#30 - Giant Coop Puzzle Collection (Newest release: Tapa-Like Loop)
What are these puzzles?
A few months ago, I coop solved a few big puzzles with some friends. A very fun experience, but procuring suitable puzzles proved more difficult. Finding them in the first place is no easy task, and I found myself always left hoping they'd be suitable for coop solving, which quite often, they are not.
This gave me the idea to set some giant puzzles across vanilla genres. The idea behind them is simple - present the solvers with a 41x41 grid roughly divided into 4 20x20 quadrants, each with their own entry point, so solvers can work independently on parts of the grid (and a divider row/column for... reasons). With an added bonus that they're in a very easy to find place - right here.
And so, after many weeks of on and off working on these puzzles, I present the first three in what will hopefully be a series I manage to keep going for a long while: A Yajilin, Tapa and Shakashaka.
The puzzles mostly do not contain overly complex deductions; I found those to be rather unenjoyable while coop solving. There are, of course, exceptions, so don't expect every puzzle to be a walk in the park!
I did not want to release the puzzles before I had least three, but going forward, whenever I finish one I will be adding them to this post, so check back every so often! I intend to release one every month or so, a different genre each time.
All puzzles are extensively tested by myself and/or others, and are always confirmed unique by a computer solver.
How to initiate a coop solving session?
To initiate a coop solving session, open the link below, click File -> Network play -> Start, then copy the link, share it with whoever you want to solve together with, and start solving!
Rules to the puzzles
Please refer to https://tinyurl.com/PuzzleRules for rules on all the puzzles that appear here.
Updates!
31/10/2021 - Masyu is live now!
My overall feeling with this puzzle is that it is a bit overclued, and I've also allowed symmetry to be broken in a couple of places to resolve a couple of pesky ambiguities, but overall I'm very content with the solve, especially the ending. Enjoy!
30/11/2021 - Kurotto is released!
This puzzle took long to set, but that's more because I'm worse at kurotto myself than at any of the other genres. Luckily I had a lot of free time lately, and I had an absolute blast setting this, since clue variety is much more open than for instance Masyu and you can take the puzzle into a lot of different directions. It's worth mentioning that this puzzle is considerably more difficult than any of the others I've released so far. That said, I'd love to hear if you manage to get through, and I'm available to ask for help should you ever get stuck. Lastly, since virtually all online available solvers are... not very good at kurotto, or do not take puzzles this large, testing was instrumental for this one. As such, I am very much grateful and indebted to Prasanna and Freddie for taking the time to test the puzzle on such short notice.
2/1/2022 - First of the year: Tapa-Like Loop!
Originally scheduled to be the next puzzle, I switched around TLL and the next (undisclosed) genre as I was falling behind on my schedule because of the holiday season, and am more comfortable with setting TLL. This one was an absolute joy to set. Loop is still my favorite puzzle category and TLL has many different ways of setting up deductions, especially a large grid. Based on my own and others' testing, the puzzle came out rather difficult, but hopefully it's still a very enjoyable solve!
The puzzles
(Note that the complexity ratings are based purely on my estimates, and your experiences with the individual puzzles may differ)
Yajilin - 5/10/2021 - Play the puzzle! - Image - Complexity: 3/5
Tapa - 5/10/2021 - Play the puzzle! - Image - Complexity: 4/5
Masyu - 31/10/2021 - Play the puzzle! - Image - Complexity: 3/5
Kurotto - 30/11/2021 - Play the puzzle! - Image - Complexity: 5/5
The yajilin has no solution via cspuz
ReplyDeleteIt's because some of the unclued cells still have arrows in them that you don't see when the Gray background style is enabled. They cause solvers to crash. You can use the link in this pastebin instead if you need the solution, both cspuz and pzprrt can solve it: https://pastebin.com/Q1ry1gB4
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