bakpao's puzzles

WSPC 2026 has concluded! This was my 5th year in a row participating in WSPC. I was on the A team for both Sudoku and Puzzles this year.  I finished in 25th official in WSC ( 1st within NL,  30th unofficial, same official rank but down from 29th unofficial last year) and 22nd official in WPC ( 2nd within NL,  30th unofficial, up from 38th unofficial last year) .  No terrible results by any means, but they both left me feeling like I could have done a lot better. Both tournaments were plagued by more unnecessary errors than usual, and during WPC I unfortunately was ill during the 2nd day. I was very well prepared for WSC this year. I put in a lot of practice, even doing a mini bootcamp  in China in the week leading up to the event,  simulating many of the individual rounds. I think my result is disappointing to me mainly due to an extremely poor start on the first morning, and bad performance in the non-standard rounds (Samurai and Relay). As for WPC, my pr...

Here's a Rail Pool I wrote last night. The idea to try for a fully symmetric grid apart from an unused cell randomly popped in my head. The top right requires a small lookahead that I didn't manage to get rid of, other than that I think this came out really cool. Difficulty: 3/5 (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of all cells. Clues represent all the different lengths of the straight line segments that are at least partially contained within the region. Each number within a region must be represented by at least one line segment. Play on pzprxs https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?railpool/11/11/zm23p2t1l3t4w23w4t3l1t2p23zn000660f0601g0c0u0cc00002111o0s0500k0703ggg800000000800000000000000000

I participated in the 24 Hour Puzzle Championship again! It took place right after WSPC, in Eger, Hungary. If you've not had a chance to take a look at the puzzles yet, they are available here . Definitely check them out! This was the 22nd edition of the event, and it was my third time participating. I ranked 23rd this time, down from 13th last year. At first glance that seems like a significant drop, but with some 100 more participants this year, many of which are typically stronger solvers than myself, I'm pretty content with my result. I'd say I would have done better if I had prepared more for the event (which I hadn't much, because of WSPC), but I think that holds true for almost everyone there.  As always, the event was fantastic and tons of fun. I especially loved doing it with this many more people. I hope we see many of them return for future editions. Unlike previous years, this year's edition came directly after a week of already exhausting WSPC solving, ...

WSPC and 24HPC 2025 have concluded! This post will recap only WSPC - 24HPC will be in a different post, probably in a few days after I finish post-solving the rounds.  This was my 4th year in a row participating in WSPC. I was on the A team for Sudoku and on the B team for Puzzles this year.  I finished in 29th unofficial in WSC (25th official, 1st NL and up from 54th unofficial last year) and 38th unofficial in WPC (2nd NL, same rank as last year).  Last year I wasn't happy with my WSC performance. This year I dedicated almost all of my preparation time ahead of the championship week to sudoku, and my performance felt better because of it. I still feel like I performed rather poorly in a couple of rounds, especially on day 1, so (as always...) there remains plenty of room to do better. Overall though, breaching the top 30 and securing the top spot in NL feels like a solid improvement over last year. Because my focus on WSC inevitably meant a lack of preparation for WPC t...

Last year, I was invited to write puzzles for the 2024 Serbian Puzzle Championships!  It was my first time writing for this tournament, and I was briefed a structure where there would be 5 sets of puzzles: 1x Classics, 1x Variants, 1x Novelties, 1x Miniatures, 1x Longer Classics. It was never really clear to me whether I was supposed to write an entire set by myself or provide some puzzles for each set, so I ended up going for the latter. It turned out my submissions would all be in a single round (my own). Had I known, I probably would have opted for a different structure or maybe a common theme, but I think it ended up working quite well. Sticking to the categories meant the set has a nice variety to it.   The tournament ultimately was postponed and didn't happen in 2024, but it finally took place at the end of last month.  This is why a few of the puzzles are still themed around the number 24.  I also believe it was a shared championships between Serbia and Croati...

Here's a random simple loop that I wrote yesterday and don't really have any other place for - as always, a good excuse to get some content on the blog. Difficulty - 3/5 (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of all empty cells. Solve on puzz.link https://puzz.link/p?simpleloop/16/16/1s000230000o21444301g0043gg860404og00e00201804026400

WSPC 2024 has concluded! I made the trip to Beijing, China to compete for the 3rd time in a row, this time on the B team in both events following my absence at the Dutch championships this year (to take part in 24HPC instead).  I finished in 54th unofficial in WSC (3rd NL and down from 38th unofficial last year) and 38th unofficial in WPC (3rd NL and up from 47th unofficial last year).  I cannot be happy with my WSC performance - I lost 175 points  alone  to puzzles where I forgot to resolve the last two cells. That means a bit of careful checking at the end of each round would have been enough to jump me to 34th place and 1st NL. Perhaps with some more preparation in the days leading up to WSC (where instead I was enjoying long, active days sightseeing around Beijing), some of the many broken puzzles could have been avoided too and who knows, my result might actually have been good. Oh well. There's always next year.  I am quite happy with my WPC performance t...

Another year, another contribution to the Indian Puzzle Championship! This marks my 4th year in a row contributing to this event. I contributed 5 puzzles this year, which can be found in this post,  along with some rejects and leftovers . Like last year this post only contains the puzzles I wrote for the contest. The full IPC set can be purchased for a small price which helps LMI cover the costs incurred to organize the live event and continue to organize them in the future.  The full set contains all puzzle rounds, full of high quality puzzles, as well as bonus content like the PR Playoff puzzles and a giant interconnected puzzle gift. If you are able to, do consider purchasing the set. More information available  here  (IPC) and  here  (ISC) . Rules are included in the Penpa links, otherwise please refer to  Puzzle Rules . #1 - Star Battle - Round 1 - 30/500 points - Solve on  Penpa Mostly going for a clean theme and a not too difficult solve pa...

I was writing a Wafusuma for a project I'm contributing to and while doing so got the idea to try this set-up. It's a little gimmicky and I didn't put too much effort into it (this was the first location I tried for the rectangles - I did have to tweak the values though) but I think it turned out cute enough to publish it. There's probably a mean counting puzzle hiding in a different version of this idea as well. Difficulty - 2.5/5 (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Divide the grid into regions of orthogonally connected cells. Two regions of the same size may not share an edge. Borders must separate two different regions. A number on a border indicates the total number of cells contained in the two regions it separates. Solve on puzz.link https://puzz.link/p?wafusuma/10/10/u78g.h.h78m69m7am99p.i.zo.i886m475zs.iab95la976u