Tag Archives: Nikoli

Aug 1 2021

Puzzle No. 510: Akari

So… I’m back.

I wondered what I could possibly say along with starting to post here after such a long hiatus (from here anyway).

I do plan to start posting here regularly again though. Why? I guess we may or may not find out.

So after a lot of thought on what to post as my return puzzle, I decided, I just want to keep things simple.

So here’s a vanilla Akari.

Rules:

Place lights in some cells so that every cell is illuminated. Lights illuminate the cell they’re in as well as all cells seen in a straight line horizontally or vertically, not obstructed by a black cell. Lights may not illuminate each other. Clues represent the number of lights in the (up to) four cells surrounding the clue.

We have penpa links now! Why penpa over some other platforms for this blog? I’ll probably write about that in a future post. I’ll also write about someone doing some nice work to make links out of some of the older puzzles of this blog. All that and more to come. For now, link to solve: https://git.io/JBSYU

The link is set to composite mode specialized towards solving Akari, and drawing in the bulbs correctly will trigger the answer check.

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Nov 1 2014

Puzzle No. 500 – 9 Shady Masterminds [Special] [Marathon]

I thought quite a bit about what I wanted for my 500th puzzle here. There was a stage when I thought I’d just ignore the milestone and post something normal. Then I got a bit of an idea of a simple theme which might still give out a nice solve path with different logical deductions combining.

The puzzle that resulted from this idea is pretty narrow and quite difficult, according to my and Swaroop‘s test solving experiences. Still, I think its ended up being quite varied in the thinking required and I like how it turned out.

Unlike my usual approach of posting a single image, for this puzzle I am attaching a PDF instead. This PDF has 4 pages. The first page contains the puzzle. The 2nd and 3rd pages contain the rules (The length is just because there are 9 different puzzles to cover, but most of them are familiar and should just be a quick read-through). There are two newer puzzle types, and one variant which I couldn’t immediately find an example for, so I have added 6×6 examples for these three rule-sets. The remaining are all classics, so I’ve just linked to the respective page where I got the rules from, and you can visit these links if you want an example. If you are new here and haven’t seen those sites before, I suggest visiting them anyway for more great puzzles.

Here’s the PDF:

9 Shady Masterminds

Please let me know in the comments or by mail (prasanna16391@gmail.com) if you have any queries regarding the rules or any other issues.

Jan 28 2014

Puzzle No. 488 – Fillomino [Instructive]

Check this post for reference on this blog’s 3 main types of posts from now on.

The instructive post-type is (for now) mainly a way to “rehearse” my way of explanation for a certain target audience, while also giving the general puzzle solvers an easy puzzle to solve. I will not cover any complex techniques here, because the end result I’m looking at is designing a curriculum with more detailed explanations. I will mostly just hint at the starting point and a basic technique that’s necessary to solve the puzzle in question.

The instructive PDF’s definitely just for complete newcomers to the puzzle type, so I’m posting the puzzle image below the PDF anyway, so the experienced solvers can solve it directly.

PDF – Fillomino_Instructive

Enjoy!

P488

P488

Jan 24 2014

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

P484

P485

P485

P486

P486

P487

P487

 

Dec 9 2013

Puzzle No. 472, 473 : Shakashaka, Fillomino

Heh. Will get back to Tuesday-Thursday-Sunday from the coming week. Also, my Puzzle posts will be Tuesday and Sunday now, and the Daily League post will be on Thursday. This is to accommodate Richard Stolk on Tuesdays.

Anyway,

Rules – 

P472 – Rules for Shakashaka.

P473 – Rules for Fillomino.

Enjoy!

P472

P472

P473

P473