as the winner, mainly by having a good playoff, as Matej Uher was ahead after the first 5 rounds (377.8 – 299.2). In fact, Jan was 4th before the playoffs, behind Jana Vodičková (332.5) and Jakub Hrazdira (306). Congrats to him, and the other qualifiers. For my round (the 4th round, valued at 110 points), the top scorers were Matej Uher (85), Jakub Ondroušek (77) and Jakub Hrazdira (62). I’m posting only my own puzzles but as a test solver for the event in general, I did have access to the other puzzles too, and the quality is quite high throughout. If you’re interested in knowing more, or you are a Czech/Slovakian interested in becoming a member of the HALAS Association (where I think you will gain access to all these puzzles), I’d suggest you contact Jiří Hrdina, who co-ordinated/organized this Championship.
Rules/links and points –
P382 : Bosnian Road (8 points).
P383 : Country Road (12 points).
P384 : Easy As Tapa (14 points) – Follow regular Tapa rules. Clues outside must be placed in the first unshaded cell in that row or column.
P385 : Fillomino (7 points).
P386 : Heyawake (Playoff puzzle).
P387 : LITS (12 points).
P388 : Masyu [Alternative] (4 points) – Follow regular Masyu rules. Additionally, the loop cannot pass two circles of the same colour continuously.
P389 : Multiplicative Corral (Playoff Puzzle) – Draw a single closed loop along the grid lines that contains all the numbered squares and does not touch itself, not even at a point. Each given number is the product of two numbers: the number of interior squares that are directly in line vertically with that number’s square (including the square itself) times the number of interior squares that are directly in line horizontally with that number’s square (again, including that square itself).
P390 : Nanro (14 points).
P391 : Norinori (5 points).
P392 : Product Heyawacky (25 points). Follow regular Heyawacky rules. Additionally, the number at the top left of a cage is the product of shaded cells in each different region, only pertaining to its area within the cage.
P393 : Shakashaka (40 points).
P394 : Skyscraper Pentomino (60 points?). (Edit – It should be noted that the puzzle in the link has “X” marks where pentominos can’t be placed, whereas the puzzle below has black cells denoting that)
P395 : Sum Skyscraper (9 points). Follow regular Skyscrapers rules. This skyscraper uses the digits 1~7. The numbers outside indicate the sum of the visible digits.
P396 : Yajisan Kazusan (40 points).
Now, the puzzles! Enjoy!
P382
P383
P384
P385
P386
P387
P388
P389
P390
P391
P392
P393
P394
P395
P396
Puzzle No. 351 – 366 : Zagreb Open puzzles
I managed to somehow squeeze this set out in one day just before my exams started, right in the middle of the hectic submissions time in college. After that, Vladimir managed to squeeze in some time on that day itself to test these puzzles, so many thanks to him for that.
Rules all placed at the start of the post with the puzzles coming later (Trying a new format for posting, simply because its more convenient for me. The puzzle captions should aid you in knowing which rule is for what puzzle, but the ordering is the same as well, so it shouldn’t be much hassle either way.
Rules –
351 – Akari.
352 – Fillomino.
353 – Graffiti Snake.
354 – Heyawake.
355 – Japanese Sums – Place the digits 1-6 in some of the squares, so that no digit is repeated in any row or column. Sums on the outside indicate the sums of consecutive digits in that row or column, in order. Each sum is seperated by at least one empty square.
356 – LITS.
357 – Nanro – Write numbers in some cells of the diagram. All numbers in a region must be equal. The given number in a region denotes how many cells in this region contain a number (at least one). Same numbers must not be orthogonally adjacent across region boundaries. Numbered cells must not cover an area of size 2×2 or larger. All numbered cells must form a single orthogonally continuous area..
358 – Odd Even Skyscraper – In addition to Skyscraper rules linked to below, all outside clues that are shaded are odd. The rest are even. Range 1-6.
359 – Pentopia.
360 – Regional Yajilin.
361 – Shakashaka.
362 – Skyscrapers. Range 1-6.
363 – Tapa.
364 – Tents – Place a tent ortogonally next to each tree so that no two tents touch eachother, not even diagonally. Numbers on the outside indicate the amount of tents that are in that row or column.
365 – Walls Fillomino – Some region borders are given; i.e. the numbers on both sides must be different.
366 – Yajisan Kazusan.
Enjoy!
P351
P352
P353
P354
P355
P356
P357
P358
P359
P360
P361
P362
P363
P364
P365
P366
Puzzle No. 347 – 349 : More UKPA tournament puzzles
It just shows how lost in other things I am, that I actually missed an entire round that had 3 more puzzles of mine. I only realized now while quickly solving through the rounds. The puzzle quality in general is superb. Refer to the previous post for a link to the forum topic where all the puzzles are posted.
