I was invited to write some puzzles for the 2023 UK Puzzle Championship! I always greatly enjoy this contest so I was happy to contribute some puzzles for it. I wrote 6 of 30 puzzles, 3 of which fairly common genres, the other 3 fairly new/obscure genres.
The contest booklets are available publicly and can be accessed via https://ukpuzzles.org/contests.php?contestid=67 (round 1) and https://ukpuzzles.org/contests.php?contestid=68 (round 2). The puzzles by the other authors are all great and I definitely recommend checking them out as well.
Rules are included in the penpa links for all puzzles.
Round 1: Cross the Streams - 22/540 points
https://tinyurl.com/25dtcuxh
A low pointer written at the end of the writing phase to balance out the contest a bit more, as we had quite a few puzzles leaning towards the harder end. I considered writing it around 2 and 3 clues but I had already seen quite a few puzzles of this genre using similar theming this year so I opted not to go with that, instead choosing a symmetric arrangement of asterisks and building the puzzle around that.
Round 2: Nanameguri - 55/540 points
A recent Nikoli type that picked up some steam this year. I chose it because it has had a very positive reception since being added to puzz.link and because I wanted to have one puzzle that I could theme around "UKPC", and it seemed like a good fit. Finding a good layout and shape for the letters was quite challenging and I definitely had to get a bit creative with the P to ensure uniqueness, but I'm happy with how the puzzle came out in the end.
Round 2: Disconnection - 30/540 points
Disconnection is a type I like coming back to every once in a while, but doing something original with it is hard - the genre tends to use a lot of the same types of tricks and uniqueness can be hard to achieve without introducing shortcuts. I had the idea for a large cross layout, something I've also used before in Nanro. I think it would have worked better on a larger grid, but I felt 10x10 would be a better fit for the contest. I tried for ages to have different arrangements for the top and right pyramids but couldn't get it to work out. Still very happy with the puzzle, though.
Round 2: Anti-Midloop - 34/540 points
While a bit of a joke variant, Anti-Midloop can be a fun variation on standard Midloop rules. You won't find many of them around, though. This was my first experience writing one. Understanding the rules (and differences with normal Midloop) well is pretty much the key to solving these. I do recommend looking at the example first if it's your first time seeing this type (sorry, testers :]).
Round 2: Yajisan-Kazusan - 27/540 points
My goal for this puzzle was to have a fun but not too difficult solve. I think I succeeded, although some testers did have some trouble spotting all the logic. The original version had a 3 up instead of a 0 up, which results in the same solution but makes the break-in a fair bit harder, so in the end it's probably a good thing I changed it to a 0.
Round 2: Compass - 53/540 points
Towards the end of the writing phase we were quite low on Region Division puzzles compared to other categories, so I constructed this compass. I'm super happy with how it came out and there's tons of cool logic to discover (despite a couple of small uniqueness shortcuts). The original version of the puzzle didn't have the 0s - I added them to bring down the difficulty a bit. It solves perfectly fine without them, but makes the break-in a bit harder to see.
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