bakpao's puzzles

I went to participate in the 24 hour puzzle championship in Budapest again last weekend!  This was the 21st edition of the event, and it was my second time participating after my debut last year, in which I ranked 18th. This time I ranked 13th , so a solid improvement! Looking at the attendee list before the event, I thought my best possible result would be 12th, but also felt like I should be getting at least 14th. So, just like in 2023's WPC, I finished exactly where I predicted ahead of the event. Ironically, I didn't receive points for two puzzles that I solved fine, but only noticed it after the event was concluded - had I gotten them, I would have jumped to 12th place... :suseyes: Like last year, the event was tons of fun and a fantastic experience. I wasn't sure for a long while whether I would attend, as the tournament coincided with the Dutch championships. Since I intend to participate in WSPC later this year and our championships serve as the selection process f

All the way back in October 2022, at WSPC in Krakow, Murat and I had the idea to organise an online contest with a special theme, meant to make solvers do a double take while solving: All puzzles were to be doppelgangers, or puzzles with a similar twist (such as expanding the grid without altering the clues, or inversing clues, like the puzzles below).  Besides the very strict theming, all the puzzles also needed to be fit for a contest and span a suitable difficulty range. Ultimately this lead to many failed attempts and many many hours spent on trying to get pairs of puzzles right. We managed to get to 12 finished puzzles for the contest before we lost the motivation to spend more time on it. We've been sitting on the puzzles ever since, waiting for inspiration to strike again one day, but unfortunately it never did and recently we decided to therefore abandon the project. A shame, but the positive is I get to showcase some of the puzzles I wrote for it here instead.  Revisiting

I was invited to write puzzles for the UKPA Open this year! The structure of this tournament was such that each author wrote an entire puzzle round by themselves, something I'd never done before. Lots of opportunities to go for fun theming, which shows throughout all the rounds (see the IBs here ).  I went for a round with 10 puzzles, divided into sets of two. A classic and a variant of the same genre, in each of the categories Loop, Shading, Region Division, Number Placement and Object Placement. I named the round "Something's Off!" in my head, a nod to each variant putting a twist on the given information somehow (with the slight exception of the Maxi Loop variant).  My round was the first of the day, and mostly leaned towards the easier side, with a couple of harder puzzles thrown in the mix. Rules are included in the penpa links for all puzzles. Puzzle 1 - Tapa - 16/383 points http://tinyurl.com/ysfobg6d A simple puzzle themed around only 2 and 4 clues, intended t

Here are two puzzles that I don't really like for the other outlets where I post most of my puzzles nowadays ( WCPN  and LMI Expo ). Good way to get some activity on this blog, I guess! Difficulty: 3/5  (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Connect some pairs of orthogonally adjacent dots to form a single non-intersecting loop. Clues represent the number of edges drawn surrounding the clue (up to four). Solve on puzz.link https://puzz.link/p?slither/11/11/hada77666267666cadar338833draca77886287886caca Difficulty: 2.5/5  (rules from  Puzzle Rules ) Shade some cells so that all areas of orthogonally connected shaded cells are rectangular and all areas of orthogonally connected unshaded cells are not rectangular. A clue represents the size of its group of shaded/unshaded cells. Solve on puzz.link https://puzz.link/p?cbanana/11/11/r5m4v7g6m8i4n9n7iam6g4v7m6r

Last week WSPC 2023 took place in Toronto, Canada! I took part in both events, on the A team for the Netherlands - my second time participating after my debut last year. I finished in 34th official / 38th unofficial in WSC (2nd NL and up from 56th unofficial last year) and 38th official / 47th unofficial in WPC (3rd NL and down from 42nd unofficial last year). Overall I'm happy to have improved my sudoku ranking and am content to hover around the top 40 mark in puzzles, but I do feel there's still a lot of potential for me to do better. Hopefully I can keep improving at future events. A short breakdown follows of my performance per round for each event, along with what I liked and/or didn't like about the events as a whole and a recap of other fun stuff that happened. If you're just here for the practice puzzles, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. ----- WSC - Day 1 Round 1 - Opening Ceremony: 400/450 points (tied for 18th unofficial) A great start for me, muc