bakpao's puzzles

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...