bakpao's puzzles

   Two classic Rassi Silai puzzles . I created both on 29 July, 2021. The first puzzle was more an attempt at creating a functional puzzle than anything else, the second puzzle I tried harder and turned out logically much more interesting. Difficulty: 2/5 for the first, 3/5 for the second (rules from Eric Fox' Puzzle Rules ) Within each region, draw a non-intersecting path through the centers of all cells. No two cells in the grid containing endpoints of paths may be touching one another, not even diagonally. Solve on penpa Puzzle 1:  https://tinyurl.com/ysj535eh Puzzle 2:  https://tinyurl.com/ysaz8wyq

    A variant Snake puzzle. I created this puzzle on 27 July, 2021. Difficulty: 2/5 (rules from Prasanna's blog ) Draw a snake in the grid of unknown length. The head and tail of the snake are given. The body of the snake cannot touch itself, not even diagonally. The numbers indicate the number of cells the snake visits in the direction of the arrow. If the snake does not pass through a clue cell, then that clue is true, otherwise, it is false. Solve on penpa

    A variant Tapa-Like Loop puzzle. I created this puzzle on 27 July, 2021. It was my entry to a speedsetting contest in the CTC discord revolving around loop puzzles with rotationally symmetrical regions. We were allowed to add one rule into the prompt, I chose a tapa-like loop aspect. The puzzle took first place. Difficulty: 2/5 (TLL rules from Eric Fox' Puzzle Rules ) Draw a single non-intersecting, non-crossing and non-branching loop in the grid. The loop must travel through all grey areas and must follow a rotationally symmetric path in each grey area.  Numbers inside grey regions indicate how many cells in the area are used by the loop.  Clues in the grid are regular tapa-like loop clues:  Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of some empty cells. Clues represent the numbers of consecutive cells occupied by the loop each time it enters the (up to) eight cells surrounding the clue. Solve on penpa

    A Statue Park (Twilight) puzzle. I created this puzzle on 17 July, 2021, as part of a speedsetting session in the CTC fan discord. The puzzle took shared 3rd place. Difficulty: 2/5 (classic rules from GM Puzzles ) A bank of shapes is given with the grid, usually with each shape labeled for your convenience. Place each of the shapes exactly once into the grid, with rotations and reflections allowed. No two shapes can overlap or be orthogonally adjacent, and all of the space not occupied by shapes must be connected. Black circles in the grid represent spaces that must be contained in one of the shapes, and white circles represent spaces that may not be contained in a shape. Number clues, act as minesweeper clues (i.e. clues adressing the neighbouring 8 cells) and give the number of cells containing the opposite colour. So if there is a number in a cell that has a black circle/shaded cell, it gives the number of unshaded non-shape cells around it, and vice versa.  Play on penpa https:

    A classic Heavy Dots puzzle. I created this puzzle on 10 July, 2021. It is the result of another prompt by Prasanna for me to set a puzzle I have no experience with. This one took a bit longer than the Seramik to create, but I'm happy with how it came out! Difficulty: 3/5 (rules from GM Puzzles ) Draw vertical/horizontal lines between dots to divide the grid into regions. A region may contain at most one number, equal to the area of the region. No region may cover a 2×2 area. Some dots are “heavy” and have 3 or 4 lines connected to them. Black circles indicate heavy dots with exactly three lines; white circles indicate heavy dots with four lines. Not all heavy dots are given, but there can be no heavy dots orthogonally adjacent to the indicated ones. In other words, there may be only 2 lines from any unmarked dot adjacent to a white/black circle Solve on penpa

    A classic Tug of War puzzle. I created this puzzle on 8 July, 2021. For more background on the genre and an example puzzle, see this post .  Difficulty: 3/5 Rules Draw a single, non-intersecting loop that passes through all circles with arrows. Clues indicate the difference between the total length of line segments going out of the clue in the direction of the arrow up until the first turn, and the total length of line segments coming into the clue, up until the first turn. For black clues, the leg going in the direction of the arrow must be greater, for white clues the leg going in the direction of the arrow must be smaller. Grey clues indicate the leg going in the direction of the arrow must be either greater or smaller than the other leg.  Not all clue values are necessarily given, in case no clue is given the length difference between the arrow leg and the other leg must be non-zero and follow black/white/grey clue properties. Solve on penpa

Background on the genre    These are 3 Tug of War puzzles. This is an entirely new loop genre that I created and fleshed out myself in the past week, as part of our Monthly Puzzle Prompt in the CTC Discord, which this month revolves around novelties.  It is the first time I have put considerable thought into an entirely new puzzle genre, and it wouldn't have been possible without the help of some seasoned puzzlers, in particular Prasanna, Swaroop and Shogia. The ruleset might take some getting used to, but should be accessible to anyone familiar with the basic loop genres. The 3 puzzles are meant to be an introductory set of puzzles, setting up some basic deductions that arise in this genre. Further exploration of clue patterns and more steep deductions is scheduled for the coming few weeks :) Rules Draw a single, non-intersecting loop that passes through all circles with arrows. Clues indicate the difference between the total length of line segments going out of the clue in the di