Out of these 3, 2 I think are the hardest ones of the set I sent. I guess its appropriate they were used in the team round. The Odd Even Heyawacky requires a lot of thinking of patterns, and the Dotted wall, is just an unfamiliar type with some tricky deductions. The Yajisan Kazusan though, I don’t think is that hard. People who’re used to solving these will find it fine enough until a pause moment near the end, if I remember right. There were 6 more puzzles I sent that’ll be used at a later time. My personal favorites of the set are among those 6.
Anyway, Enjoy! Next post, Tuesday Sudoku.
P347 : Dotted wall – Reading from left to right, top to bottom, every Nth shaded cell is marked by a dot. N is a constant value that needs to be determined by the solver. The shaded cells must form a contiguous wall. No 2×2 group of cells can be entirely shaded. The number at the top of the clue gives the number of shaded cells around it, and the number at the bottom gives the number of dots around it.
P348 : Odd Even Heyawacky – Shade in some cells. No two shaded cells should be adjacent, and all of the unshaded cells should be in one contiguous region. There may never be a horizontal or vertical line of unshaded cells that crosses two thick boundaries. An O in a region means there are an odd number of shaded cells in that region. An E in a region means there are an even number of shaded cells in that region (including zero).
P349 : Yajisan Kazusan – Shade in some cells. Shaded cells cannot be orthogonally adjacent. The remaining white area has to be connected. The clues indicated the number of shaded cells in the direction of the arrow. The clues that are unshaded must be true. Once shaded, a clue is irrelevant.
P347
P348
P349
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. 190 : Yajisan Kazusan
Just felt like it. Nothing too great.
Rated : Medium. But on the hard side with the opening and starting few steps.
Enjoy!
Puzzle No. 190
Puzzle No. 178 : Masyu [Yajisan Kazusan type something]
Update : Slight uniqueness issue fixed. Thanks to Liu Bobby for pointing it out, and apologies for the issue.
This took me quite a long time to get working, and has turned out to have more logical workouts than I thought would be the case when I started upon it.
Anyway,
Follow Masyu rules. Not all circles need to be visited by the loop. For the circles not visited by the loop, the number in them gives the number of cells visited by the loop in that direction. For the circles visited by the loop, the converse rule applies and the number is a liar, i.e. the number of cells visited by the loop in that direction cannot be that number.
Rated : Hard.
Enjoy!
Puzzle No. 178
Puzzle No. 169: Yajisan Kazusan[Cipher]
I made this one 5 hours earlier. Took some time to reproduce on the computer, and a lot more time since I was adamant about getting it tested before putting it up, since it’d be kind of an anti-climax to make a broken puzzle as my returning one after a break 😛
Additionally, all numbers are replaced by letters. Each letter equals a different number, except C and I which are repeats. C = either S or Y, I = either H or R. Determining all this is part of the puzzle, but some letters may remain undetermined as long as the rest of the rules are followed. The double arrows mean that the sum of shaded cells in both directions is considered in case the clue cell is true.
Rated : Hard, not sure though.
Enjoy!
Puzzle No. 169
Puzzle No. 112 : Yajisan Kazusan Invert-isan Clue-zusan [Worst title ever]
Right. 2nd puzzle of the day.
Btw, TVC XII this weekend. I may have well and truly screwed up chances of being 1st among Indians, but hey, some of the puzzles seem to have great potential and I look forward to a fun test.
IB and submission link for the test here.
Follow Yajisan Kazusan rules.
There’s one big difference. All the clues that are shaded MUST be true and all the clues that are unshaded MUST be false. The clue cell itself is not included in its clue-count. i.e. If there is a 3 pointing towards its right, for there to be three shaded cells to its right, this 3 must be shaded too. If its unshaded, there cannot be 3 shaded cells to its right.
Heh.
Rated : Medium.
Solution here. Password – WT
Enjoy!
Puzzle No. 112
Puzzle No. 91 : Yajisan Kazusan[Diagonal]
I thought the Yajilin Diagonal came out quite well and I just wanted to see how this works. If its rubbish, say so. 😉
Follow those. The clues, instead of pointing in orthogonal directions, point in diagonal directions. The same clue can point in multiple directions, meaning, if its true, there has to be that number of shaded cells in each of those directions. The “?”s mean it has to be the same number of shaded cells in all directions.
Rated : Medium I suppose.
Solution here. Password – DYK
Enjoy!
Puzzle No. 91
PS's puzzles + 