#61 - Speedsetting Puzzle Collection
We regularly host speedsetting sessions in the CTC discord. The concept is simple: a host sets a prompt - usually a (pool of) genre(s), a theme or other constraint - to work with, participants then set a puzzle around that prompt in the allotted time, usually one hour. Judges then solve all the puzzles and decide their top three favorites, which are declared the winners!
These are always fun events. Not only do they encourage me to set genres or constraints I normally wouldn't, there's also a strategic element involved where you have to make rapid decisions on what genre to go with, grid dimensions, theming - all before and while setting a functional, interesting puzzle. An hour seems like quite some time, but more often than not I find myself battling against the clock.
The puzzles that I write during speedsets tend to not be published anywhere other than in Discord, even though they can be quite nice. They're not as refined as my usual puzzles, but that's the charm of speedsetting.
This post collates my speedsetting puzzles that I think turned out nice, from newest to oldest.
Double Choco (Off by One) - 1st out of 10 entries - Difficulty 2.5/5
https://tinyurl.com/2pzmjgp5 (rules in link)
A fun session, where we had to theme our puzzles around sudoku, but not have them be sudoku (note it's just a theme - the puzzle doesn't solve as a classic or any common variant sudoku) This idea to do a double choco variant came to me randomly and was a bit of a coin flip - I had no idea if it would work. It posed quite a bit of challenge, as figuring out the behavior of something unfamiliar is always time consuming, but in the end I managed to set a nice puzzle within the time limit. I ended up having to make some aesthetic sacrifices, but that's okay.
I think this variant has tons of potential. The time pressure and the very restricted region set-up meant I couldn't explore it to the fullest during the session, but I'll definitely be revisiting this idea in the future.
Easy As ABC (Mastermind) - 3rd out of 3 entries - Difficulty 3/5
https://tinyurl.com/2mkbxxxd (Normal Easy As ABC rules, additionally clues in shaded areas between grids are the first seen in one direction, but not the first seen in the other)
I was invited to do a live speedsetting on Memeristor's channel along with two others, sharing our screens the whole time. It was a fun and interesting experience, with the knowledge that an audience was watching adding even more pressure than usual. The prompt was very challenging - Easy as ABC with linked grids. I opted for a mastermind style linking of grids where the clues are true in one direction and false in the other. Unfortunately I ended up submitting a puzzle with one grid horribly non-unique, a consequence of not backtracking far enough and building logic off of an invalid deduction towards the end under all the time pressure. A huge shame, as the other 3 grids resolved very nicely and were very well received. This is a fixed version of that puzzle. I went much less for aesthetics than I usually do, mostly because of the level of challenge of the prompt but also because I knew the audience for this particular challenge values logic much more than aesthetics.
Balance Loop - Outside of top 3 (9 entries) - Difficulty 2.5/5
A session themed on Valentine's Day. We were given various song titles and had to incorporate one of them into the theme of our puzzle. I went for Against All Odds (like almost everyone else) and a simple vanilla balance loop. Not all the clues are needed, but they don't bypass too much and they made the theme and aesthetics work better.
Slash Pack - 2nd out of 8 entries - Difficulty 1/5
This was only a 30 minute speedsetting and I joined about 10 minutes before the deadline, so obviously there wasn't a lot of time to set much at all. The prompt was to build your entire puzzle using only rabbit emoji (themed on the Chinese new year). Since the puzzle is very easy, I decided not to give the rules but to use the preselected penpa input mode and the word 'slice' as clues - fortunately the judges were able to figure it out.
Instructionless - 1st out of 17 entries - Difficulty 2.5/5*
Difficulty for the puzzle, not including figuring out the ruleset.
Example and solution https://tinyurl.com/23bhbzhp
Puzzle https://tinyurl.com/2a5a39cl
This was a great prompt - setters were to create a loop puzzle without giving the rules, and use only an example for the solvers/judges to use to figure out the rules. I'd never set instructionless before and we had to decide on a ruleset, create an example and write an actual puzzle. Overall a great challenge and experience.
Rules (ROT13 - it's more fun to try and figure them out yourself!): Qenj n aba vagrefrpgvat ybbc guebhtu gur pragref bs nyy pryyf. N ahzore va n ertvba ercerfragf gur ahzore bs pryyf bpphcvrq ol gur ynetrfg pbagvahbhf ybbc frtzrag jvguva gur ertvba. Rnpu pyhr vf bss ol rknpgyl bar.
International Borders - Outside of top 3 (14 entries) - Difficulty 2/5
https://puzz.link/p?interbd/9/9/-28i1i-34h-2bi-14i-2ak-14p1i-16i1p-14kfi-14i-22h-3di3i-1e
Rules: Shade some cells so that each orthogonally connected area of unshaded cells contains all instances of clues with a particular shape. Clued cells cannot be shaded, and number clues represent how many of the (up to) four orthogonally adjacent cells are shaded. Each shaded cell must be orthogonally adjacent to unshaded cells from at least two different areas.
A bit of a meme entry - we were not given a genre, instead only a grid with some clues predetermined. The additional rules specified links were to be provided for penpa or puzz.link, which at first seemed like a mistake (and probably was), but then I remembered this genre exists. I wasn't feeling particularly inspired to come up with a ruleset to go along with the grid, so I tried to make International Borders work and ended up providing the only puzz.link entry for the session. It obviously wasn't the ideal layout, but there's still some fun logic to discover.
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Canal View-Like Loop (Hex) - 1st out of 10 entries - Difficulty 3/5
https://tinyurl.com/29d7adnj (rules in link)
An example of valid clue fulfillment can be found here.
The prompt here was a loop genre on a non-square grid. The constraint I opted for was a complete gamble, as I had only used it once before, in this mash-up, and this was only my 2nd hex puzzle. Thus, most of the time was spent figuring out how to force logic and make ambiguous ends resolve. One ambiguity popped up at the very last second and I had to add one extra clue to play it safe.
Square Jam (Heterocut) - 1st out of 16 entries - Difficulty 2/5
https://tinyurl.com/2adxtdtw (rules in link)
The prompt for this genre was to have a region division genre where the grid would be divided in squares. Square Jam was an easy choice, the blend with (part of) Heterocut rules gave it a nice unique twist.
Equality - 1st out of 14 entries - Difficulty 3/5
https://tinyurl.com/y74pllbl (rules in link)
https://tinyurl.com/ycbx866b (rules in link)
This was a really interesting session, and one of my favorites of all time. Participants were given free choice of genre, and then tasked with setting an incomplete puzzle. After 30 minutes, the incomplete puzzle would be sent to another participant, and we all received someone else's unfinished puzzle (without knowing whose it was), which we then had to turn into a finished puzzle. I was given this grid by Prasanna. I recall trying to finish it with only tetrominoes, but I couldn't get it done in time and opted for more clues in the middle.
Shapopia - Outside of top 3 (13 entries) - Difficulty 2/5
https://tinyurl.com/2eyeruu7 (rules in link)
https://git.io/J9sKC (rules in link)
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